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Cognitive Disconnect between Jews and Christians on Gaza

(Jewish News-UK) Patrick Moriarty - Jewish friends ask me, "Why are my Christian friends silent, when they were so supportive after previous antisemitic attacks?" Christian friends ask me, "What's happened to my Jewish friend? We usually see eye-to-eye on everything, so why can't she see how all this looks?" While both Judaism and Christianity are "religions," this blurs an important difference of emphasis: while Christianity is a "faith" bound together by a set of beliefs and a worldview, Judaism is also an ethnic group, a "people" bound together by a commitment to clan and land at least as much as to theology. Jews are traumatized by the grief over the brutal massacre and abduction of members of their extended family, perpetrated in the land of God's promise, the only place on earth where they are not a minority. Christians say, "It was Judaism that taught us about limits to vengeance, about care for the vulnerable, about compassion," looking in horror and bewilderment as Gaza is laid waste. They absolutely know the barbarity perpetrated by Hamas but they don't feel it the way Jews do. Jews approach the justice issues of this conflict with their guts, since their history means there are profoundly different stakes. The writer, an Anglican Priest, is a trustee of the Council of Christians and Jews.
2023-11-22 00:00:00
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