Why Christians Must Speak Up

Transcript

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[0:00] Thank you, Adele. And you may have noticed that this is on purpose that we're reading from the Revised Standard Version today because I'll be reading the sermon text from the Revised Standard Version today as well. And there's sort of a teaching point in all of that. But you notice that it has older language. It has only masculine language, whereas our newer translations such as the New Revised Standard Version tried to make all of those more gender neutral pronouns. And what we normally use in worship is the New Living Translation, which is a good translation, but also a bit of a paraphrase. So there's some challenges with that. That's a topic for another time when we have a paraphrase. But I'm going to read the sermon text from the Revised Standard Version. Pardon me. Now, where did it go?

[0:51] It's not in there. And you know why? Because it's not in there. Because somebody wrote the bulletin today, and it was me. And I must have erased it on accident. So I'm going to have to go like this. Now, the reason, and just a little word of introduction about this, is the Revised Standard Version does a better job of more sort of literally translating what's in the original text from the Gospel of John. This is John chapter 19, starting at the beginning. It's about the trial of Jesus, and it leads to his crucifixion. And in the Revised Standard Version, I'll just sort of give it away right now so we know, when it talks about the Jews, and that's the word it uses. Like I told the kids, the Jews, in the Greek text, it just says the Jews. The Jews said crucify him. The Jews said we have no king but Caesar. You'll see. Now, when you get to the New Living Translation, which is a paraphrase, it doesn't say the Jews just like that. It says the Jewish leaders. And that's contextually correct, because this is a conversation between the leaders of the Jews. So this would be the Sanhedrin, the council. And the problem that you'll find, and I'm not saying that the Revised Standard Version has a problem in it, but the New Living Translation does

[2:06] a better job of this, is you lose the context that it's not all Jewish people who are saying we want to crucify Jesus. It's the Jewish leaders. That's an important distinction. And this has led to, as we'll see, a lot of problems in understanding that Christians thought Jews, just all the Jews, killed Jesus. All right? So that's the interesting. Does that make sense to everybody? So when we read it, and I'm going to kind of turn backwards to read it, then we'll go through it. Let's go through it. So this is our reading for today. It's from John chapter 19.

[2:35] Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him. And the soldiers plated a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him saying, hail, king of the Jews, and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, see, I am bringing him out to you so that you may know that I find no crime in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, behold the man. When the chief priests and the officers saw him, and so you see those are the leaders right there. When the chief priests and officers saw him, they cried out, crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no crime in him. The Jews answered him. See that right there? That's correct in the Greek, but that's the challenge that we've had with this text over the centuries. The Jews answered him, we have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he has made himself the son of God. Upon this, Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out, if you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar. When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment table.

[3:51] And Pilate sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the pavement, or Gabbatha in the Aramaic. And in Hebrew, oh, there it is, Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, behold your king. They cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to him, shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, we have no king but Caesar.

[4:18] Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. To the Roman soldiers, that would be. So let's say a prayer. Lord, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it in Jesus' name, amen. So now we're going to shift control to Hans-Erik. Let's see how this works. We have this little clicker here.

[4:37] And oops. Now how'd that happen? There it is. So just a little foreground. Today, that sermon is kind of a sermon, kind of a presentation. And it's sort of a case about one thing. It's about why Christians should stand against anti-Semitism.

[4:53] And why is that happening now? You may ask yourself. And it's partly because I've just noticed a rise in anti-Semitism in our culture, both on the far right and on the far left, and in sort of normal culture in colleges, high school classrooms, lots of places. It's a bit of a concern. And Christians actually have sort of a unique responsibility to stand up against it. And we'll see about why that is a little bit later. Um.

[5:18] And so it's just something that's been on my heart. And I wanted to share it with you. And also, I want to create a little bit of time at the end for questions or ideas that come to you. But I want to just sort of start off by defining it. I'm going to just test and see if this works. Whoop.

[5:34] I might have to ask Andres. Does that work? Nothing ever worked. Well, I just have to ask him to move the slides forward. So be it. So let's start off. Now, this I do have. I won't have to look behind my head. So that's good. So we're going to be standing against anti-Semitism. That's the idea. And what is anti-Semitism? You've probably heard this phrase before. And also, there's no dash in anti-Semitism, because there's not a Semitism to be anti against. Anti-Semitism just in general means, a simple definition, is prejudice, discrimination, or hatred directed against Jewish people simply because they are Jewish. OK, so that's the definition of anti-Semitism. We've all seen it. We all probably know what it is. But it's more complex than that. And we'll get into a little bit about the complexity of what actually anti-Semitism is. It's actually a matter of debate on college campuses and other places. So we're going to go ahead to the next slide. And I'm going to have a few frequently answered questions. But I'm going to start with one at the beginning, because this is something that comes up that's important to frame. One thing that we should be aware of is that anti-Semitic hate crimes have gone up since October of 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel

[6:46] and Israel. And Israel attacked Hamas back. And that only just recently ended, but probably didn't really end. That's a different story. But whether it's ended or not is a different story. But that was a conflict that has been simmering a long time. But one of the early questions is, does standing up to anti-Semitism mean we're taking the side of the nation of Israel? Does everybody understand why? And does everyone understand why we would even ask that question? Because it kind of seems that way. Like to stand against hatred towards Jewish people means, we're siding with the political parties that run the nation of Israel. But now you realize, though, that when you ask that question out loud, it's kind of obvious what the answer is. The answer is no, because the Jewish people who live down the street from here, and if you come here on a Saturday, you can often see them walking to synagogue, because they're devout and they won't drive a car on the Sabbath. They're not in Israel. They may have never even been to Israel.

[7:43] They have no control over what's happening in Israel. So they're just Jewish people observing their religion. If they're victims of hate crime and we defend them, we're not defending the nation state of Israel and the decisions that are made in that country. Does that make sense to everybody? So we kind of have to separate them out. And so the answer here in this handout is it means you're taking the side of your Jewish neighbors or colleagues and fellow citizens against prejudice. So we have this, we're not taking the side of Israel. The problem is some people might think so. But that's OK, because you have a chance to explain it, just like I have right now, and say, yes, I'm citing against this person against hate, with this person against hate. But it does not mean that I'm citing with the government of another country. And I mean, I would bring up, think of Daniel sometimes. He's Russian, although now you're an American citizen. And it would be very unfair of us to come and yell at you over what's happening, what Russia is doing to Ukraine. That would be completely unfair to you. You have no control over it, and you don't like it. But if we look at Daniel, we don't know if he likes it or not. He could like it, but he doesn't, thank goodness.

[8:53] But since we don't know, we can't just yell at him for it. That would be Russophobia, right? That would be wrong to do that, to lump him in with all the other people. And that is actually sort of one version of anti-Semitism, is to assume that all Jewish people, any Jewish person you meet, is actually responsible for what all Jewish people are doing. And that's what we're doing in the world, this idea that, and it kind of is kind of related to this idea that this sort of a conspiracy theory that Jewish people control the world, and they all are on the same page. It's like they all have this one book that they're reading from. Sometimes it's called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which they actually never wrote. That they're all on the same page in some grand conspiracy to control the world. Now, you notice when you say things out loud, they kind of lose their power, because I'll tell you, if the people who are controlling the world, they're doing a terrible job of it for themselves. They're not that good at it. So if they're trying to control the world, I would say they're failing. So the logical thing you would have to say is, no, they're not controlling the world. Are the Russians controlling the world?

[10:04] No, they're trying to. Are the Americans controlling the world? Maybe more than we should. But is any one ethnic group in this world controlling the entire world? And the media, and Hollywood, and the lizard people, and the Illuminati? No. Please, please. And Christians, like I keep saying, Christians cannot have no commerce with that kind of conspiracy theory. It's a violation of the commandment not to bear false witness against your neighbor. The Jewish people are our neighbors. The Russian people are our neighbors. We can't tell lies about them. We have to be truth-telling people.

[10:39] Yes, that's fine, George. So what are your thoughts on this free Palestine? My face is also obviously .. No, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously, Jewish people are against the government of Israel. In fact, .

[10:55] At least half of them are, yes. Exactly so. Yes, even people who live in Israel and who are Israeli citizens, half of them, at least, don't like what their government is doing. And just like, I mean, why would that be any different than this country? Do half of the country love what our government is doing? Absolutely. I mean, there's like weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of protests against our own government in the last few months, haven't there? Yeah. So it's like, so do you want anyone to come to you and say, oh, you Americans are responsible for everything your country does?

[11:25] Well, and then everything is more complex than this compression of ideas. Because in some sense, we are responsible because we vote. And we're responsible if you don't vote. So I think you should vote. But here, this last sentence of this slide says, conflating all Jewish people with the Israeli government is one form of anti-Semitism. And you're defending people from hate, not endorsing a government's policy. These are two different things. OK, let's go to the next slide. Just real quick, a little bit of history. As I said, the word Jew comes from Judea. A Judean is sort of a place name. But Judaism is complex. Or being Jewish is complex.

[12:07] Jewish can refer to a religious group or a cultural group or an ethnic identity. And so you have ethnic Jews who are Buddhists or atheists. They're not religiously Jewish, but they're ethnically Jewish. So it gets a little confusing. But here are the main groups of Jewish people, at least ethnically. Ashkenazi Jews that are descended from Central and Eastern Europe people, Germany, Poland, Russia. Sephardic Jews are descended from Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. And they were expelled in 1492. And they were scattered. Then they were pushed out across the Strait of Gibraltar into northern Africa and the Middle East and other parts of Europe. And so there were religious reasons for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 as part of the Spanish Inquisition. And then the Mizrahi Jews are descendants of Jewish communities from the Middle East and North Africa, like Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, who never left. And so some of the people, some of the Jews who were exiled to Babylon, some of them came home, were reading. They were reading Ezra and Nehemiah in the men's Bible study. Some of them came back, rebuilt the temple, rebuilt the walls. Some of them didn't. And they remained there as a Jewish community in Persia

[13:22] and in what's modern-day Iraq for millennia. And in recent years, some of them have been pushed out. But actually, there are, believe it or not, there are still Jewish people living in Iran. Did you know that? Not all of them have left. They're like, this is our home. We're Iranians.

[13:38] But they are forced to denounce the Jewish people and the nation of Israel by the government of Iran, just so they can stay alive. They're forced to do that. And I guess they do, because they want to stay alive. But they could leave, I guess. But that's the thing. There's a lot of movement of people all around. Let's go to the next slide. The distribution of Jewish people around the globe. In Israel, there are about 7.2 million people. Half are Mizrati or Sephardi. Sephardi, another half are Ashkenazi.

[14:14] And the United States, we have about 6 million Jews in the United States, mostly Ashkenazi. And in Europe, France, very interesting is majority Sephardi and Mizrati, because some of them had to leave North Africa after the 50 years of time after the creation of the modern state of Israel. A lot of them were actually moved. Moved isn't a nice way of saying it. They were moved out of majority Arab or Muslim countries. And there are a lot of Jewish people in the United Kingdom. So let's go on. Just a little bit of background. Who are these people?

[14:51] Anti-Semitism. I mean, I could tell you that I've noticed a rise in anti-Semitism, but that's just anecdotal. I kind of prefer when we have some sort of numbers. Some people here love numbers. Some people don't, I guess. But anti-Semitic hate crimes are the most common form of religious-based hate crime in the United States.

[15:08] But it's very interesting, because Jews make up about 2% of the US population. Right? And they're not the only ones. But they get most of it. Most hate crimes are directed at Jewish people and Jewish institutions like synagogues. The attorney general of California, in 2021, there was 152 events. In 2022, 189. 2023, 289. Big increase. And then FBI says about 60% of hate crimes are directed at about 2.4% of the population. So it is out of balance.

[15:43] Not that there should be any good balance, but as if balance was a good thing. It should all be zero. But it's out of balance. It's directed against Jewish people. Anti-Defamation League, which is a bit of a biased organization, because it tracks, really only tracks, it does track hate crimes against all groups, but it's very interested in hate crimes against Jewish people. An all-time high in anti-Semitic incidents in 2023. And we have to just name the reality that the events of October 2023.

[16:14] Either exposed a lot of latent anti-Semitism all around the world, or it generated some anti-Semitism all around the world. That would be interesting to figure out what it was, but in a way, it doesn't matter. If hate is hate, no matter where it comes from.

[16:30] And so there is a key spike. Following the attack of October 7, 2023, the ADL tracked a 360% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the US over the same period the previous year. So you kind of see that there was a triggering event, and that's what we're seeing in our world today. And I would say in the United States especially, we're seeing right now on the far right, political right, there's a question of, is it OK to mainstream anti-Semitic voices? And so even the extreme right, politically, Tucker Carlson, if you know this person, he's kind of, I'm not supposed to say mean things.

[17:12] He's had anti-Semitic people on. He's promoted conspiracy theories about Jewish people. He's an anti-Semitic person. I don't think I'm going off the rails too much there. He got kicked out of Fox News. He was too much for them. He got kicked out of them. But he's so popular, he has a following. He's had anti-Semitic people on. And they're trying to normalize that on the far right, saying this should be mainstreamed in the regular right. And it's a lot of interesting sort of things that are happening on the far left. And so it's about racial purity. It's about, oh, they're controlling the world. And again, if you say that out loud, they're not doing a very good job of it. OK. So that's happening on the right. It's also happening on the left. There's some very virulent anti-Semitism on the far left. Sometimes this is located in college campuses. And so Pastor Victoria has a story about somebody she actually knows, a family that she was a nanny for. Their son, who's now a college student, was going to the Ohio And he was Jewish. He didn't say anything about Hamas or Israel or anything. It was just that he was Jewish. And he was being harassed so much he had to leave campus before his exams. And evidently, the administration

[18:25] wouldn't or couldn't really intervene to protect him and stop him and tamp it all down, because it was just so powerful on the campus. So that's happening on the left. And on the far left, I think the real gotcha is on the far left, which is a lot And I'm not the only one that's very interested in naming things that are white and oppressive and whiteness. To them, Jewish people are white, because they're oppressing. All Jewish people are oppressing Palestinian people. But that's not true, right? Because the people down the street really aren't doing that. So the Jewish people are white in the sense that they're oppressors. But on the far right, Jewish people are absolutely not white, because they're not pure-blooded Aryan people like they love. And so one side says, well, I'm not white, and I'm not Jewish. And the other side says, you're white, and that's a bad thing. And the other side says, you're not white, and that's a bad thing. So there's this, you know, so here they are. And there's this narrow band of tolerant people in the middle that it's OK for Jewish people to exist in the world. But on other sides, there seems to be a lot of intolerance towards Jews. And not just intolerance, but sort of green lighting of these attempts

[19:33] to sort of erase Jewish identity. And that's an issue that all these, the far right, is going to have to have a, you know, sort of have a come to Jesus moment, I think, and go, this is wrong. We have to stop it in the far left. Somebody brave has to stand up on that side and say, this is more complex than that. It's not this just all oppressor. The world is just made up only of oppressors and oppressed.

[19:59] Even intersectionality would tell you that people are more complex than just one identity, you know? And so somebody on the left is going to have to stand up and say, we have to change how we talk about this. Because what we are enabling is the kind of thing we saw at the Ohio State University. But you multiply that times hundreds of college campuses around the country. So in Europe, I'm not going to read all these things. Let's read the next one.

[20:23] In Europe, it's actually possibly even worse than the United States. I hate to think that. Let's just go back then. But now I want to talk about this. And excuse me, why do we care? Because why is this an issue for the church? And the answer is, let's go to the next slide.

[20:37] is that Christianity is the source of a lot of historic anti-Semitism. And this is to the shame of the church. And so for centuries, many churches taught dangerous and false ideas, including, and this is the first one where our scripture passage came in, deicide, this idea that who killed Jesus, right? Who killed Jesus? And it was the accusation that all Jewish people for all time, that's not even fair. Like, you take people out of the time context that they were in. The descendants of the Jews who killed Jesus are responsible for killing our guy, Jesus, right? So this calling somebody a Christ killer, and this has happened in this country even in recent history. But it is more of a medieval thing. The other idea is that there's something called supersessionism, with a replacement theology, the belief that Christianity had replaced Judaism. And so that's really, Judaism is defective and needs to be kind of erased or converted. And so there were many times in Europe, starting from the 1100s on, where Jews who were living in all over Europe were told, you have to convert to Christianity or we'll kill you. Which is what, you know, this is what King Olaf did to all the Vikings. So I guess there's precedent for it, too.

[21:55] You know, he was like, he went around. And so that, this is like, because you can't be Jewish. You just can't be Jewish. You can't keep being Jewish and doing all your Jewish things. You have to be Jewish. You have to become a Christian. And if you can't become a Christian, you can't be around us, because that's a problem, evidently.

[22:09] So we look at our text. And that was the unfortunate literal translation of John chapter 19, where it says, the Jews said, crucify him. Right? It just says it right there. Now, the New Living Translation, other translations take the context, because clearly this was a conversation between the Jewish leaders and Pontius Pilate. And so, John, when he said the Jews, I think the correct interpretation scripturally is that was just shorthand for the Jewish leaders. It was not the whole Jewish people. It was not the whole Jewish race for now and for all time saying, crucify Jesus. So we have to set aside that it's not the Jews who killed Jesus. It was actually the Romans who crucified him. But yes, the Jewish leaders sort of forced Pilate into a corner and said, you have to do this, or we will complain to your boss that you're not a friend of his. And that's the New Living Translation. It was not motivated. He was ready to set Jesus free. So you have to weigh these things. These are all true, right?

[23:08] So yes, the Romans killed Jesus, but not without the help of the Jewish leaders. Now, the Jewish leaders were not representative of all the Jewish people, any more than any of our leaders were representative of all of us people. So I mean, unless you want to call yourself all Trumpians, you know, oh, you don't want to? OK. I won't. I won't call you that. So we won't do that.

[23:29] So but the other thing, theologically, if we look at our first reading from Romans, Romans 3, what does it say? For all have sinned, all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God. And they are justified by the work of Jesus Christ. The expiation is the word, or the propitiation is another word for it, the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. And so the real question, the question, who killed Jesus? Do you have a mirror? Do you have a mirror in your pocket? If you do, I hope you would. Your phone can do this, right? If you do a selfie, take a selfie right now, and then mail it to yourself, email it to yourself, and say, this person killed Jesus, just as a reminder to yourself. Does anyone not know what I'm talking about?

[24:17] Our Christian theology is that my sin, my sin, even though I was born after Jesus died, my sin put Jesus on the cross. I killed Jesus. Not the Jews. Every person in this world who sins created the condition that made it necessary for Jesus to go to the cross so that he could save the world. So this is the correct Christian view of things. And we can never blame any ethnic group for the death of Jesus. We have to look at ourselves first. So that's sort of correcting some theological problems. But these are the theological problems that persisted in the Middle Ages. And so what happened to Jewish people, and we'll take a look at the next thing, the next page. These are some of the things that happened. And this is an incomplete list. But even before the Holocaust that the Nazis perpetrated, there were hundreds of thousands of Jewish people between 1100 AD and 1938, between that and the Final Solution, hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were killed in Europe.

[25:30] Spain and Italy. And in 1492, convert or die. Eastern Europe, there was something called the pogroms. These were sort of collective groups of people running around, finding Jewish farms, finding Jewish businesses, destroying them, killing them, raping them, looting them. And there was hardly any. But they kept living. That was the thing that everybody, I think they hated more about the Jews than anything else, is that they just never disappeared. They just, you know. They're like, we're still here.

[26:02] We're still here. So if you've ever seen Fiddler on the Roof, you know what I'm talking about. There's a pogrom in Fiddler on the Roof. The village gets run over. But they're like, the next day, they're just piecing things together again. But the pogroms, now listen to this. The pogroms often happened around Easter because the Christian pastors would preach about the death of Jesus and blame the Jews. And so if you think about a group of people who have a memory of something, they're like, oh, I don't remember that. They haven't forgotten this any more than we've forgotten the American Revolution and the fact that King George wanted to tax our beer. I mean, that was like, I remember. No, I don't remember that. But you know what I'm saying? Like, every group has these things that they remember. For many Jewish people in the world, Easter does not mean the resurrection of Jesus.

[26:53] Easter means this is when we were slaughtered. So if you just imagine how difficult it is actually for Jewish people over history to be friends with Christians. And so it's a very important thing with Christians because of that history. So it would actually take Christians kind of going out of their way saying, that was all wrong. I'm really sorry. You know? And so but here's more sort of the reasons for Christian roots of anti-Semitism. The Nazis drew heavily on this long history of Christian anti-Semitism to build their racialized ideology. And as I mentioned last week, I talked about Luther. I said, next week I'm going to tell you something bad about Martin Luther. Towards the end of his life, when he had serious health problems, although I don't know if that's a good excuse or not, he started writing some very horrible writings about Jewish people and saying many of the same things, that they were awful, that they should be converted or killed. This is what Luther said. So there's no heroes in this world. I mean, Luther was a brave person. He brought about the Protestant Reformation, but he had feet of clay. He was a fallen, broken sinner who needed God's grace just as much as the rest of us. And so he was a hero.

[28:01] And he would do anything to help the people of the world. So Luther's writings, and he was a good German, and the Nazis found those writings, and they're like, oh, this kind of helps our cause. So Christianity has contributed to this problem. We have to say that.

[28:17] And so it's kind of our mess to clean up, And that's kind of how I think about it. Why should the church care about antisemitism? Well, because the church is the cause of some of it. Some of it just has happened for other reasons, but some of it has happened. So let's go to the next slide. The other reason we should care about this, this is a kind of a well-known idea, the canary in the coal mine is in academic and historical circles, Jews are often referred to as the canary in the coal mine. You know the miner goes down into the mine with a canary and he, poor canary, you hope it stays alive, but it doesn't. He holds it lower than him because there's heavier gases like carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and other gases, and he carries it down here and if it falls over dead, he knows to stop descending into the mine and make an exit out of the mine. So it's an indicator that you're entering into sort of a lethal space, right? And the idea is that how Jews are treated is referred to as the canary in the coal mine. And so the safety and the status of the Jewish community is a key indicator of the health of a civic, civil society. And if Jewish, I almost said Israelis, this is how conflated it has become.

[29:26] If Jewish people are treated poorly in Los Altos, that's actually, there's sort of a domino effect. So an attack on one minority signals that the barriers protecting all minorities are starting to come down. So if we normalize anti-Semitic hate, then there will be a normalization of hate against other ethnic groups too. So it doesn't just start with Jewish people.

[29:54] And so let's go, just real quick FAQs. And then I'll at the very end, because these are anticipated questions. The first one I already saw, we'll skip past that one, to standing up to anti-Semitism when we're taking the side of Israel. Hopefully even more of the things I've said here will make you go, no, no, not at all. Next question. Should we highlight the problems with the Israeli-Israel Hamas war? Or before standing up to anti-Semitism and defending a victim of it? And again, that's one of those questions when you say it out loud, you realize, no, that doesn't make sense. So you have to say, oh, you have to agree with me on some framing of a political issue before I can defend you from hate. No, I have to defend you from hate first. That other stuff can come later. And people can have different views about how Israel operates in the world. But it has, in that moment, it has nothing to do with somebody being the target of hate. So I'm going to go back to that. OK. So as it says, the last sentence of this slide says, you can, and many people do, as George was saying about his friend Noah, you can criticize Israeli policy and defend your Jewish neighbors from bigotry. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[31:05] But this requires you to hold things in tension and actually embrace the actual complexity of the world because it's there. Let's go to the next one real quick. Oh. Now. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. After 1965, they clarified, not just the Jews killed Jesus. Everybody, everybody did. And then major Protestant denominations, especially the Lutherans, because they're so embarrassed, and they should be about Martin Luther, have issued formal statements confessing their own histories of anti-Semitism, rejecting supersessionism, and calling on Christians to actively combat anti-Semitism. So there are a fair number of Protestant churches that have gone beyond just saying, we don't think it was the Jews that killed Jesus. We think it was all of us. These Protestant denominations have taken a sort of proactive stance of saying, we are opposed to anti-Semitism in particular because it's something that we helped create. So now we'll go to where are we today.

[32:28] I kind of talked about the left, right, and the middle, college campuses, battles on the right, battles on the left. And I think my goal for us, but also for our denomination and for our sort of civic society, is something can keep getting said and keep getting said, and it kind of becomes what we would call normalized. So anti-Semitic hatred, and even, I'll be honest, I had a friend in seminary, when we were just talking one day, they made a very anti-Semitic comment.

[32:57] And I was like, what? You're going to be a pastor. You can't talk like that. You know, you can't do that. And so I did stand up, maybe it's because I had a friend in high school who was Jewish. But then I said, well, I'm going to be a pastor. And they said it as if it was nothing, you know, just kind of rolled off their tongue. And that made me think that they said it everywhere else, you know. So that's that normalization of this kind of language. And I think you can denormalize it by standing up against. Doesn't mean you yell at the people who do it or you hate them back, but you say, hold on. Stand up. Wait. What I heard you say sounded really hateful, but I want to make sure I understood it correctly. You know, you can always do things like that. But to say, look, in this area, I don't want to, you know, I don't believe that. I don't want to hear it. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's normal. And so we want to denormalize it. And I think if as much as the church and Christians can be people who denormalize all kinds of hatred, then we should do that, you know. And it also has to do with the church being a place that's kind of safe and good and truth telling. And we also have to say everywhere we're opposed to violence.

[34:06] We don't think violence accomplishes good things at all. We don't really think so. We think that. We care for the rights of all people. We care for justice to be spread in the world. So all these things are, none of these are mutually exclusive, right? You know, we're not taking sides, except we take the sides of the vulnerable. We take the sides of the people who are objects of hatred in that moment, and we stand up to it. So we want to denormalize it. And let's see, what's next?

[34:33] Let's go, let's not go there. I want to go skip all the way to the last slide. This is a famous quote. This is a quote from Martin Niemöller, who was a German Lutheran pastor. He was imprisoned by the Nazis, right? And it's kind of the canary in the coal mine, although it starts with the socialists and the trade unionists and then the Jews. But the idea is there's this progression of people that are victimized. And at a certain point, it's too late to stand up and talk. So this is what he said. He said, Martin Niemöller, first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists. And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews. And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

[35:18] Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak for me. We don't want to get in that spot, do we? Right? So actually, I would say, you know, why should Christians care about this? Three good reasons.

[35:32] One, this is our mess. So we don't want to ask anyone else to clean it up for us. We helped create this mess. So we have, we actually have sort of, you know, a lot of people who are not Christians. So we have, we actually have a special responsibility to speak against anti-Semitism.

[35:44] Two, anti-Semitism is sort of the first domino to fall. And after it comes all sorts of hatred towards other groups. And eventually towards us. But don't do it just to preserve yourself. Do it because it's right, you know? And third, our Christian witness matters in this world. And we need to speak up for all people. But this is a particularly egregious thing that's happening in our country at this moment. And it's important for us to speak out against it. We can also speak out against violence. We can speak out against people who are disenfranchised. We need to do all that. This is one of the particular responsibilities for Christians. And I'll stop there. But I want to take questions, comments, thoughts. Some of you maybe are troubled.

[36:25] Is it uncomfortable that we're talking about this? I think sometimes we have to have sort of uncomfortable conversations. But seriously, any thoughts, questions, or improvements? I'm going to show this to other people. So if there's ways I can make it better, let me know. Anyone, really.

[36:40] Yes, Brian. This is great, Dr. Eric. I don't have anything to suggest to you. I'm so glad you spoke to this topic. And, you know, how can we apply, take what this great information you've given us, and apply it in our personal lives and our relationships with our Jewish friends? Okay, shoot. Now we should go back to that FAQ that we swung. So go back. All right. What do Jewish people wish? What do Jewish people wish non-Jews would do to fight anti-Semitism? One, speak up when you hear an anti-Semitic joke or conspiracy theory about money, control, the media, etc. Challenge it in a loving way. But say, wait, did I hear you right? Do you really think that's true? I don't think that's true, lovingly. But say, hey, that can't happen here. Don't leave it to the Jewish person in the room to defend themselves. Two, include, recognize that Jews are a minority and include them in your diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Right? D-E-I. Listen, check in on your Jewish friends and colleagues, especially after a major anti-Semitic event. And this is something that we've kind of been encouraged to do as part of our racial justice work is when there's an attack against a particular ethnic group, it doesn't have to be Jewish sometimes, any other group,

[37:52] is to acknowledge that this has happened so that it's not, this unspoken thing kind of papers it over. But to say out loud, this happened and it's bad. Check in with the person. And then learn there's actually a lot to anti-Semitism. And you can, it's a bit contested, so that's a topic for another time. But I think it's kind of like, you know, the Supreme Court's definition of obscenity. You know, I can't really put it in words, but I kind of know it when I see it. I think you'll know it when you hear it. You'll kind of hear what's going on behind it, what's underneath it, you know. But just to be clear, criticizing the government of Israel, that is not anti-Semitic. Any more than criticizing the government of Israel. That's what the government of the United States is. But assuming that all Jewish people all around the world are responsible for what the government of Israel does, that is anti-Semitic. It's unfair to them.

[38:49] So let me see. There's one other FAQ, Brian. You're asking a good question and I shouldn't have skipped that. Let's go one more back, Andres. How can we engage civically and socially? So how can we combat? So we want, if it's up to you, support robust hate crime legislation. Actually, California, about two months ago, passed a law that really only governed schools, but it was an anti-antisemitism.

[39:16] No, it was anti... Yeah, anti-antisemitism. Well, anyways, but it wasn't semitism because two doubles don't make it anyways. But Gavin Newsom signed it. Now interesting, there's very conservative bills like this that were opposed by some people on the far left and people on the far right. It's very interesting. And there's similar bills like in Arizona. It was not signed by the very conservative governor of Arizona. So it kind of tells you something that this isn't left-right coded. This is middle coded versus extreme coded. And I think if you want to code it anyways, in any particular way, that's probably the way to look at it. And then it says, raise awareness, build coalitions, engage with your local community, Jewish community. Show up to interviews. Have your faith events. Thank you, Brian. Any other questions or no? How can you help? Anyone else? I just wanted to say, I find it very tragic but also understandable because when you're talking about how it's really bad in Europe, I feel like the country that after the crimes committed that has done the most corporately and politically to fight back against anti-Semitism is also Germany. It's probably the country also that has done the most. No modern Jews want to live in Germany.

[40:36] No, they don't live there. There's only a thousand Jews in Germany. Yeah. But they're one of the only Western countries that's actually passed laws that undermine democratic principles as a sort of way of effectively like, this is our country, remember what we've done. So they've outlawed the Nazi party and the anti-public anti-Semitism and you arrest the party here. In Germany. And that makes sense in the German context. But I lived in Austria, Germany, and I lived in Germany for about a year. I lived in Austria for two years when I was a boy. And I remember a lot of anti-Semitic things being said by my classmates. And they don't have the same law. So there actually is a neo-Nazi political party in Austria.

[41:19] And when I was a kid, I watched the election results on public television in Austria and they got one and a half percent of the vote. Straight up unabashed, unapologetic Nazis. And that's probably gone up. You know. That's probably gone up. And that's happening all over Europe. It's really interesting. Yeah, thank you, George. That's a good point. So Germany, because of its unique history, is holding the line, at least legislatively. But there's still anti-Semitism in Germany, no doubt. Anyone else? Other questions or thoughts? Thoughts are welcome too. You know, thoughts.

[41:53] They're not thoughts and prayers. Yeah, Steve. I'm looking forward to the conversation I'm going to have later on immigration. I think all of this is related to that. There's the fear of the other. Yeah. And there's a lot of core values that can't really promote that sort of fear of the other. Totally. And so, yeah. We'll have a conversation afterwards. And in times of national stress, the fear of the other skyrockets and it turns into a vehicle for political power for anyone who's smart enough or resourceful enough to grab it. And I think about why, aside from Christian theology, have people been so...

[42:34] Opposed to Jews. And I think one of the answers is they never joined the cultures that they were in. They kept to their own languages. I mean, they would learn their own... They would learn the language of the country they're in, but they had their own religion. They had their own clothing. They had their own holidays. They were always other. They never assimilated. Some of them did actually, interestingly. But the ones that didn't assimilate... And the unassimilated other in a country... I mean, I think that's a big question. But I think that only a really stable democracy can tolerate that. But an extremist government on either side can't tolerate it. Because it's such an easy target just to pick off and to create lies about them. And then that's a pathway to political power. But yeah, I think this is actually just a piece of the whole problem of what we would call othering in the world. And again, that's why... It's just... It's been so prevalent that this is the first domino to fall, but there's all sorts of dominoes that can fall if we normally... normalize anti-Semitism in this country. So, yeah. Any other thoughts?

[43:38] Yeah, Michael. So, this is more like an academic question, but do you know historically what made people decide that we should just call this new nation reforming Israel? Because that confuses a lot of people. Sure does, yeah. What if they thought about that and there's a strategic reason for calling it Israel? Because I remember growing up that people would say things like, you know, that same nation of Israel in the Bible is still around. Is this one? That's not true. No, it's not true. One of the newest nation states in the world. Exactly, yeah. By comparison. And it was created by the United Nations, not by God, you know, so to speak. Right, right. Unless you think those are the same thing, but I've got news for you, you know. I think that's what confuses a lot of us who are not well informed of the history, but I have a feeling that there must have been some strategic reason for calling it that. Yeah. Like they could have called it anything else and it would have helped us feel... Yeah, it would have helped Christians, yeah. I mean, I feel like the whole goal was to make a homeland for Jews so that there was a country where they were not a minority. Because every country they've been a minority in, sort of the same thing has happened to them.

[44:47] So they're like, let's create a place, especially after the Holocaust, and the world was kind of with them for about five years, the world was kind of on their side, you know. So this was created, but yeah. I think a lot of Christians even now have conflated, modern day Israel that was founded in 1948 with biblical Israel.

[45:07] And the Bible doesn't say that. So like even from a really conservative Christian point of view that was really, sort of really strongly believes in scriptural inerrancy, you can't make that case because it doesn't speak about 1948. You know what I mean? It doesn't speak about 1948 in the Bible. There are other places maybe you could make the case, but I think as sort of maybe sober-minded thinkers, we would have to say, this is a country that was created so Jewish people would not be a minority in one place in the world and they could protect themselves. The real challenge is to do that, other people had to be moved out. And that's the continuing problem today. And those people do need justice. And those people do need their own land and their own country. And there's unending complexity around that question that we can't even discuss today. There's no way we can solve it because they can't solve it, but we can't solve it. There's no way we can even discuss it. But yeah, there is this conflation. And so we have to be clear that this, this is just another country, kind of like other countries, but also very different from other countries. And it's just a country. It's not biblical Israel. Yeah, it's not some fulfillment of prophecy.

[46:09] So some Christians would say so and some Jewish Israelis would say so. I think they called it Israel because that was the historic name of that land to them. They could have called it Judea. They could have called it Palestine. Yeah, Pam. Interesting. I Googled it and I just Googled, why did they name it Israel? Yeah, good. But I just stopped halfway there and just Googled it. And that popped up. So obviously it's a question a lot of people have. Oh, interesting.

[46:37] Other people are searching for the same thing. Yeah. They named it after Jacob. Yeah, the liar. Because he saw himself as the children of Jacob and his name was changed to Israel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Jewish doesn't equal Israeli. I mean, that's another thing to remember. Because Israeli now is a citizen of Israel. Because the land was named after Israel. The land was not named that. Yeah, I mean, and the Jews were named after Judea, which after Solomon became distinct from Israel because the northern kingdom was called Israel. It's all very confusing. Yeah, yeah, good. Anyone else? Yes, Barbara.

[47:16] My maiden name is Makatas. Makatas. What does that mean? It's very German. Uh-huh. But it means make dance. Oh, Makatas, yeah. E-T-A-N-C. Yeah. And I remember during the war, we didn't discuss. Yes. We didn't talk out in public very much about the idea that it was German because, gee, are they? It's the German side. Yeah. There we have it. The internment of Japanese people in this country, citizens of this country during World War II, the suspicion that they were sympathetic with the nation of Japan, even though some of their family had come here hundreds of years before, maybe 100 years before. And I think Natalie's grandfather was one of them. Is that right? He ended up in Manzanar or someplace. We actually just interviewed a 95-year-old woman who was living up in the Oakland area of Elkis, so hopefully she could share about that too. Yeah. But that woman was 12 when she was interned, so that's a direct, you know, firsthand account. Totally. Yeah. Of what it was like. Yeah. And the Germans were not popular in America, but there were so many of them, they kind of, you know, they were everywhere. But who flew across the Atlantic? What was his name again?

[48:40] Lindbergh. Lindbergh. Yeah. So Lindbergh was popular, and then he wasn't. But he also, because he said a bunch of stupid things after all. But people were like, we don't like Lindbergh anymore because he's German, you know. There was, that went on. Yeah. Good point. Thank you, Barbara. Yeah.