by Zev Chafets
TONI MORRISON ONCE called Bill Clinton the first black president. He was certainly the first Jewish one. He discovered Jews at Georgetown and Oxford and Yale Law School—a rising meritocratic horde that was rapidly displacing the old WASP aristocracy in the country’s elite liberal cultural, academic, and political institutions, including the Democratic Party—and made them Friends of Bill.
Clinton, with his déclassé background, could never pass for a WASP. But the Jews were delighted to befriend this big, good-looking all-American boy who didn’t look down on them. Like them, Clinton was a usurper. Jews fell for him as hard as they had fallen for the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956, Adlai Stevenson (who, unlike Clinton, didn’t love them back).
As president, Bill Clinton charmed both American Jews and Israelis. In 1994, when he appeared before the Knesset in Jerusalem, he gave a speech that could have come straight from Begin’s friend Falwell.
“The truth is that the only time my wife and I ever came to Israel before today was thirteen years ago with my pastor on a religious mission,” Clinton told the Israeli parliament. “I was then out of office. I was the youngest former governor in the history of the United States….
“We visited the holy sites. I relived the history of the Bible, of your Scriptures and mine. And I formed a bond with my pastor. Later, when he became desperately ill, he said he thought I might one day become president. And he said…‘If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you.’ He said it is God’s will that Israel, the biblical home of the people of Israel, continue forever and ever.”
Some Israelis (me included) thought that Clinton laid it on a bit thick. But who, in the end, can turn down such devotion?
Clinton cultivated his relationship with Yitzhak Rabin, and used it to ease the very wary Israeli prime minister into his famous handshake with Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn. When Rabin was assassinated, in 1995, by an Israeli religious fanatic, Clinton seemed personally shaken. He came to the funeral in Jerusalem and stole the show with an eloquent eulogy, which ended with the Hebrew words Shalom, chaver (“Good-bye, friend”), a sentiment that became an instant bumper sticker in Israel.
Clinton got along much less well with Rabin’s successor, Benyamin Netanyahu. If Rabin had been the father Clinton never had, Netanyahu was the competitive brother he couldn’t stand. Both were young, smart, nakedly ambitious, charismatic, prone to woman trouble, and full of themselves. Netanyahu didn’t like the Oslo Accords (which supposedly set the stage for a two-state peace deal) and dragged his feet as much as possible.
Netanyahu had been raised and educated in the United States and served as a senior diplomat in Washington and New York. More than any prime minister, he understood the dynamics of American politics. Did Clinton have the Jews in his pocket? Fine, Netanyahu would use the Republican evangelicals to stymie the American president and send a message to the liberal Jewish establishment as well; they were no longer necessarily Israel’s closest American ally.
Netanyahu lasted only three years as prime minister, and he was followed by Ehud Barak of Labor. Clinton and Barak got along much better. They both wanted to cut a land-for-peace deal with Arafat. Barak, who had spent his entire life in the military, knew and cared very little about American politics. As it turned out, he didn’t understand much about Israeli politics, either.
THE ELECTION OF George W. Bush in 2000 was a blow to the American Jewish community, which overwhelmingly supported Al Gore. It was also received with foreboding in Jerusalem, where Bush was seen as his father’s son. In the 2000 election, Bush had been popular among Arab Americans and got a majority of their votes. Politically he owed the Jews nothing. There were no Jews in his cabinet or inner circle.
But Bush proved to be a very pleasant surprise. In March 2002, Palestinian bombers blew up a communal Passover seder at a hotel in the seaside resort city of Netanya. Thirty Israelis—mostly senior citizens—were killed, and another 140 were wounded. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had meanwhile taken over for Barak, ordered the Israeli army back into the cities of the West Bank—which it had left under the Oslo agreements—with orders to destroy the terrorist infrastructure and isolate Yasir Arafat. The Palestinian leader found himself holed up in his headquarters in Ramallah, where he remained until he died in 2004.
The Israeli operation was called homat magen—“defensive wall,” a term that presaged Sharon’s later decision to construct an actual physical barrier between Israeli settlements and the Palestinians. When the fighting started, President Bush sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to Israel, presumably to calm things down. Liberal Christian activists joined foreign policy “realists” in calling on Washington to force a cease-fire. But, barely six months after 9/11, the president of the United States was in for-us-or-against-us mode. So was Bush’s evangelical base, which flooded the White House with e-mails and faxes supporting the Israelis. Bush, who clearly saw homat magen as an integral part of the war against Islamic radicalism, signaled to Sharon to go ahead and finish the job.
At the same time, Bush declared that he would support an independent Palestinian state next to Israel. He was, in fact, the first U.S. president bold enough to formally propose this, although it had been implied in the Oslo Accords. But, unlike his predecessors (including Clinton, who expected Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians during a terror war), Bush declared a new principle: Israeli concessions would be required only after the Palestinians stopped fighting.
Then, on June 24, 2002, the president stepped into the White House Rose Garden and called on the Palestinians to replace Yasir Arafat. This was like asking the New York Yankees to get rid of George Steinbrenner. Arafat, love him or hate him, owned the Palestinian franchise. Bush added that Arab states must act against anti-Israel terror or face the consequences.
Finally, in April 2004, following a meeting in Washington with Sharon, Bush completed a radical change in American policy by declaring that “realities on the ground” dictated that Israel should be allowed to keep some of its West Bank settlements. This reversed the position of every American government since the Six-Day War. It also cemented the born-again Bush’s place as the most pro-Israeli president in the history of the United States.
It was growing more and more difficult for liberal American Jewish supporters of Israel—even those who hated Bush—to deny the positive role he and his Christian evangelical base were playing in Israel’s security (and, by inference, theirs). Among the smarter and more farsighted Jewish leaders there were even second thoughts about the wisdom of demonizing the president and his core supporters, Americans who thought blessing Israel and supporting the Jews in a time of jihad should be an unshakable commitment of U.S. foreign policy.
TWELVE
ERIC IN WONDERLAND
Nine thousand kids packed the Vines Center at Liberty University on a Wednesday morning in April 2005. They were there to participate in a regularly scheduled convocation; most didn’t realize that they would be attending a historic event. The speaker that day was Eric Yoffie. It was the first time in Liberty’s history that a rabbi had been invited to address the student body.
Yoffie had never spoken to such a large group of evangelicals. And since I had seen an advance text of his remarks, I knew he was going to say things that had never before been said publicly at Liberty University.
Sitting in the audience among the students, I felt a twinge of anxiety. This had been my idea. A few months earlier, discussing the harsh attacks on evangelicals by Jewish leaders, Jerry Falwell had mentioned to me that he had never met Rabbi Yoffie. I suggested that it might be an interesting encounter, and he agreed. “I’d even invite him down here to talk with my students,” Falwell said.
When I got back to New York I called Yoffie. Would he care to meet Jerry Falwell and give a talk at Liberty? At first, he thought I was kidding. When he realized I was serious, he promised to get back to me. Many of his colleagues, he discovered, opposed the idea of the head of the Reform mov
ement appearing at Liberty University. But he decided to accept the invitation.
Now Yoffie’s face was on giant monitors mounted around the Vines Center and his Massachusetts accent echoed through the normally honey-cured speakers. He had been given exactly eight minutes and his speech had been crafted to use every second of it.
He began by saluting evangelicals for their support of Israel. Then he highlighted their common ground for their opposition—as fellow religious people—to pornography, materialism, and no-strings-attached sex. “Who is at fault?” he asked rhetorically. “The Left, for confusing liberty with license and for ignoring public morality in the name of personal choice. And the Right, for being far too accepting of corporations that reach into our homes with their trash and relentlessly market sex and violence. I for one am sick and tired of media giants that tout family values in their news programs and press lewdness in their entertainment shows. Shame on all those who poison our public life in this way.”
The students around me applauded. So far, so good.
Yoffie shifted into a brief lesson in American history.
The Founding Fathers of the United States were, Rabbi Yoffie told the students, “religious people who wanted God in public life. But they thought that religion must be a unifying force in America. They did not want government to be an agent of religion, and they refused to use sectarian language or images. It was they who authored the First Amendment, the noble sanctuary of our most precious freedoms.”
Jerry Falwell is a Baptist and an advocate of the separation of church and state. The students applauded again.
Yoffie took a deep breath. “We can do all this without papering over our very real differences,” he said. “Your religious tradition prohibits abortion; my religious tradition permits it in some cases and forbids it in others, but believes that every woman must prayerfully make the final decision for herself.”
There was an audible intake of breath, but Yoffie barreled ahead. “You oppose gay marriage while we believe in legal protection for gay couples. We understand your reading of the biblical texts, even if we read those texts in a different way. But gay Americans pose no threat to their friends, neighbors, or coworkers, and when two people make a lifelong commitment to each other, we believe it is wrong to deny them the legal guarantees that protect them and their children and benefit the broader society.”
This elicited a few hisses. I looked at Falwell on the platform, but his face was perfectly composed.
“As significant as these differences are, my hope is that they will not overwhelm us,” said Yoffie. “We need less anger and more thoughtful reflection, less shouting and more listening. Even when we disagree, let’s do so without demonizing each other. I can discuss these issues and believe what I believe without calling you a homophobic bigot, and you can do the same without calling me an uncaring baby killer. Let’s promote respect for each other’s religious tradition, and let’s work for civility in public debate. And where we can, let’s build bridges, find shared values, and join together in common cause.”
Yoffie finished his speech to hesitant applause. Falwell rose and said, “I’ve spoken in synagogues where we had disagreements and I’ve never been booed. I want to thank Rabbi Yoffie for coming and speaking to us.” The students understood the signal and applauded heartily. I did, too, relieved that my friend Eric was getting out of the Lynchburg lion’s den in one piece.
After the speech, Falwell and Yoffie met the press. Yoffie said that he hoped this would be the beginning of a relationship between liberal Jews and evangelical Christians, and Falwell agreed.
“We can differ on many things not essential to the freedom of the country,” he told journalists, adding that he wouldn’t have asked the rabbi to travel all the way to Virginia if he hadn’t been seeking a rapprochement.
FALWELL HOSTED A small private lunch after Yoffie’s speech. The meal was, if not kosher, at least pork-free—a powerful culinary concession in a town whose best restaurant is called The Silver Pig. Yoffie confined himself to the vegetables, while Falwell tucked into a large plate of barbecue and rice. He’s had heart problems lately, but it appears that he is relying on Jesus to be his cardiologist.
They made an incongruous pair sitting side by side at the round table: Falwell large and expansive, the graduate of a Missouri Bible college who now owns his own university and the mountain it sits on; Yoffie trim and laconic, a New Englander with a degree from Brandeis who rides a bicycle and reads Hebrew novels for recreation.
Grace was said. Then Yoffie thanked Falwell for his support for Israel. Falwell accepted this pleasantry without mentioning that he had been an ally of Israeli prime ministers when Yoffie was still a small-town congregational rabbi.
I asked Falwell a question I knew was on Yoffie’s mind: Is evangelical support for Israel really an effort to bring about Armageddon? Falwell shook his head. “I believe absolutely in the Second Coming of Jesus,” he said. “But I don’t know when it will happen, and I don’t imagine it will be anytime soon. In the meantime, protecting Israel is a practical matter. We need to do what’s necessary to keep these Muslim barbarians from wiping it off the map the way they want to.”
Yoffie blinked at the word “barbarian.” Many American Jews, even some liberal Jews, feel the same way and say so in private conversations; still, nobody would utter such a thing out loud, to a stranger. But Falwell speaks his mind. At seventy-two, he had nothing to lose, and he was at the top of his political game. Senator John McCain who, a few years earlier, had called him an “agent of intolerance” was scheduled to come down to Liberty to deliver the university’s commencement address. This was an admission that McCain needed Falwell in the GOP’s Southern primaries. It was also a recognition that Falwell and his fellow evangelicals are, like it or not, a permanent part of the American political fabric.
The subject of Iranian nukes came up. Falwell confided that he thought George W. Bush was too politically constrained to do the right thing by taking out the ayatollah’s reactors and Yoffie nodded; he shared that assessment.
Falwell took a sip of water. “So,” he said, “it looks like the Israelis are going to have to do the job.”
Yoffie sipped his own water and said nothing.
“Would you support them?” I asked Falwell.
“Not just me. The day Israel takes out the weapons of these barbarians, there will be eighty million evangelicals at the gates of the White House cheering. And I’ll tell you something, President Bush will be cheering, too.”
“How about your people?” I asked Yoffie. “Would they go to the White House?”
There was a long pause. Yoffie, the most important liberal rabbi in America, is a lifelong Zionist, but he is also an honest man. Finally he said, “That’s a very good question. It would depend on the circumstances.”
THIS EXPLAINS WHY the government of Israel has no intention of alienating its evangelical allies. Unconditional wartime support is a precious thing. Like Jewish Zionists, the evangelicals are influential, generous, and undemanding. But unlike the Jews, they are also impervious to accusations of neocon dual loyalty, unmoved by the need to seem evenhanded, and wholly indifferent to the good opinion of European sophisticates, progressive intellectuals, or the Palestinian enthusiasms of the mainline churches.
The Israel-evangelical seed planted by David Ben-Gurion during his appearance at the 1971 Jerusalem Prophecy Conference and nourished by Menachem Begin has now become a perennial. Evangelicals are in no sense exotic to Israeli leaders. The former Likud prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, has close connections with Pastor John Hagee. Ehud Barak, the former Labor prime minister, is a faculty member of Pat Robertson’s Regent University. When Ehud Olmert came to office in 2006, his years as mayor of Jerusalem had put him on a first-name basis with just about every influential American evangelical leader.
But if the Israeli-evangelical connection is a fact, American Jews are still at the opening stages of a very tentative courtship. “Religio
usly, we have two basic problems with them,” Yoffie told me before going down to Lynchburg, “Armageddon and conversion.”
These may be valid theological differences, but have very little practical importance. American Jews are in no danger from Pentecostal proselytizers. They live in different worlds, cut off from one another by geography and social class. For the most part, evangelizers who deal with Jews are simply going through the motions. As for Armageddon, unless you actually believe in end times, what difference does it make what others believe? The premise of Armageddon is passive—it is brought about by God, and not by man. Are there evangelicals who think that Jesus is coming tomorrow? Sure, and there are Hasidim in Brooklyn who think the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the deceased head of the Chabad movement, is the Messiah. So what?
Some Jews are offended by Armageddon, because it makes them bit players in someone else’s drama. But liberals in academia, the entertainment business, and the media need to be a little less self-righteous about this. They, too, promote an end-times utopia, a day when evangelical Bible-thumpers scrape the Confederate decals off their trucks and the mayonnaise off their sandwiches, beat their hunting rifles into sixteen-speed bicycles, replace Genesis with Darwin, and embrace Seinfeld values.
In any event, the greatest barriers to a Jewish-evangelical relationship are neither theological nor practical. Most Jews, like most evangelicals, embrace and practice middle-class family attitudes. Very few want their kids watching pornography or engaging in recreational sex. You won’t find strip parlors in Jewish suburbs. Jews may oppose prayer in public schools, but they don’t complain when the schools in their neighborhoods shut down on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. As any parent will admit in a truthful moment, Jews are not nearly as personally liberal on the subject of homosexuality as their public stance would suggest. And even unquestioning support for “abortion rights” is softening—at least for late-term procedures—under the graphic testimony of modern ultrasound.