Part 3

A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance
by Zev Chafets

(Page 3 of 3)

We sat next to a married couple, a pair of high-powered academic psychologists affiliated with a prestigious New York university, who loudly applauded every dig at the president. "It's frightening to realize that this man was elected," the woman said to me. "What kind of person would vote for him?"

A few weeks earlier I had cast a ballot, for the first time in my life, in an American presidential election. I voted for Bush and I told her so.

She and her husband looked at me in amazement. How could a Bush voter have infiltrated the party? Was this some sort of grotesque joke? Finally the woman said, "I refuse to believe that!"

"A lot of people voted for Bush," I said mildly. "Sixty million and change."

"Not Jews," she snapped. "A Jew who voted for George Bush is a Jew for Jesus." Lisa was smiling. She is often taken to be Jewish and, as a result, has had quite an education about what liberal Jews say to each other when they think gentiles aren't listening.

"My parents are Holocaust survivors," added the woman, as if this clinched the argument.

"Sorry to hear it," I said, which, I immediately realized, might be subject to interpretation. The husband saw the conversation heading off the cliff and intervened.

"It's just that we've never met anyone who voted for Bush," he said in the fake nonjudgmental tone of a man who deals professionally with psychopaths. "We're really interested. It would be fascinating to talk to you more about this, to see how your mind works."

"Yeah, that would really be something," I said. I could just picture these two in laboratory coats, peering deep into my eyes to find the gleam of perversity that would compel me, an Israeli and a Jew, to vote for the most pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish president in American history.

"What could you possibly find to like about Bush? He's a fundamentalist Christian," said the woman. "He wants to start Armageddon!"

I had been hearing variations on this theme with friends and family for the past few years. They, like the shrinks, couldn't fathom how I could tolerate, much less support, a born-again Christian like George W. Bush, or think a positive thought about Jerry Falwell. I understood them well enough. I am constantly infuriated by Israeli rabbinical politicians who act morally superior and want to impose their religious views on society at large. But the intifada (and, subsequently, 9/11, the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons) had shifted my priorities.

Evangelical Christians-led by George W. Bush-were offering an alliance with Israel and its American Jewish supporters based on what they call Judeo-Christian values. Liberal Jews are disinclined to accept this offer because it would mean tolerating, if not supporting, the evangelical domestic agenda and cultural style. And maybe in peacetime I would be, too. It is more satisfying to fight the Falwells than to join them.

But this isn't peacetime. And, no matter how often Jewish liberals declare that the United States isn't a Christian country, that is exactly what it is. Jews make up 1 percent of the population-an influential percent, to be sure, but still, a tiny minority. The bargain extended by the evangelicals-to add "Judeo" to the name of the firm-is not easily dismissed.

Like all offers of partnership, this one needs to be weighed in terms of its costs and benefits. For Israel, the gains are obvious, even though some liberal Jews try very hard to make it look like a bad deal. In her 2006 book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Michelle Goldberg, a young American journalist who describes herself as a Jewish secular humanist, asserted that "the alliance between Christian Zionists and the most fanatical Israeli settlers is well known." But like many things that are well known, it doesn't happen to be true.

The evangelical-Israeli alliance is not a pact between Christian and Israeli religious nuts. It is a long-established relationship between the leaders of evangelical American Christianity and mainstream Israel. Every prime minister since Begin has relied on the support of the Christian right. Ehud Barak, the last Labor Party prime minister, is actually listed as a member of the faculty at Pat Robertson's Regent University (the only unsaved member, as far as I could discover).

The dislike and contempt for evangelical Christians that is so integral to American Jewish cultural and political thinking is almost wholly absent in Israel. A few very reactionary Orthodox rabbis object to any connection with goyim. A few Israeli leftists whose views are in constant conformity with Western fashion hate Zionist Christians mostly because the New York Review of Books does. But the average Israeli-even the average anticlerical secular Israeli, appreciates evangelical support.

For American Jews, who tend to deny that they are in any way personally threatened by the jihad, the issue is obviously more clouded. But it should be said that if Jews feel entirely safe in the United States, it is because they are wrapped in the larger American polity. If the conservative Christians they believe to be anti-Semites actually were anti-Semites, life wouldn't seem so secure to them.

It is also worth considering what would happen if the U.S. government were to actually decide-as some on the Pat Buchanan right as well as the Ramsey Clark left argue-that supporting Israel, with its paltry 6 million people, isn't worth alienating the billion plus Muslims. American support is vital to Israel. Do American Jews really want to make the case for Israel all by themselves, without support from millions of Christian Zionists? And, do they believe they can continue to count on evangelical support as they position themselves as the chief adversaries of evangelical cultural and political aspirations?

It is clear from every poll and survey that no community in the United States is more philo-Semitic than conservative Christians. Most Jews are, by now, aware of this, but find it impossible to believe. They can't get past two thousand years of Christian persecution, and two hundred years of secular liberalism. Many believe that evangelicals want to convert them, or to use them as cannon fodder in some great End of Days Armageddon battle. They suspect that behind the warm, toothy smiles of the evangelicals is a coldhearted desire to establish a Christian theocracy in the United States. When they get to thinking about rural folk their minds go-as mine did on my first meeting with Lisa's aunts-to white sheets and burning crosses.

I understand the skepticism. And, during the year I spent among evangelicals, I kept an eye out-the same critical eye I have been casting on Christians since my Little League days in Pontiac.

What I found was that Evangelical Christians, for reasons of their own, are, in an unprecedented way, extending a hand of friendship and wartime alliance to Jews; and the ancient tribal instinct to slap that hand away is a dangerous one. It may be that American Jews will decide they would rather face jihad alone than rely on conservative Christians. But if they do, it is a decision that will come at great cost to their connection to Israel and their relationship with tens of millions of their fellow Americans. It is not a choice that ought to be made based on stereotypes, knee-jerk partisanship, or simple prejudice. Christian Zionism, in a time of jihad, deserves a closer look.

"A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo - Evangelical Alliance", Zev Chafets, January 2007. Used by permission of HarperCollins www.harpercollins.com. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Zev Chafets was born and raised in Pontiac, Michigan. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he moved to Jerusalem, where he spent thirty-three years in politics, government, and journalism, including a stint as director of the government press office for Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Chafets is a former columnist for the New York Daily News, as well as a founding editor of the Jerusalem Report magazine and the author of nine books of fiction, media criticism, and social and political commentary.