On Sunday, two gunmen killed more than 15 people on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, where the local Jewish community had gathered for a Hanukkah celebration. As antisemitic violence rises around the world, rabbi Josh Stanton says it is imperative that Christians respond in solidarity with their Jewish neighbors.
The Bulletin sat down with Stanton, associate vice president for interfaith and intergroup initiatives at Jewish Federations of North America, and bishop Robert Stearns, president of the Israel Christian Nexus in Los Angeles, to talk about the threat of hatred toward Jews and the actions Christians can take in response. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation from episode 176.
We’ve seen too many instances of antisemitism and violence over the past year. How is your community responding?
Robert Stearns: Jewish communities are filled with fear because when antisemites chant, “Globalize the intifada,” they mean “Kill Jews everywhere.” Lo and behold, words of hate led to actions of hate. Our fear is that the tirade of hate that we have been hearing is going to manifest in physical, real ways across the country. Rabbi Yehiel Poupko says the Jewish people were “a family that became a faith that stayed a family.” When any one of us is targeted, all of us feel it.
Josh Stanton: Our community in New York is reaching out to our Jewish brothers and sisters to express our care, our solidarity. The Jewish people have been persecuted and hunted down more than any other people in history. In the past, Christian support for Israel has had a lot of baggage, sometimes connected to specific eschatology or theological presuppositions. I have a moral obligation to stand against racism, bigotry, hatred, and violence in any form. Our community is deeply strategizing how we develop a more holistic, transcendent outreach to our Jewish brothers and sisters that’s not encumbered by some of the baggage of the past in Christian circles but far less evangelical circles.
For two millennia there’s been a teaching of contempt, meaning that Jews are supposed to suffer in exile forever because they refuse to accept Jesus as the Messiah. As a result, many Christians theologically struggle with the idea that Jews have returned in large numbers to their ancestral homelands. Christians need to grapple with that theological issue at this moment in order to be good friends and allies of the Jewish people. Many are doing that. It takes time and intention.
The other aspect is replacement theology: the idea that, though Jews were in covenant with God, because of their refusal to accept Jesus as Messiah, they are no longer in covenant. I’ve seen Bishop Stearns and other deep friends of the Jewish community make clear that they are drawing from the teachings of Romans that Christianity was grafted onto the tree of Judaism. This tree has deep roots that we can draw from together, but it means that Jews are still in living covenant with God. If Christians are able to grapple with the teaching of contempt and replacement theology, there is so much that we can do together in friendship.
These crimes seem to be a violent outgrowth of protest culture, where all Jews get lumped into one generic community. How important is it that people understand Judaism’s diversity?
Stearns: By random historical coincidence, by act of God, for whatever reason, the majority of Jews in the United States have ancestry from Eastern Europe. That is not true in Israel and for Jewish communities around the world. If you go into French synagogues, a large percentage of French Jews are from North Africa, and they do not look the same as Jews of Eastern European ancestry. Many of them speak Arabic and have different customs.
For Americans who don’t know the difference, it’s easy to paint with a single brush a highly diverse people that has been shaped by every culture that has hosted them, usually for the good. It would be nice if people listen to Jews as they describe themselves, rather than telling Jews who they are or who they are supposed to be. When we’re told who we’re supposed to be, it reduces our humanity. It turns us into the types of people you can hate. When you strip our humanity from us, it’s easy to hate an idea of who we are.
Political progressives are searching for something to be for right now. That is an important journey for them to be on, but they cannot coalesce around hatred of Jews in Israel. That is not a reasonable way to find your way out of the political wilderness. Hatred of Judaism is not progressive and is not an acceptable path in American political discourse. Very sadly, a lot of the most radical anti-Jewish and anti-Israel voices today are from the progressive camp. For many Jews who have voted left of center, it’s a disillusioning and painful experience. It is not okay to blame one group of people for all of the ills of the world. That is a story as old as Jewish-Christian relations, and it is a story that we need to tell differently today.
How has American Jewish life changed since October 7 and since the outbreak of antisemitic violence?
Stearns: If we put aside, for a moment, the emotional and physical toll of the violence and hatred directed against Jews, there’s also a financial toll. Synagogues are spending, in many places, 20 percent of their budgets on security.
It takes two or three lines of security to bring your kids to Hebrew school. You tell your five-year-old child that in order to practice Judaism, you have to be wanded twice and go through a mantrap at your synagogue door. When I go to Episcopalian churches, I walk right in the front door. No one’s there, no guard, no locked doors. It is a different reality for Christians right now than for Jews. Unfortunately, the murders have taught us that security is absolutely essential for our physical well-being. What it does to us emotionally, day in and day out, being reminded of the fact that there are a lot of people out there who wish us harm, it’s excruciatingly painful.
For mission-driven organizations who want to feed the hungry, who want to care for the vulnerable, these security costs are like a 20 percent tax by virtue of humanity’s hatred of Jews, the ambient hatred in our society. How are we supposed to follow through on our mission when we can’t keep our doors open? How are we supposed to motivate and excite people about Judaism when it’s harder to get into a synagogue worship service than it is to check in for a flight at JFK airport?
How have you seen Christians effectively show up and show solidarity following instances of antisemitic violence?
Stanton: An increasing number of pastors and credible leaders from a broad spectrum of Christianity are waking up to the moral, transcendent obligation to care for humanity and specifically for our Jewish brothers and sisters. Scripture is generally the story of the majority getting it wrong and a little remnant getting it right. Then God partners with the remnant; something salvific comes from it. My prayer is for an awakening and an education coming, because I don’t think just the future of American Jewry is at stake. The future of the Judeo-Christian worldview and Western civilization and basic human rights truly is on the line.
Stearns: It all starts with one friendship. What is a concrete message to Christians everywhere? Reach out to your Jewish friends. Say, “Hey, I care about you. Can we get coffee?” It’s amazing what can come out of one simple conversation over coffee.
The first time I felt okay after the extraordinarily painful attacks of October 7 was in the presence of Christians, because it was the first time I felt held emotionally and realized that I was not alone, that Jews were not alone.
The good that you can do, pastorally and relationally, transcends words. This is an amazing opportunity for Christians everywhere to reach out in friendship, to start to see Jews as Jews see themselves, and to fight antisemitism and the virulent strains of anti-Zionism together.
