Antisemitism at Harvard and the power of ideas
Police in England arrested five men, including four Iranian nationals, over the weekend in what is being described as one of the largest counter-terrorism operations in recent years. Authorities report that the “Iranian terror attack” was foiled with just hours to spare. Speculation mounted that the target may have been a synagogue or another target linked to the Jewish community.
If so, we can only wish to be surprised.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have announced a “comprehensive” aerial blockade repeatedly targeting Israel’s airports. This after a missile strike Sunday hit near Ben Gurion Airport, the latest in a string of attacks. In response, some twenty Israeli fighter jets struck targets in Yemen last night.
Closer to home, the New York Times reported recently that a task force at Harvard University found antisemitism has “infiltrated coursework, social life, the hiring of some faculty members, and the worldview of certain academic programs.” The rabbi and theologian David Wolpe recently spent a year as a visiting scholar at Harvard, where he saw personally how the October 7 massacre of Jews by Hamas “intensified hatred against Jews on an already hostile campus.”
He reports that Jewish students “were insulted, shunned, harassed, and hounded in a hundred different ways.” One student, having walked through Harvard Yard while being screamed at by protesters, said to him, “They don’t just hate what I believe. They hate me.”
Such sentiment illustrates the warning of French philosopher Emile Chartier, “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”
How Freud explained antisemitism
Four days of celebrations in the UK began yesterday to commemorate eighty years since Sir Winston Churchill declared victory over Germany in World War II. King Charles III and the royal family took part, along with huge crowds and a military parade.
An estimated fifteen to twenty million people in Europe—six million of them Jews—died in the war because of the horrific idea of one man. A historian said of Adolf Hitler: “No other political leader of the era would have harnessed national passions or driven an anti-Semitic, pure-race agenda with such ferocity or tragic consequence, resulting in the deaths of millions of European Jews as well as gypsies, homosexuals, the weak, and disabled.”
Hitler’s maniacal commitment to the genocide of the Jews was fueled by eugenic theories, popular in the day, that claimed some people were genetically superior to others and sought to purify races accordingly. Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, was a key early figure in this movement, building on Darwin’s “natural selection” theory to advance “race betterment.” Nietzsche’s advocacy of the “overcomer” additionally prompted Hitler’s elevation of Aryans to “super-race status” and reinforced his hatred of the Jews as their enemies.
Ideological prejudice against the Jews has tragically been the norm across much of their history. Sigmund Freud, who was born on this day in 1856, identified several such sources of antisemitism:
- The Jews are hated because they survive and thrive.
- They are forced to live differently, which provokes hatred against them.
- They are excluded and then seen as holding themselves separate.
- They are objects of fascination, but this creates envy.
- They are allowed only the currency of intellectuality, but their fantasized “cleverness” is then feared.
To this we can add claims by critical theory advocate and Columbia scholar Edward Said, who believes like many others that Israel is a “colonialist occupier” of Palestinian land and “oppressor” of the Palestinian people. Unsurprisingly, the BBC is reporting today that support among Americans for Israel is at its lowest level since Gallup began tracking it twenty-five years ago. Antisemitism continues to rise in the West even as teenage terrorists being radicalized online threaten our security and our future.
“We are remade in the likeness of his Son”
I have taught and published widely on Israel and Judaism for many years and have led more than thirty study tours to the Holy Land. In my work as a seminary professor, pastor, and philosopher, I have often reflected on sources of antisemitism. In my mind, jealousy and fear of the Jews’ success and uniqueness fuel much of the persecution they continue to face.
Their enduring significance can be traced to their commitment to this foundational text in the Hebrew Bible:
God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).
They genuinely believe that each person bears the image of God and is thus able and obligated to worship and serve the Creator according to the laws he has given us. Their passion for literacy stems from their commitment to reading and following the Torah; their drive to improve their land and the world at large stems from their partnership with God in stewarding his creation (cf. Genesis 2:15).
The only idea more transformative than the Jews’ commitment to the imago Dei is the gospel proclamation that this “image” can be restored and redeemed in Christ. As the great theologian Athanasius (ca. AD 298–373) wrote:
We were made “in the likeness of God.” But in course of time that image has become obscured, like a face on a very old portrait, dimmed with dust and dirt.
When a portrait is spoiled, the only way to renew it is for the subject to come back to the studio and sit for the artist all over again. This is why Christ came—to make it possible for the divine image in man to be recreated. We were made in God’s likeness; we are remade in the likeness of his Son.
To bring about this re-creation, Christ still comes to men and lives among them. In a special way he comes to his Church, his “body,” to show us what the “image of God” is really like.
What a responsibility the Church has, to be Christ’s “body,” showing him to those who are unwilling or unable to see him in providence or in creation! Through the word of God lived out in the body of Christ, they can come to the Father, and themselves be made again “in the likeness of God.”
“All right knowledge is born of obedience”
If all Christians were to reflect the “image of God” as the body of Christ today, what steps would we take to combat antisemitism and encourage Jews to know their Messiah? How powerfully would we reveal Christ to those who are “unwilling or unable to see him in providence or in creation”?
For us to reflect this “image,” as Athanasius noted, the word of God must be “lived out in the body of Christ.” In his May 5 devotional, my friend Dr. Duane Brooks quoted John Calvin: “All right knowledge is born of obedience.” Then Duane commented:
“God’s next work in our lives begins with his grace and comes to fruition when we obey.”
Will you experience your Father’s “next work” in your life today?
Quote for the day:
“We can’t take the next step with God until we do the last thing he told us to do.” —Dr. Duane Brooks
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