Dear Ms. Weiss: You might be interested in our (admittedly) small movement inside the Episcopal church to combat the hierarchy's anti-Israel bias. We are in the process of redoing this website and working up a general anti-divestment petition aimed at mainline Protestants. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

Dennis Hale
Director, Episcopal-Jewish Alliance for Israel

Then I saw this article:

Six months after the Presbyterian Church (USA) shocked and angered Jewish groups with its decision to divest in companies that do business in Israel, the church is facing a backlash from many of its pastors and parishioners as an anti-divestment campaign gains ground.

�There has been a real groundswell,� said the Rev. Dr. William Harter, a minister in Chambersburg, Pa., and a leader in Presbyterians Concerned for Jewish and Christian Relations, the group spearheading the revolt.

. . . The Episcopal Diocese of New York appears to share that view. The diocese�s Episcopal-Jewish Relations Committee has adopted a statement that says �church-sponsored programs to disinvest from Israel impede efforts towards a peaceful settlement by undermining the perceived legitimacy� of Israel. �Worse, they give the appearance of supporting Christian antipathy towards the Jewish people,� according to the statement.

Pro-divestment forces fight back with the old "Jewish power" canard:

. . . resistance from some church leaders continues to be fierce, setting the stage for what one Presbyterian activist described as a �major and very disruptive� internal battle, with church leaders �playing the bullying card� � claiming the church is being bulldozed by a powerful Jewish community.

I guess it's easy to reach for stereotypes when you don't actually know any Jews:

Yitzhak Santis, director of Mideast affairs for the community relations council in San Francisco, said that �Zionism is a foreign concept to many� Presbyterians in the Bay Area.

�Some say to us, isn�t Zionism the settlers? It�s been turned into a caricature,� Santis said. �There is no gut-level understanding that Jews living in Marin [County] or the Silicon Valley would have any more feeling for Israel than Presbyterians have for Scotland.� So his group finds itself �going back to Judaism 101� in contacts with local Presbyterians, he said.

Well, I have sometimes wondered if Jews living in Marin have any feeling for Israel, so I can't blame the Bay Area Presbyterians that much for assuming their Jewish neighbors would be equally enthusiastic about sticking it to that nasty racist Zionist Entity, but even lefty Berkeley Jews are getting their consciousnesses raised. Judaism 101 indeed.

Finally, Friday night I went to a Shabbat dinner where the guest of honor was one of my favorite Jewish musicians (more about that later). But the highlight of the evening was sitting next to a rabbi who teaches at a Presbyterian seminary here in NYC and does a lot of interfaith work, and who has been in the thick of the Presbyterian divestment debate. (I won't identify him any more than that.) He told me that the seminary where he teaches is also weighing in against the divestment initiative.

So I think the tide has turned, folks. At least for a while.

UPDATE: More on the political echo-chamber of the Protestant Left.

UPDATE: Dave says I can't change which series I want considered for the award. That's fair, since I had plenty of opportunity to change it and didn't beforehand. So don't vote for me in that category, vote for me in the other categories.