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March 29, 2005
Human rights watch, cont.
All Terri Schiavo posts are here.Unlike David Klinghoffer, I applaud the Seattle Jewish Federation's outreach to gay and lesbian Jews. But I share his impatience with the liberal Jewish community's reaction to the Schiavo case.
Jewish Democrats in Congress and the Florida legislature led the rushed struggle to fend off efforts to save the brain-damaged woman. Meanwhile, I had a chance to personally gauge Jewish sentiment when Seattle's largest Conservative synagogue graciously invited me to speak on an unrelated subject - my new book, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus, which acknowledges the cultural contributions of Christianity.In the Q&A period, the synagogue's rabbi asked what contributions I had in mind. When I mentioned the campaign by Christians to rescue Terri Schiavo from being killed by her husband Michael, who claimed she'd want it this way, the crowd reacted with a sharp intake of breath, shocked murmurs as if I'd said a kind word about the Spanish Inquisition.
Klinghoffer and Dennis Prager think liberal Jews are so traumatized by centuries of persecution by Christians that they automatically take the opposite position to whatever Christians advocate. This doesn't ring quite true to me, since secular gentiles as well as liberal Jews do the same thing, and since liberal Jews and liberal Christians make common cause on everything except Israel. The political battle lines in the Schiavo case are much more complex, with some Republicans decrying the intrusion of Big Government, and some libertarians decrying the intrusion of Big Medicine.
Most of those - Jew and gentile - who object to keeping Terri Schiavo alive see the other side as motivated by religious conviction, and therefore, if the "right to life" movement prevails, religion will have influenced government to an unacceptable degree. In particular, fundamentalist religion (both Catholic and Protestant), which has a history of misinterpretation of, and violence and aggressive conversion attempts against, Jews. Most Jews don't want to see these folks get any more power in this country than they already have, although much of the antisemitism has been jettisoned.
If you have been reading my other posts on this topic, you know that there is a secular case to be made for protecting whatever life Terri Schiavo has, as a matter of equal protection under the law. This is the case that the disability activists are making. It is certainly an interpretation of the issue that liberal Jews, with their history of civil rights activism, could get behind. Personally, I would rather err on the side of supporting the right thing (which is also supported by Jewish law), even if some of my allies make me uneasy, than supporting the wrong thing, just to be on the opposite side of a movement which makes me uneasy.
RELATED: More unlikely allies (if you haven't been following the news, anyway).
Glenn has a good roundup of the "allies who make you cringe" issue.
UPDATE: Via the Corner, a range of religiously-oriented articles at Beliefnet. (Among the rabbis, Schmuley Boteach is against removing the tube, Arthur Waskow dodges the issue by believing the husband. Well, I got disgusted with Waskow's foreign policy moonbattism a long time ago, so this is no surprise.)
Judith | 03/29/05 at 07:38 PM | Categories: - Terri Schiavo
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Judith:I am a fan both of your web site and the Dennis Prager show. I am a Jewish former liberal democrat, still feeling my way around on the political spectrum, but now fitting somewhere between you and Dennis. I came across this item on Nordlinger's column at NRO today, which I think is a better explanation as to why liberal Jews tend to support starving Ms. Schiavo to death than the one you cite:"How to explain the seeming need of so many to see this woman die? There are many explanations, and one of them is articulated by a reader as follows:I think much of the Left's support of the so-called husband stems from the fact that they get a chance to stick it to George W. Bush and his religious supporters. They couldn't beat him at the ballot box, so Terri Schiavo's death becomes a sort of victory for them. Pretty hard to believe, but . . ."So I guess the point is that it isn't that the liberal Jews oppose whatever the Christians favor - as you point out that clearly won't explain, for example, Jewish support for abortion. Rather, it is that the liberal Jews instinctively oppose whatever they can identify as the position of the "Religious Right." Therefore, center and left Christians support abortion = no problem for liberal Jews. But since right wing Christians oppose abortion, support the Schindlers, support school vouchers (and on and on) the first instinct of the average Jewish liberal is to take the opposite position on each one.
Tom Freeman | March 30, 2005 05:16 PM
