Posted on 05/24/2010 10:44:19 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
Opening shot You can't walk down the street in downtown Chicago without people handing you stuff. Menus, mostly, sometimes handbills ballyhooing sales or circuses or whatever.
Typically, I accept the flier with a smile, give it a glance, and tuck it in a pocket to toss out later. I figure it's callous to rebuff hardy souls trying to scrape by on street corners. At least they're working.
Except when someone offers a colorful brochure touting Jews for Jesus -- then I draw my hand back, the smile dying on my face, and give them what I hope is a hard, peddle-your-zeal-elsewhere look.
The key fact about Jews for Jesus is that its founder, Moishe Rosen, who died last week at 78, had been a Baptist minister for 20 years when he formed the group in San Francisco in 1973.
I don't want to get caught up in the question of whether two decades of Christian ministry undermines one's Jewishness, or whether Jews for Jesus are indeed Jews at all, or just perpetrators of a not-half-as-clever-as-they-seem-to-think-it-is scam. I'm actually of the opinion that people are free to believe whatever they like and call themselves whatever they wish. Plenty of individuals embrace faiths while directly contradicting their tenets -- gay Catholics come to mind -- and passing judgment on whether a person deserves to be in the club implies that someone else can pass judgment on you.
That said, the notion that you can accept Jesus Christ as your savior and remain Jewish does remind me of the transvestite I met once at a drag ball who told me he is a heterosexual male who lives as a woman and dates men. O . . . K . . ., if you say so, pal, but it seems to muddle the boundaries a bit.
So why refuse the Jews for Jesus brochure while accepting one from every new deli? I think because they try to be hip, in a 1970s way, with coy slogans and jokey text, tossing a chummy arm over your shoulder and swearing you can eat all the bagels and cream cheese you want while still partying with your new Lord. The brochures must work -- where else do the volunteers handing them out come from? But that doesn't mean I have to take one.
1964 all over again "The Good Negro," Tracey Scott Wilson's powerful drama about civil rights, begins with what should have been an ordinary event -- a mother takes her 4-year-old to a public toilet in a department store.
But the mother and daughter are blacks living in the South, the era is the early 1960s, and the bathroom is reserved for white customers -- and so unfolds the tragedy burning up the stage at the Goodman until June 6.
When I attended the opening two weeks ago, the story line seemed firmly situated in the past. But as William Faulkner said, "The past isn't history -- it isn't even past." Suddenly there's a current politician -- Tea Party darling and Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul -- obligated to defend his stance on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark legislation that said little girls can't be banned from public toilets and that lunch counters selling grilled cheese sandwiches must sell them to all, regardless of color.
The specifics of Paul's statement are not important. He believes that private businesses should be free to discriminate, if they choose -- not an uncommon position for a Libertarian -- but when he found himself an actual contender, he began the furious backpedaling that most politicians do as they approach the levers of power.
"I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964," he said, adding that he is also against racism.
Big of him. Earlier, he had told Rachel Maddow that while the government may prohibit itself from discrimination, he draws the line at Big Brother telling businesses what to do, adding, "had I been around" when the bill was being debated, "I would have tried to modify that."
I never thought I'd live to see the day when would-be leaders are so captivated by their pet philosophies they would question 50 years of racial progress -- we just passed the half-century anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., Woolworth lunch-counter sit-in.
This isn't about Rand Paul -- good luck to him. This is about a brand of politics -- call it Libertarianism, call it Tea Baggery, whatever -- that hates government, whatever it does, so much and sides so completely with business owners and their supposed right to decide who can use their toilets, that they'd ignore the greater right of 4-year-olds to use a public bathroom.
Today's chuckle To tuck a child in, he has to actually go to bed before you. Though that ship has sailed regarding our teenager, I still trudge up to his room, to say goodnight and put in a plug for sleep.
"He's still reading," I reported to my wife, returning.
"What's he reading?" she asked, distracted in a book.
"The Master and Margarita," I said. "By Bulgakov. The devil comes to Moscow in the form of a cat."
"Is it a novel?" she asked.
Here is where an amateur would have wrecked the laugh, perhaps by repeating, with emphasis. "The DEVIL comes to Moscow in the form of a CAT." As a pro, with almost 20 years of marriage under my belt, I knew enough to say nothing, to let no flicker of expression cross my face. Just a neutral look, patiently waiting for her question to sink in. It did.
mailto:nsteinberg@suntimes.com
The Apostles were the first “Jews for Jesus”.
Ofcourse.. if you listen carefully to lefties ...THEY...are the most intolerant of all people. it’s in their DNA.
I notice he didn’t mention the pogroms of Communist Russia.
“...call it Libertarianism, call it Tea Baggery, whatever —that hates government.”
I guess this jerk made the point he was not expecting to make. Hates govt? Well this jerk is in Chicago where the city is broke, incredibily corrupt, murders off the charts, high taxes, everyone in govt is on the take.
What’s not to like about govt? East Germany was probably a nicer place to live in versus Chicago.
He probably doesn’t get bent about pro-abort “Catholics” either.
Oh yeah..that goes without saying.
Actually I think it would have been Mary, then Joseph...but I get your point.
And the barbaric raiding of the kibbutz’ in early Israel where Arafat killed as many jews as possible, especially the little children.
Perhaps he might want to read the story of the attack on Kyriat Shmona by Arafat’s murderers.
Your property isn't your own these days (even the Supreme Court of Leftists decided that you could be forced to sell out to a private company if it means more tax revenue).
Yet I didn't hear the Left speak up when businesses discriminated against Republicans in employment and lodging in the wake of the 2004 election. No room at the inn in some bed and breakfast if you'd voted for Bush. Also there was a computer company that blacklisted employing Republicans.
Because while sexual and religious beliefs are protected now under hate crimes laws (sexual beliefs weren't always so protected), political beliefs (or even science beliefs questioning global warming etc) are not so protected. Someone questions every point of the theory of evolution? Mock them as believing that Jesus fought dinosaurs with a lightsabre.
Now you'd THINK that bit of antiChristian bigotry would likewise be called discriminatory and intolerant but it isn't.
Wow. Just wasted two minutes of my life reading this idiot’s diatribe.
Ooh, the left-winger warface. Scary.
What a comparison! A "drag ball"?!?!?
Wasn’t Jesus a Jew? His first followers were Jews. In fact, I think one of the first big “debates” among Jesus’ followers were whether and/or to what extent goyim had to learn and follow Jewish Law to be a member of The Way.
Christians really need to get in touch with their Jewish roots, and Jews ought to take seriously Jesus’ claim to be their Messiah.
Translation: “I’m extremely open-minded about drag queens, but I draw the line at Christians and libertarians.”
I’m guessing that if a Jew can be an atheist, then one can be a Christian, too. Seems to me we are conflating two different things, the ethnic Jew and the religious Jew.
But then, what do I know? Only that everyone needs Christ.
Neil, if you really, really don’t like Jews for Jesus and don’t want to convert, I for one won’t fight you to the death over it. But your column is making me do Regan McNeil head spins trying to follow it.
I always found the Council at Antioch Epistle regarding circumcision unintentionally humorous kind of like a Lenny Bruce bit.
I think Isaiah was the first Jew for Jesus :)
He could have saved hundreds of words by just stating, “I don’t like Jews for Jesus.”
“then I draw my hand back, the smile dying on my face, and give them what I hope is a hard, peddle-your-zeal-elsewhere look.”
I wonder if he’ll use that face on Judgment Day.
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