A time to mourn: My seminary encounter with Christian violence toward Jews

If I had to tell you one seismic shift in my thinking since starting seminary, it would be the way I understand Jews and Judaism. My favorite classes have been Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and Hebrew. I've had multiple professors who are experts in historical Jewish-Christian relations. And I have been smacked in the face with the grief of the way my religion has treated our such close Jewish brothers and sisters.

I was not, or at least I thought I was not, anti-Jewish in any way before I came here. But sometimes we don't realize the subtle ways our beliefs build walls or breed condescension.

Like a good Christian, I saw the Jewish faith in some way as incomplete, misguided, overshadowed by the advent of Jesus Christ, as though God's intimate and messy history with the people of Israel were no longer worth much attention, except as it prefigures Jesus or reveals human brokenness.

Like a good progressive whose husband spent a year living in the West Bank under the shadow of the Israeli dividing wall, I mourned the way Israel went from oppressed to oppressor. I began to associate Judaism with 18-year-olds on catwalks holding AK-47s, pointing them down to intimidate all who travel through the Bethlehem checkpoint from Palestine into Israel. I began to associate Judaism with Europeans living in wealthy modern cities built on the tears of displaced people. (Americans, and Christians are of course implicated also in these things, which are never simple.)

I still believe Jesus changes everything. God did a new thing in Jesus, but there must be a way to hold that newness in tension with the good and faithful things God was doing and continues to do through the covenant with Israel.

I still believe that, though it is complicated and sometimes painful to talk about, though there is mutual violence and enmity, the state of Israel should be rebuked for the times it has been an oppressor. But this should not define Judaism.

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Meanwhile.

Did you know that in the middle ages, Christians made up stories about Jews desecrating the bread of Holy Communion in order to justify killing or expelling them from cities?

Did you know that the Nazis extensively used the language of Martin Luther and other Protestant Christian reformers to build up their rhetoric against the Jews in the 1930s?

Did you know that on the way to "take back Jerusalem" in the First Crusade, and aflame with apocalyptic ideas, Christians pillaged and ransacked Jewish cities and killed their brothers and sisters?

Did you know that language from our very own Gospels was used for centuries to view Jews as children of the devil, killers of Jesus, stubbornly unreachable?

Did you know it's not over today, or at least, its felt ramifications are not over today, in the small ways Jews hear our language as superiority, in the small ways our assumptions carry forward?

All of this I deeply mourn.

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So especially this week, a week when so many of us Christians will unthinkingly associate Jews with the death of Jesus, a week when so many of us Christians will celebrate the historic event that seems to us sometimes to render any of God's work in the world before the time of Jesus as irrelevant or secondary at best, I want to pause and celebrate the beauty that I have found as I've learned more about Judaism.

The Hebrew Bible is an exceedingly beautiful religious text, remarkable for its time.

I love that out of all the ancient religions of the Near East, the Jewish people were the only ones who lost their land and kingdom and independence and yet did not lose their God. Instead of believing (as was typical) that the destruction of their kingdom was a sign their God was not strong enough, or had abandoned them, they believed that their God went with them into exile, and 3 generations later brought them back.

I love that the vast majority of works preserved in ancient Hebrew are theology. We have references to other literature, like political records and court documents, but what was important enough to them to preserve was the story about God.

I love that God's crowning act of creation and a centerpiece of God's law given to Israel is a day of rest. (A day which Christians have largely ignored or explained away, and then have said Judaism is a religion of works and Christianity a religion of mercy.)

And if this is not enough...Jesus himself was deeply Jewish. Christians have sometimes divorced his teachings and theology from its Jewish roots, offering a caricature that paints the Torah as legalistic and Jesus as focused on the heart. But Jesus' teachings are deeply connected with the Hebrew Scriptures, and many of his "innovations" have long precedent in the Torah (Here's a great book about that.) His last word, his last prayer, was a Psalm.

All of this--all this beauty, all this pain, all this mangled history--calls me to mourn. I mourn for the violence of my heritage, and I mourn for the years of missing out on so much richness of my spiritual heritage by not looking deeply into the Torah and the offerings of historical Judaism. I come now to a place of humility, and I think now is my time to listen, and learn, from the tradition that taught the world so much about God, and shaped even my Jesus in his ministry to all.

What we deserve

On Thursday, January 30, I am riding my seventh snow day in a row, and I am angry.

I could enjoy it—read, write, bake—but instead, I calculate the amount of income I’ve lost over the last two weeks and become sullen. “Why can’t North Carolina take a chill pill about the snow,” I say to my husband. Two inches of snow on Tuesday meant the rest of the week off. When I say it out loud it seems a silly thing to be angry about. But I’m in a self-righteous mood.

I don’t deserve this! I think. What I mean is, I don’t deserve to be almost twenty-eight and never have had a full time job where I would get a consistent income despite snow days. I don’t deserve to have an employer that won’t allow me to work more than 22 hours in a given week even if there is work to be done. I don’t deserve to have a paycheck that can be cut in half by a couple crazy weeks of weather.

“I don’t deserve this!” I say out loud. I did so well in school, I worked so hard and I got so many A’s. Then I put in some years of service with nonprofits, and I worked hard there and my bosses liked me. Shouldn’t I have obtained a “real job” by now?!

The truth is I have only looked for this type of job twice. Once, I had three interviews in a week and didn’t get any of the jobs. So I took a part-time job. The other time was when I first moved to Cherokee, where I’m not the only one who has had trouble getting work. Maybe I “deserve” to have a full-time job by now, but then so do the fifty-year-old men who’ve gotten laid off from companies where they worked for twenty years. So do a good chunk of the ten million unemployed people in America. So do the recent college grads who are working as waiters and babysitters.

Because I’m off again today, I can’t say no when my neighbor knocks on my door to ask for a ride. He needs to go borrow money from a friend. “You’re not the only one who lost some days of work this week,” he says as we ride across town. Three days of his construction job were cancelled due to the weather. He is hard up for cash and trying to figure out how to make it as a single dad—he lost his young wife four months ago, to a sudden illness just weeks after she had given birth to their first daughter. They had both been in trouble with the law but had begun to turn things around, had “gotten saved” and sobered up and started associating with a better crowd, especially once they knew there was a baby on the way.  Now he is trying to hold on to that traction while he pieces together the disappointments and curve balls that keep coming. Does he deserve that?

We don’t always get what we deserve. Sometimes it is hard to understand why or how. I could write a whole separate lament on that topic.

But that is not the way my thoughts are flowing today. I know we don’t get what we deserve, but maybe sometimes it is better this way. Maybe this opens the possibility that sometimes, we get more. I don’t think I deserved a free Toyota Camry, for example, but when my grandfather died no one else wanted it. I doubt I deserved a husband who is far more patient and good-looking and fun to be around than I will ever be. Or a friend who is still my friend despite so many hurtful things I’ve done. Or a river view and a shining sun this afternoon and a box full of letters and photos from people who love me all over the country. Once I start playing this game, it is hard to stop. I know I don’t deserve Jesus—who lived a life that was holy and justice-oriented and ethically brilliant and accepting of the marginalized and all about ending down barriers and divisions and self-sacrificial in the freest way—who is the embodiment of God’s unconditional love for all of us.

I’ll take a couple snow days in exchange for that.

Letting someone wash your feet

Photo credit

For as long as I can remember, everyone remarked how well he was doing for his age. Played golf and tennis and walked a mile a day up to about 90. Took us skiing at 79, because he thought we should learn how. The third day in we saw a sign: "over 70 ski free." The pacemaker has slowed him down a little, but even last summer, at 92, he jumped in the ocean with us for an afternoon.

The real slow-down started in January, with an infection, a hospital visit, a return home and slow recovery, weaker, then another infection, repeat, weaker, repeat. When I went to visit end of March, he was walking with a cane, sleeping a lot, but nonetheless doing better than he had for a few months.

We went to church on Maundy Thursday, and I was introduced to foot-washing. At their last supper together, Jesus washed his followers' feet as a symbol of humility, love, and service. Tonight, we were to come to the front of the church with a partner and wash each other's feet. Grandfather motioned me forward I handed him his cane and walked him to the front. I carefully removed his shoes and socks and washed his feet, taking care to avoid the ingrown toenails we'd gone to the podiatrist about earlier that day. When I finished he stood from the chair, put aside his cane, and to the dismay and shock of everyone standing nearby, knelt down on the ground. He washed my feet in the bucket, dried them with the towel, and then rose halfway and whispered in my ear, "The Lord bless you and keep you." I helped him the rest of the way up and we returned to our pew.

This was the truest reenactment of the gospel story. Grandfather is the one who deserves to be served and prayed for and taken care of. Earlier that week, hired home health aides were giving him a bath. And he washed my feet and blessed me.

Making sandwiches

I have been working at Subway for about two weeks. I like it well enough. I interact with people, I get free cookies, I feel generally good about the company--we don't throw away food much, we serve a relatively healthy fast food option. Yes, I make minimum wage but since my income is supplemental, that's not a huge issue. I have been trying not to be prideful; when people ask me I just tell them that's where I work without trying to sound like I'm above this type of job, I try not to act like I'm better than the other workers, even though I believe I'm the only one with a college degree.

But, it's all a bit humbling. Because the only job I can get here is Subway, and I doubt I'll get anything better than this or perhaps substitute teaching, while I live here. Luckily, my hope and plan is to move to Raleigh/Durham area for grad school next fall, so I won't be working on an assembly line forever. It's a phase of life, and I get to work part-time, play housewife which I enjoy, and spend lots of time with my new husband.

What if this weren't temporary? What if we were planning to stay here indefinitely? I see why it is so difficult to move to a small town and find a way in. I see how my BA in English doesn't go too far in a place that's not a metropolis with thousands of nonprofit or church or writing jobs. I honestly have no idea what I would even want to do if I had to make a career here in Cherokee. I thought my liberal arts degree was equipping me for anything, but when the best I can even apply for is to be a medical secretary or entry level hospital job, I'm not sure what to think. People who don't realize I'm planning to leave in 9 months ask me what I want to do here, and I'm at a loss to answer.

I also realize how blessed I was, career-wise, in DC. I loved teaching adult literacy. I loved being a youth and children's minister. I was paid to love people. I was able to use gifts and skills that I had developed, and to be stretched to keep developing new skills. I had networks of people who knew me and could recommend me for jobs.

As I keep making sandwiches, maybe I'm being cured a little of the romantic idea that every job should be a dream job, that work should always feel fulfilling or it's not worth doing, that the only place for my gifts is the workplace. It's okay to make sandwiches for a few hours, come home, and put my caring-for-people gifts to use with phone calls to friends, and put my creativity gifts to use with cooking, put my writing gifts to use on the blog, and be stretched not by new tasks at work but in learning to be married.

I hope I won't have to do it this way forever, because there is so much I want to give to the world, and I am willing to work hard, to go out of my comfort zone to exercise my gifts. But for now, there is something to learn in the simplicity of making sandwiches and mopping floors. I hope I'm aware enough to find it.