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Stepping Forward In Berlin

T

he persistence of anti-Semitism
is a puz7lement.
Why should such a tiny frac-
tion of the world's population — a
group that for 2,000 years didn't even
have political power over their own lives
much less anyone else's, that suffered
near total annihilation in Europe, that
doesn't proselytize its faith — be the
object of such continuing antipathy?
We ask ourselves what we have done
wrong to stir this passion. We count
our traditions — we hold ourselves out
as God's chosen people, we want our
children to marry within our nation
and, yes, we're often stiff-necked and
quarrelsome — and can't see how that
makes us, in the Arab idiom, "the sons
of pigs and apes."
If, as the anti-Semites say, we control
the news media, how is it that we have
such a lousy job of convincing all those
people who watch "our" movies and
television and read our papers that we
aren't the bad guys?
Why would we let Mel
- Gibson's The Passion of the
Christ, with its portrayal of
Jews as Christ-killers, make a
quarter of a billion dollars
through showings in "our" theaters?
How have we failed to convince an esti-
mated 6 million Americans that the
Holocaust actually happened?
Much of the Arab and Muslim world
continues to inflame anti-Semitism by
conjoining it with anti-Zionism. It airs

television shows that repeat
the blood libel and treat the
totally phony Protocols of
the Learned Elders of Zion
as if it were true.
Time and again, it por-
trays Israel's efforts to pro-
tect itself from Palestinian
terrorism as racist acts of
genocide that are equiva-
lent to Nazism and the
Holocaust. And both the
United Nations and the
European Union continue
to bury their collective
heads in the sand, dismiss-
ing acts of violence against
European Jews as the work
of "young men" rather than
the deliberately targeted
hatred of Muslim immi-
grants.
Against this background,
it was laudable to have the
Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
representing 55 governments,
agree a month ago on an
important plan to combat
anti-Semitism.
Meeting symbolically in Berlin, the
one-time home of Nazism, the organi-
zation agreed unanimously that anti-
Semitism posed "a threat to democracy"
and resolved "that international devel-
opments or political issues, including
those in Israel or elsewhere in the

EDIT OR1AL

The Case For Faith

Boston

O

f the roughly 50 million children enrolled in
American grade schools, all but about 5 million
attend government-run public schools.
Of those 5 million, approximately 800,000 attend
secular private schools. That leaves just 4.2 million
who attend the nation's religious schools — only one
American child in 12.
That isn't much, particularly for a country in which
more than 60 percent of adults say that religion is very
important in their lives.
Two Americans who aim to change that attitude are
T.C. Pinckney, a retired Air Force brigadier general,
and Houston attorney Bruce Shortt. Lay leaders in the
Baptist Church, they have drafted a resolution —
which they hope to bring before the Southern Baptist
Convention in Indianapolis June 15-16 — urging the
denomination's 16 million members to take their chil-
dren out of public schools and either home-school
them or send them to parochial schools.

Jeff Jacoby is a columnistfor the Boston Globe.
His e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com

Greenberg's View

FOR MOST ISRAELIS,
THE SIGNS ARE
BECOMING
CLEARER

Middle East, never justify anti-
Semitism." Its member states promised
to track anti-Semitic crimes, to write
national hate-crime laws and to pro-
mote education to counteract anti-
Semitic prejudice.
But the important fact was the wide
applause for U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell's contention that "Today,
we confront the ugly reality that anti-
Semitism is not just a fact of history,
but a current event." American Jews, so
comfortably thriving here, need to

remember the worldwide reality of anti-
Semitism and to understand it will per-
sist even if Israel and the Palestinians
make progress in ending their differ-
ences.
We can treat the Berlin declaration
as part of a process that we cannot
speed, but which we must support
patiently and in the hope that 2,000
years from now, anti-Semitism will be
just a dim memory of the world's
imperfect past. 111

Their argument is straightforward: Christian
into the 20th century, for example, daily
parents owe their children a Christian educa-
prayer and Bible reading were a familiar part
tion, not the relentlessly secular and often
of the public education experience, and stu-
anti-religious instruction provided in public
dents sang Christmas carols in annual school
schools.
pageants.
The resolution accordingly "encourages" all
No more. Government schools today rou-
Southern Baptists to "remove their children
tinely suppress any trace of religious influence.
from the government schools and see to it that
Public schools have barred children from read-
they receive a thoroughly Christian education,
ing Bible stories during their free time or giv-
JEFF
for the glory of God ...and the strength of
ing bags of jelly beans with attached religious
JACOBY
their own commitment to Jesus."
poems to their classmates before Easter.
Special
To which I say: Amen.
In a case now being litigated in Virginia,
Commentary
I'm not a Southern Baptist or even a
school officials want to ban a graduating senior
Christian — I'm a religious Jew — but I vote with
from singing Celine Dion's The Prayer during com-
Pinckney and Shortt. Parents who take their faith seri-
mencement ceremonies because the song asks God to
ously ought to think twice before putting their kids'
"help us to be wise ..."
education in the hands of the state.
If parents gave parochial education a serious look,
For the first two centuries of U.S. history, it was
countless American parents would find that the values
taken for granted that education included not only
it promotes are their values, and the truth it inculcates
reading, `riting and crithmetic but religion, as well.
is their truth. With 45 million children in public
That changed in the 19th century and, by the late
schools, parochial education will never be the popular
1800s, the burgeoning "common school" system was
choice.
secular.
But surely it can be, for many more than one child
Nonetheless, many schools continued to affirm the
in 12, the right choice.
importance of God and religion in American life. Well

❑

6/ 4
2004

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