By Jeffrey Ballabon

I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish enclave in New York and have spent most of my life here. Over the better part of the past decade, however, my work has brought me away from New York and, very often, into the company of devout Christians. If my New York accent didn't mark me as an outsider in the Bible Belt, then my yarmulke certainly did. But the people I've met there — and of whom, quite candidly, my environment had prepared me to be wary — have overwhelmingly been warm, appreciative, and disarmingly respectful of my commitment to my own faith. I did not expect to find these friends, but it has been a blessing.

A child and grandchild of survivors, I grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. Jackbooted Nazis populated my childhood nightmares and, to be honest, I still can't hear German spoken without feeling an inchoate sense of unease. This is not a judgment about today's Germany; it is a personal confession of how deeply the genocide of my parents' generation continues to haunt me.

But I also feel, and at the same profound level, a sense of gratitude for the good Christians of that dark time. While virtually my entire family was killed, my mother was rescued by a Christian family, who raised her from infancy until the age of 5.

Recently, the ADL ran a national ad campaign reprinting the text of a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Ralph Reed, formerly executive director of the Christian Coalition. The piece is a moving personal testament of kinship and empathy with the Jews who are today frightened by the reemergence of anti-Semitism on a global scale.

Reed's recollections of his own formative lessons of the Holocaust are remarkable for their simplicity and nobility. Pondering his words, I was struck by one line in particular which — while certainly unintended as such by Reed — appear to me to pose a moral challenge to American Jews. From his mother's stories of those Christians who resisted Hitler, he writes, he absorbed the lesson "that standing up for my faith meant defending the right of Jews to practice their own." 

In the post-Holocaust world, American Jewish communal institutions have sought to defend against the tyrannies of majoritarian religion. But vigilance in preventing the establishment of an official state religion has calcified into an unpleasant extremism, and an intolerance of public expressions of the private faith that is shared by a majority of Americans. Have American Jews erred for too long on the side of suppressing the faith of good people? Were the words "God Bless America" — posted on September 12 on the marquee of a public school, and immediately the target of a legal challenge — truly the least bit threatening to Jewish survival? In the struggle for our own freedoms, have we diminished those of others? 

Throughout our bitter, millennial exile, Jewish teaching has always maintained that there exist righteous gentiles and benevolent realms. I believe it is time for American Jews to take note that, as clearly as we have intractable enemies elsewhere, we have unshakable friends here  — and that the primary source of the goodwill we enjoy from many of our neighbors is, in fact, their religion. 

Reed's heartfelt words deserve reciprocation. His sentiments don't just represent the view of one man but are a glimpse, for my community, into an entire society. There is a Christian America that is benevolent, welcoming, and acutely aware of the physical and emotional trauma Jews suffered in living memory. If European Christianity saw the Jews' stubborn survival as a challenge to their replacement theology, American Christianity sees our survival and the founding of the state of Israel as miraculous proof of G-d's love for us. The sentiment I have most consistently heard expressed by these good people is their desire to help and protect the Jewish people — not because of some obscure cataclysmic eschatology, but out of a sense of decency and history, and faith in G-d's promise to Abraham that those who bless his children shall themselves be blessed. 

Abe Foxman and the ADL have long served American Jews with distinction, and I believe they have performed a great service by reprinting Reed's words. Still, it is difficult to overlook the track record of "mainstream" Jewish groups, including the ADL, in erecting barriers of suspicion and hostility between Jews and Christians. I hope that Mr. Foxman now will heed the challenge, and lead the ADL in the direction of greater tolerance for American Christians. I believe American Christians often are hurt by our rebuffs, but that they also understand we are still more fragile than our blustery pretense would suggest. In a generation when anti-Semitism has cast aside its anti-Israel and anti-Zionist guises to reveal its true virulence and its true nature, can we, for our part, not cast off our own prejudices? 

Our community no longer can afford, morally or practically, to harbor unworthy suspicions and prejudices. We judge our enemies by their words and deeds; can we not judge our friends by the same benchmarks? 

Recently, I asked a well-known Christian leader why America is showing itself to be so much more benevolent than Christian Europe. "Don't forget," he said, "our parents came here running from those guys too." This is something American Jews do forget. America is the great enterprise in which we all are joined. Let us not lean on "them" as necessary allies of the moment, as merely convenient political bedfellows. Let us acknowledge and embrace Christian Americans as compatriots and neighbors. And let us work together in defense of all our rights to practice all our faiths.

 — Jeffrey Ballabon is the founder of Roshem, the Center for Jewish Values.

© 2002 National Review Online