#JudeoWhat? 2/3 Judeo-Christian — this is a meaningless term that carries a lot of political weight, but has almost nothing to do with Jews and Judaism. As Jeffrey Salkin wrote last year for the Religion News Service (https://religionnews.com/2017/10/16/judeo-christian-trump/), the term came into use in the lead up to World War II as a way of “counteracting the fascist use of ‘Christian’ as code language for anti-Semitic.” After all, one couldn’t be anti-Semitic if one acknowledged the Judaic roots of Christianity. Its use expanded during the 1950s as a unifying phrase that could set our religiosity against the atheism of Soviet Russia. Jews were OK with it, Salkin says, because “Basically, it allowed Jews into the ‘country club’ — if not the real tennis and golf country club (that would come later), then at least the formerly restricted ‘country club’ of American culture.” // The term also “papers over some very real and crucial differences between the two faiths and the two cultures. Notions like the personage of Jesus of Nazareth; the meaning of religious law; the very essence of human nature — for starters.” // The reality is that it is a political phrase that makes the user seem expansive and open to difference, while still creating an other — in this case, Muslims, but also, somehow, Latino and African immigrants regardless of religion, and all of the out-groups targeted by the Christian Right. This, of course, includes Jews — as the events of the last two years have demonstrated. #JudeoChristianValues #AfricanAmericanWriters #ACTforAmerica @Act4America @tanehisicoates @barnesandnoble https://www.instagram.com/p/BqTwgkTH5z9/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1516yu6xeenz4
