were talking. T he priest said: we feel about abortion the w ay you
feel about Israel. I think we can talk, said the rabbi. It is in the
interests of male Jew s (the power structure) to increase the population of Jew s. The trade-off—abortion for Israel— is in the interests of Jew s both for the sake of Israel and for the sake of rebuilding a
Jewish population in the easiest w ay— through male domination.
Second, there is the effort to dissociate the Jewish men from any
perception of fem ininity, being less masculine. Israel, of course,
makes Jew s more male: owning land, controlling a state, having a
nation, having an arm y, having borders to defend and to transgress. In associating with the Christian Right, there is a repudiation of homosexuality, liberal social tolerance of it (still blamed on Jews), a strong move against women (reestablishing male dominance), and in general making an alliance with the rulers— with the
Christians who run a Christian country.
Third, there is the fact that suffering has not made Jews good,
which means that there are greedy Jews who think that power
means safety and also who take pleasure in power. The Christian
Right offers Jews not only a means of dissociation from homosexuality but also real dominance over women, if the social order the Christians want is effectively legislated.
Fourth, there is the fact that suffering has not made Jews good,
which means that there are Jews who hate homosexuals, women,
blacks, children, reading, writing, air, trees, and everything else
the Christian Right seems to hate.
Fifth, the right-wing emphasis on the importance of property
offers Jews a way of changing the history of Jews with respect to
property—whether the property is Israel or land or housing or factories or farms. The protection of property suggests to Jews that they will not be driven off what they own.
Sixth, religious conservatism has its analogue in social conservatism, in that both particularly uphold the rights of men to ownership of women and children. Right-wing Jews who are religiously orthodox see the secular pluralism of Western society in general and the United States in particular as taking Jews away
from Judaism: this, despite the emphasis that Judaism puts on
learning, makes them hostile to secular learning, secular intellectuals, secular Jew s, any education that is not strictly and explicitly Jewish. This brings them into a harmony of values with Christians
who do not like Jews because Jews represent learning: the right-
wing Jews are under the illusion that they and the Christian Right
dislike the same Jews for similar reasons.
Seventh, strangely enough it is in this quasi-religious coalition
with the Christian Right that right-wing Jews seek to find the assimilation that has always been the hope of Jews. We feel the same way you do, they say; we have the same values you have, the same
ideals, the same goals, and we are doing our share. It has been
brilliant strategy on the part of the Christian Right in the United
States to welcome the participation of Jew s, to support the state of
Israel, and to use pedestal anti-Semitism: rather than being ground
under stomping boots, Jew s loyal in their right-wing values are
being lifted up onto a pedestal— where the footing is always precarious, as women know. Believing they can fit in— assimilate
—these Jew s are turning to the one group of people— the fundamentalists— who w ill never forget that “the Jew s killed C hrist. ”
Anything not to be that castrate, that homosexual; there is more
dignity in the killing of Christ than in the concentration camps
when the measure is masculinity.
In the contemporary world, Jew s have an extra burden as creators of culture: Freud and Marx were Jew s. The ideas of both are repugnant to the Christian Right. Freud, right or wrong, made sex
a central social issue. Marx brought half the world to revolution. It
is Marx that the United States government and the Christian Right
are fighting; armies are raised and missiles are built to do it. It is
Freud who asked w hy the family works the w ay it does and suggested that the fam ily was a sexual unit. The intellectual Jew Freud had ideas that undermined what the Christian Right regards
as the cornerstone of Amerikan life: the family. The real question,
