The fun thing about football is that it provides an escape from the day-to-day horribleness of the real world. Especially as someone who deals with politics every day, it’s nice to spend part of my weekend with a game that represents nothing but pure, meaningless fun. Nobody dies if my team loses, there’s always hope for next season and even the biggest arguments are over trivial things like the merits of a triple-option offensive scheme. The real world doesn’t often pollute football.
Or at least, that was the case before Tim Tebow became the most controversial figure in the game. Now, what started as an argument about whether an “option offense” quarterback could play in the NFL has evolved into a seething feud over the validity of faith — and off-the-field religious hate is seeping into the game. The question now isn’t whether Tebow can play; it’s whether his evangelical Christianity should be allowed to exist in the public discourse, or whether he must fail in order to prevent his voice from polluting secular society.
It’s been a heated debate, and I’ve heard some pretty extreme arguments on both sides, but the dialogue as a whole has been largely intelligent and constructive. However, there have been some tasteless things said and we all knew that eventually someone in this argument was bound to cross “the line” from criticism into straight-up bigotry. I had expected that mistake to come from the militant atheist community, from a Christopher Hitchens type for whom even the admission of the possibility of G-d’s existence is anathema. But yesterday, it showed up in the pages of The Jewish Week in a column by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman. In one of the more bigoted screeds that I have ever read, Hammerman details how Tebow’s success must be stopped — before the football hero incites pitchfork-wielding evangelicals to start torching mosques.
“If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds,” Hammerman claims, ” it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.”
In addition to being detached from reality, this statement (which has since been deleted from Hammerman’s Jewish Weekly op-ed, though the rest is still online and the original, unedited op-ed can still be found on Hammerman’s blog) is ridiculously Christophobic. Hammerman assumes that, despite the presence of contradictory facts, evangelicals are all hateful people itching to burn heretics at the stake. Never mind modern evangelicalism, especially Tebow’s particular brand of it, is mostly about love, compassion, humility and treating others how you want to be treated. I understand that a large chunk of the Jewish community has a historical and justified caution regarding orthodox forms of Christianity, and after centuries of anti-Semitism, pogroms and crusades, it’s hard to blame them. However, to boil that down to a base hatred of all things Christian, and then to assert that even the most non-violent evangelicals secretly desire ethnic cleansing, is bigoted and morally reprehensible.
In fact, Hammerman is using the exact same rhetorical shell game used to justify anti-Semitic blood libel, and I say that as someone who has been personally subjected to anti-Semitic blood libel.
Think about it. The blood libel argument starts with a false premise (“The Jews killed Jesus”), then uses that to form a violent stereotype (“All Jews are violent and must be killed”). Hammerman starts with a similar implied false premise (“Evangelicals are the same people who incited crusades and pogroms”) and blows that up to a similar violent generality (“Evangelicals want to expel/kill all non-believers and must be marginalized”).
If that’s not enough, Hammerman makes it personal by suggesting that Tebow’s mother should have aborted him and then ups the ante by asserting that it was actually unethical and wrong for her to allow his birth.
“Tebow’s mother, a Baptist missionary, became comatose during her pregnancy and was saved by drugs that nearly killed the fetus,” Hammerman notes. “Doctors anticipated a stillbirth and recommended termination to protect her life, but Tim’s mother refused to abort.”
This is mentioned as a positive in the beginning of the column, but later Hammerman circles back and condemns the act, claiming, “His mom’s decision to risk her own life rather than abort her fetus flies against my own — and Judaism’s — values.”
So, there you have it. All Christians are violent barbarians hankering for the blood of Muslims, gays, immigrants and (by implication) Jews. Furthermore, Tim Tebow’s very existence is immoral and he should have been eliminated in the womb — which one would assume would have spared the world from the coming football-fueled holy war. Yes, I understand the ethical argument that this may have been a situation in which an abortion may have been justified to save the mother’s life — which is a valid ethical debate both inside and outside the Judaic context. In the context of the column, however, it seems to have been inserted as an extra twist of the knife — an implication that Tebow never should have been born, that his very existence is out of step with Judaism, an added reason that he cannot continue to exist. That sort of thing verges, once again, on blood libel.
I respect the debate, but at some point, someone has to draw a line in the sand — especially when this sort of tripe surfaces in an outlet that claims to speak on behalf of a faith community. “The Jewish Week,” of all outlets, should be above this ethno-religious hate. As noted by Human Events, Hammerman’s column is out of line with the publication’s policy of deleting all comments that denigrate any religion — and even if it wasn’t, it’s still one of the most hateful things I have ever read. “The Jewish Week” should be ashamed of itself for publishing this bilge, and it owes an immediate apology and full retraction to both Tim Tebow and the evangelical community at large. Rabbi Hammerman has embarrassed his entire religion, and in an ethical world he would be without publication outlet by this time tomorrow if he refuses to retract his statements and live up to his stated “focus” as rabbi, which is “creating an oasis of warmth, love and mutual respect, befitting the role of a modern congregation in an increasingly complicated world.”
His synagogue should also consider sanctioning him in some way. I’m a believer in second chances after something like this, but they should be preceded by teshuvah. Rabbi Hammerman is currently baiting evangelical critics of his column on his blog, and while he has a few nice words for Tebow as a person, he still seems committed to the idea that Tebow’s faith is immoral, with the only positive being that it’s “better than raping little boys.” So, teshuvah does not appear to be forthcoming.
Am I taking a pretty hard line on this? Probably, but I fail to see how this sort of conduct can be tolerated, not just in the modern world, but especially in the context of modern Judaism. To put my cards on the table, I’m a non-Jewish practitioner of Messianic Judaism, which I’m sure Rabbi Hammerman would consider to be an illegitimate and threatening missionary force, but actually I spend quite a lot of breath haranguing missionary groups for trying to make Jews into Christians — and because of my practices, most of the non-Jewish world lumps me in with him rather than Tebow. In fact, I’ve personally suffered from anti-Semitism at the hands of evangelicals (an extremely rare and uncharacteristic act, by the way). So, while Hammerman might consider this to be a reaction from the people he’s criticizing, nothing could be further from the truth. I’m not mad at him because I’m on the other side of the fence — I’m embarrassed and ashamed by how his comments reflect on my own faith.
Adam Brickley was the founder of the website “Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President.” He has contributed to Race42012.com, The Weekly Standard’s blog and Conservatives4Palin.com. His personal blog is AdamBrickley.net.
