Jew v. Jew

Julia Duin’s roundup of Jewish defenders of Pastor Hagee in the Washington Times has the virtue of making clear that holding God in some way responsible for the Holocaust is not beyond the bounds of Jewish opinion. Which isn’t to say that Jewish opinion is unanimous on this subject–as if Jewish opinion were unanimous on […]

Julia Duin’s roundup of Jewish defenders of Pastor Hagee in the Washington Times has the virtue of making clear that holding God in some way responsible for the Holocaust is not beyond the bounds of Jewish opinion. Which isn’t to say that Jewish opinion is unanimous on this subject–as if Jewish opinion were unanimous on any subject. Note Dennis Prager’s disagreement with his own father.
Saperstein.jpgFor a statement of the anti-Hagee point of view, there’s this posting by Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, in the Washington Post‘s department of religious kibbitzing, On Faith. According to Saperstein, Hagee’s offense lay in blaming the Holocaust on European Jews for their failure to immigrate to Palestine. Although Hagee didn’t say that, it is not an illogical conclusion to draw from his remarks.
By including the Book of Job in their collection of approved texts, the compilers of the Bible figured that Jews ought from time to time ponder the question of why an almighty God permits the apparently innocent to suffer. Whether a presidential campaign is one of those times is another question.

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