How odd of God to Choose the Jews!
God chose the Jews. Not because of their superiority or because they are the greatest nation ever. On the contrary. They were and are small; often poor, powerless, persecuted. There is no rational, calculative logic to this choice. It is spontaneous, gratuitous, random. They are "elect" as chosen to do his work, which includes suffering disproportionate suffering and hatred. The Jews are his special people.
The rest of us...gentiles, goyim...have a choice: love them or hate them. You cannot be neutral or indifferent, in the Drama of Salvation, about the Jews. They are to good/evil and sin/salvation what Duke is to college basketball, what Notre Dame is to college football, what the Yankees are to MLB: you love them or you hate them.
Recall that Joseph, 11th of Jacob's sons, was specially loved by his father and so despised by his brothers. They conspired together to kill him. But Ruben, the oldest, intervened first to prevent his outright murder and instead throw him into a ditch. Then Judah suggested that he be sold into slavery instead of murdered. So, albeit imperfectly, two of the brothers did decide in favor of his life. Later, happily, he becomes the savior of his family and the entire Middle East in time of famine.
We Christians have been adopted into the chosen people. We gentiles have been "grafted onto" the vine that is Israel. Spiritually we are Semites. We love the Jew: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the apostles, the patriarchs, prophets, kings and all Jew through the ages. This includes secular "Woody Allen" Jews, leftwing Jews, observant Jews.
God's love for the Jews over three millennia has left its mark. Every Jew I encounter, even the entirely non-religious, even the militantly secular as Marxist or Freudian, radiates a delectable charm that is invisible, mysterious, emotive and spiritual.
We Catholics who consume the body and blood of the Jew Jesus ourselves share in this charism.
The surge of antisemitism on the political right and left both goes far deeper than disapproval of Netanyahu, the suffering in Gaza, leftist anti-colonialism or fascist chauvinism. It's spiritual root is Envy, the sin of Lucifer. It is diabolic. Lucifer in his envy of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, is constituted by two primal hatreds: of woman and of Jew. Antisemitism is resentment of God's elect and of God himself.
Of course criticism of Israel or its policies, of Zionism or even of Judaism is not antisemitism. Policies, programs and politics are prudential issues that can be debated. But love of the Jew is at the very heart of our Catholic faith.
It is troubling that antisemitism is surging at both extremes of our political spectrum. As a strong moral conservative, firmly on the Right, I am more troubled by that on the right. From the left criticism of Israel is in part understandable humanitarian concern for Palestinian suffering. It is deeper than that as an expression of ideological rejection of colonialism, another example of the dominant oppressor/oppressed paradigm. I do not sense as much a resentment of the Jew as such. For example, I am not aware of holocaust denial from the Left.
From the right we do have ideological isolationism, rejection of American interventionism and "forever wars." Those arguable concerns are not antisemitic as such. But accompanying these prudential concerns there is the vile odor of hatred of the Jew: holocaust denial, conspiracy theories, and broad disgust for the Jew as greedy, powerful, and manipulating.
As a conservative Catholic, I disagree but tolerate ideological anti-Israelism from the left. That from the right is a deeper and darker reality. When conjoined with misogyny its diabolic nature, its hatred of Christ himself is manifest.
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