When I think that Trump and members of his administration cannot go to any lower depths of morality and civility, they always surprise me. By now, no one can ever measure the seemingly bottomless chasm they have carved into the farthest reaches into the Earth by their words and actions.
Subsequent to the relatively compassionless manner that Trump dealt with the aftermath of the tragic mass murder and injury to Jewish congregants and police officers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Vice President Mike Pence followed with his own brand of insensitivity and disrespect that has outraged members of the Jewish community and others.
At a midterm campaign rally in Michigan, Pence invited a “Christian rabbi,” Loren Jacobs, to the stage to deliver a prayer for the victims and their families of the synagogue shooting rampage. Jacobs of Bloomfield Hills’ Congregation Shema Yisrael (“Hear O Israel”), practices so-called “Messianic Judaism,” (a.k.a. “Jews for Jesus”). He attended an evangelical Christian seminary, and founded his “synagogue,” according to the website as an “evangelical ministry” to convert Jews.
On stage at Pence’s event, Jacobs never referred to the murdered victims in Pittsburgh, nor did he utter the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Instead, wearing the traditional Tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) he invoked “Jesus the Messiah,” and he blessed a list of Republican candidates running for office. By doing so, Pence and his faux-rabbi revictimized the beautiful souls taken too soon at Tree of Life.
I understand all-too-well the harm caused by the oxymoron that is these Jews for Jesus.
There are important and life-changing events in everyone’s life that forever separate before from after. This was clearly true for me.
After what turned out to be a surprisingly comfortable and even joyful outing for the day with a family member (whom I will not name), we eventually exchanged words that eternally altered our already tenuous relationship.
I am fairly certain that he will not remember this because he has a convenient way of forgetting things that may paint him in a negative light, or because he simply can’t recall most of his past. However, I can attest to what happened that day down to the exact phrasing and intonation of the voices and the emotions attached to them in this dialogue that will remain vivid in my mind for the remainder of my days.
Driving back to his house after a day of shopping, with him driving and myself in the passenger seat, we talked about our purchases. I then suddenly changed the topic.
Starting off rather tentatively, I said, trying to appear nonchalant while my heart beat faster, “[Family member’s name], there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” At this point, I could feel my chest tighten and breathing becoming more deliberate.
“Sure, go ahead,” he said confidently. “Anything.”
I began. “As you know, I’ve been working on a book for the last couple of years on the topic of homophobia and how homophobia doesn’t only negatively affect gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, but also how it hurts heterosexual people as well.” (Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price, 1992, Beacon Press.)
Responding with a smile and animated, he said, “Yes, you’ve mentioned it to me. You even wrote in the introduction a story of you and your sister growing up, and how people sometimes picked on her because you were her brother, someone they knew as a homosexual.”
Feeling somewhat relieved, I continued. “Yes, that’s right. And now, I would like to ask you something.”
With the previous tension returning, I continued, “As I told you, my book is about homophobia, which as you know is prejudice and discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Though we haven’t talked about this for the past 20 or so years since you decided to call yourself a “Messianic Jew” or a “Jew for Jesus,” what are your feelings about my being gay? I know you go to your church, and you listen to Christian radio at home and in your car, and I haven’t wanted to bring up the topic, but I would like to know now how you feel about gay, lesbian, and bisexual people?”
Looking at me and then back toward the road ahead, he expressed in a slow and calm tone of voice, “Warren you know I love you very much, and your being gay has nothing to do with that.”
“Yes, I know because this is the first thing you told me back when I came out to you in 1970.” Glancing downward to better visualize the event in my mind’s eye, I remembered sitting with this relative in a guest room in his small apartment. I felt so relieved when he came close and hugged me, tears forming in his eyes, telling me that he had known for a very long time about my sexuality. His tears came from the joy he felt that I finally trusted him with the truth. But that was a few years before his conversion to conservative Evangelical Christianity.
Looking at him imploringly, I asked him now to be totally open with me, “But what do you believe about homosexuality? What have you been taught to believe?”
“Okay, remember you asked me,” he said enthusiastically as if he could finally explode the dam he had self-constructed. “To be completely honest, you are going to go to Hell twice.”
With a quick flinch of the head in his direction believing I may have misheard him, I asked, “Twice?”
“Yes Warren, twice,” he quipped back. “You are doing to Hell for being a practicing homosexual…”
Cutting him off at this point, I piped in, “But I am not a ‘practicing homosexual’ because I no longer have to practice. I am a professional homosexual,” letting out a guffaw.
He did not respond in kind since he saw no humor in my remark. Realizing this, I continued, “Okay, that’s one time in Hell. What’s the other?”
“Are you going to take me seriously? You asked me to be truthful,” he replied.
“Yes, sorry. Go ahead,” I said.
Taking a deep breath, he continued emphatically. “You are also going to Hell because you do not accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior.”
With my neck, hands, and arms tightening, I asked my relative, “So you are saying that even if I were a practicing heterosexual like you,” giving great emphasis on the words “practicing” and “heterosexual,” “I would still go to Hell for not believing in Jesus?”
“I’m afraid so,” he responded calmly. “No one can enter God’s kingdom without first taking Jesus into their heart.”
I had always admired and felt a deep connection with my familial namesake, my maternal great-grandfather, Wolf Mahler. According to Ashkenazi (European) Jewish tradition, a newborn is named after a beloved deceased relative. The name is formed by either taking the entire first name or the initial letter and forming a new name. My parents choose to call me “Warren,” with my Hebrew name as Ze’ev meaning “Wolf.”
“So,” I continued in a serious and rather stern tone, “I would like to pose a hypothetical question to you, so I can better understand.”
Though he responded by asserting that he did not like to deal in hypotheticals, I continued nonetheless. “You know that our family, my grandfather Simon’s family were orthodox Jews. You also know that the Nazis murdered most of them in Poland for being Jewish.”
“Of course I know that,” he said.
I continued with my question, “So, where are they today?”
“You don’t know they didn’t accept Jesus before the Nazis killed them,” he argued back in a barely restrained and agitated tone.
At this point, I simply could not believe what I was hearing. How could he even imagine that our Polish mischpucha (family) would ever convert to Christianity — Protestant or otherwise. How did he get his ideas? Though I never felt much of a connection to this family member other than a familial history and blood, and we shared very few interests of attitudes in common, this conversation exposed the length and depth of the void between us.
This conversation also exposed the reason that while we may have felt a certain familial love for one another, on the other hand, neither of us may have truly liked the other. If we had terminated our relationship here and now, I, at least, would feel relief.
“Well,” I continued. “Let’s say for the sake of our discussion, that our Polish relatives didn’t accept Jesus before the Nazis killed them. Where are they today?”
Without hesitation, he blurted out. “They’re in Hell.”
When he told me this in that car, I could see the blood rapidly circulating at an increased rate through my heart. I automatically tightened my neck. As a blinding rage rose like molten lava from the very depths of my bowels, I began to blank out, my eyes clouding with an impenetrable cottony opacity.
A small voice came from inside reminding me to breathe in and then out, in and then out again. Not knowing from where the strength had come, he heard myself saying: “That is the most hateful thing I have ever heard anyone say,” I declared with an obvious constraint of the full extent of his outrage. “You’d better pull over to the side and let me out of this car, or else I might do or say something I will probably regret.”
My relative responded that if I could wait just a few minutes, we would arrive back at my home where he would drop me. When we arrived, I exited his car, and not turning back, I heard him drive away. I went immediately into my bedroom and screamed deeply and long into a pillow.
Two months later, I called him and said that if we were ever to have any sort of relationship, homosexuality and religion must be left off the table of discussion. He agreed.
How truly sad and unfortunate I find it that humans, as our world spins around, as individuals and nations since recorded history have attempted to explain the mysteries of life, as spiritual and religious consciousness first developed and carried down through the ages, people have come to believe their way stood as the right way, the only way, with all others as simple pretenders, which could never achieve THE truth, the certainty, the correct and right connection with their deity or deities, as individuals and entire nations raped, pillaged, enslaved, and exterminated any “others” believing differently.
All Earthly religious doctrines stem from uncertainty and conjecture, from multiple gods, hybrid gods and humans, to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, to the burning bush, to the covenant and the parting of the Red Sea, to the immaculate conception and resurrection, to Muhammad’s rising to heaven from the rock to the golden tablets, all beginning with humanly-created god(s).
“Truth” is what the dominant group declares to be THE “Truth.” “Knowledge” is anything the dominant group defines as “knowledge,” though “knowledge” itself is socially constructed and produced.
How many wars are we going to justify in the name of “god,” our “god” versus their so-called “false gods”? I remember hearing once that throughout the ages, more people have been killed in the name of religion than all the people who have ever died of all diseases combined.
I don’t know whether this is actually true, but I do think it highlights a vital point, which is that we continually reject, oppress, and kill others and are killed by others over concepts that can never be proven.
The person who was Jesus was, from all that I have heard and read, seemed like a very nice person, maybe even a mentsch in his time. He worked to help the less fortunate among the people. He was concerned with feeding the poor and with nursing the sick.
He wasn’t concerned with men who were sleeping with other men or with women sleeping with other women except that maybe he liked this because it was love. He loved it when people loved each other. That’s what he wanted, more love.
I hope one day to forgive my relative. I also hope one day to forgive Donald Trump and Mike Pence for their divisiveness, their meanspirited and hateful rhetoric, their utter lack of appreciation for human diversity, their bigoted and blatantly partisan policies, and their self-centered ambition at the expense of We the People.
Unfortunately, I’m not yet in a forgiving mood.
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all-access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class, and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group, and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
RSVP for Political Activism Calls
![]()
Join the Politics FACEBOOK GROUP here.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
The post Pence, Evangelicalism, & Insults to Victims at Tree of Life appeared first on The Good Men Project.