The Jewish Community and The United Church
by Kenneth Bagnell, July 14, 2012
Sometimes the implication of our action has far more impact than our intention. Take as an example the statement of a United Church “working group” soon to appear before the church’s national governance assembly, recommending a church-wide campaign to boycott products from settlements on Israel’s West Bank. Its respected chairman, a former United Church Moderator, the Very Rev. David Giuliano, says: “What we’re calling for is a focused boycott of products that are being created illegally. To buy settlement products is the same as buying stolen goods — in other words, benefiting from the crime…”
I’ve been involved in the United Church all my life and after much internal debate, write an essay with, in part, a feeling of reluctance. The church’s history has much to be admired and even its current experience of smaller congregations has made it, to me, more welcoming and especially in times of family grief, a strong support. That’s all to the good. But, the working group’s tactic of urging this national boycott bothers me. It’s a telling example of what I mean. The implications overshadow the intentions: more justice for the Palestinian people.
To achieve the latter is first and last, a geopolitical matter. It’s thereby highly dependent on two major political figures, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel and Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. I cannot possibly imagine, Israel’s Prime Minister caring about a policy of the United Church. (For a vivid comment on this resolute man read Peter Beinhart’s recent book, The Crisis of Zionism.) As for the attitude of Canada’s Prime Minister to a United Church policy, there’s obviously no need to say much: he was raised in the United Church but in adulthood became a staunch conservative evangelical and supporter of Israel.
So while the proposal itself — even if sanctioned by the national church at the Ottawa General Council meeting August 11 to 18, is unlikely to attain its goal — what it implies is another matter: the implications serve to make the troubled relationship between the United Church and Canada’s Jewish community ever worse. I asked a friend, Rabbi Erwin Schild — one of Canada’s most respected Rabbis, a survivor of Dachau, and member of the Order of Canada — about reaction if the working group report is adopted. “Members of the Jewish community will be troubled, even incensed,” he replied, “by an unfair critique of Israel. Most Canadian Jews may be critical of some Israeli policies but resent it when criticism of Israel is accompanied by silence on much more serious offenses against human rights in the Middle East or other parts of the globe.” Rabbi Schild, whose mother and father perished in the Holocaust, is now 92, but still haunted by the very word “boycott,” for it recalls an experience he had as a boy when Hitler came to power in 1933. “Almost immediately,” he told me, “the Nazis called for and implemented a boycott of Jewish owned businesses…. I cannot escape from this visceral response to the word ‘boycott,’ but am sure I am not alone.”
The relationship between the United Church and the Jewish community has been troubled for decades. For a scholarly and reliable essay on the matter pick up a new book: The United Church of Canada: A History. (By now it’s in most large library systems in Canada.) It has many worthy essays but one that’s relevant to the issue discussed here. It’s by Dr. Alan Davies, a credible and very respected Professor Emeritus of Religion at the University of Toronto but also a United Church minister. His essay, “Jews and Palestinians: An Unresolved Conflict in the United Church Mind,” is impeccably careful and sensitive. He points out a relevant and instructive fact: the problem has been around for many years. Is it due to anti-Semitism? Probably not. But what of anti-Zionism?
Dr. Davies goes back to the founding of Israel in 1948 and the attitude at the time of United Church leaders: “As self-assured religious and political liberals, the pre-eminent United Church voices of the day proved incapable of grasping the Zionist idea in other than hostile terms. They also failed to grasp the tremendous emotional signifigance for Jews of the seemingly miraculous creation of the state of Israel in the same decade as their near extermination in the Nazi death camps.” There’s much more.
Moreover, the “liberals” Dr. Davies alludes to, have in recent times, taken another step. Within their major church bureaucracies, a strong egalitarian culture has developed. It’s not unworthy. But it often means that those holding such a view, thereby also become very wary of the proverbial high achiever. Their concern is so focused on current “victims,” they’re likely to view leaders in finance, politics or the marketplace, as “victimizers.” That’s not wise. We learn from achievers in almost every line of work. I certainly believe I have, in both pulpit and journalism.
Here’s the point: Israel is a very high achiever. The evidence has been there from its creation, especially in its astonishing scientific and technological research. This is explored in an eloquent book I’ve read and reread, The Israel Test by renowned economist George Gilder. All of us might benefit from its thesis: that achievers often point the way. A memorable quotation from the book reveals why: “The envy of excellence leads to perdition; the love of it leads to the light.”
None of this comment is intended to diminish the vision, research or integrity of the United Church working group. Moreover Israel isn’t flawless. But as for the boycott idea, it won’t work. Far worse, it could do harm of historic proportion.
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Journalist Kenneth Bagnell has been, until his recent retirement, a United Church representative on Toronto’s Christian-Jewish Dialogue.
Very well said. I hope many have the opportunity to read this piece.
Thanks for sharing it.
Hello Kenneth:
I share your concerns about the direction of the UCC on Israeli-Palestine. To that end, I have created an online petition at http://www.faithfulwitness.ca. Please consider signing it and spreading the word.
Thanks for permission to share this with others, Ken. I can’t understand why/how what appears to be a self appointed “working group” is getting all this attention. Even if their “report” is defeated, much damage will result to relations with our Jewish friends–and even if defeated or sent somewhere for further study there will be serious done.
Thank you Mr. Bagnell for your clear commentary – it is refreshing to know that it is just a small group within the Church who is walking this path. I am the child of a Holocaust survivor and a staunch supporter of Israel. I also have deep concerns over the Settlement issue and believe that it has done great harm to the country as a whole. As a Zionist, I resent the religious right who seemingly have more rights and protection than those who just wish to live their lives, serve their country and love their families. And that does not negate the need for the country to be safe and free from terrorism – from any group.
Boycotts inflict harm not only those who are ‘perceived’ to be the ‘bad guys’ ie the Settlers, but also to those they employ, often being those very Palestinians the good members of the United Church wish to ‘help’. It does not help to lose income because there are no sales of the product. It is a backwards way of thinking and does nothing but inflict harm and create more tension between already precarious groups. The United Church would be serving their flock better by creating dialogues and facilitating a meaningful peace instead of causing more drama. In the wrong hands and the wrong minds, this is just another powder keg waiting to blow. And it makes us Jews who have supported our neighbourhood United Churches not want to do so anymore — I have 3 in my immediate community.
For 25 years the Christian Jewish Dialogue Group of Toronto, (CJDT) has been in dialogue between and among the Jewish and Christian faith communities of Toronto. Because the Jewish and Christian traditions share a strong common history, CJDT strives to uphold and celebrate the diversity of authentic faith experience and the commonality of our God. We give thanks for the strong bonds of trust which have been established over the past quarter of a century between members of the Jewish and Christian communities and we are grateful for the deepening of our awareness of each other, our histories and the potentialities of our collective strengths.
Now it is distressing for the members of CJDT to listen to the concerns of our Jewish friends as the August 2012 gathering of the General Council of the United Church of Canada considers the implications and actions suggested by the report of the Israel/Palestine Policy Working Group.
We understand, and commend, those who seek justice in the world, but we urge caution as sometimes actions taken which may seem justified prove not only politically ineffective, but shattering of relationships built upon trust and dialogue. CJDT has learned that trust can only be built by talking and working with one another. When one chooses to stop talking to the other — to boycott the other — trust disappears and along with it, any possibility of finding resolution.
Also, the report itself is presented as considered and supposedly objective. Yet it fails to mention either the word Hamas or the word Hezbollah; these are the two leading terror groups that continually strive to derail the peace process; the founding document of Hamas commits the organisation to the destruction of Israel. The CJDT would encourage the Israel/Palestine Working Group to study more deeply this oversight and consider an addendum to their report.
CJDT members support and encourage positive economic investment in those Palestinian projects and businesses that peacefully strengthen the social fabric of Palestinian society. We believe a positive strategy is much more likely to achieve something than is the punitive option of divestment within Israel.
As the United Church of Canada prepares to gather in their 41st General Assembly next month, the CJDT extends its membership and resources as a medium within which conversation, dialogue and learning can continue. The CJDT experience is a witness of faith where diverse communities enter into dialogue believing that when strangers become friends, conflicts become resolvable and our human family becomes stronger.
May Yahweh’s wisdom guide the deliberations of the United Church of Canada towards a just and reconciling witness for peace.
Respectfully
Reverend Cynthia Scott
Long-time member and Senior United Church Representative to CJDT
As a fellow member of the UCC I do not share Mr. Bagnell’s views and in fact fully support the boycott. For far too long the Israeli government and the Israeli support groups like the CIJA have turned a blind eye to the settlements and the occupation. The annexation of Palestinian land which began in 1967 continues today unabated. This is not just my view but the view of countless numbers of people around the world.
Thanks Ken for this both wise and insightful commentary on our church and the importance of the relationship we have with our Jewish friends, colleagues, neighbours. Having been to Israel and Palestine six times I know that there is no easy answer to this conflict. Any response to the conflict, however, has to have as its primary concern our ability to stay in the on-going conversation with both sides. We need to be a welcome and respected partner in what will be a long, long process. The proposed boycott will limit that severely and ultimately exclude us from helping anyone in this situation. I hope that our General Council Commissioners will heed your advice.
I thank each of you for the care given and thought expressed thus far on the matter of the urged boycott. I was, as I noted earlier, quite reluctant to write as I have. But for a variety of reasons — two being the importance of preserving our relationship with our longtime friends of the Jewish community, another the reality, painful to many, of Middle East policy in today’s federal government — I wrote as I did. Once again, many thanks for time taken and views shared. Kenneth Bagnell.
“It is my hope that the delegates of General Council take seriously the perspective of voices such as Kenneth Bagnell. There is a level of complexity involved with this issue that most of us simply have not taken the time to fully grasp, including myself. The congregation I serve has hosted a group called Peace It Together for many years. This group brings Palestinian and Israeli youth together to get to know each other outside of the caricatured portrait of their respective ideologies. As this deconstruction happens, the stories of anguished reconciliation are filmed by the youth. I would rather see our denomination support initiatives such as Peace It Together in the hope that the entrenched foundational ideologies of older generations will simply erode as the emergent youth culture brings their own creativity to bear on the continuing injustices and violence of their homelands.”
Bruce
Ken: Thank you for your thoughtful comments on the proposed report. Your characterization of “liberals” as reflexively supporting the supposed “victims, seems to me to get to the often mistaken stance of just supporting the perceived “underdog” without due regard for the facts, as I think has happened with this report.
The authors seem to forget that after the UN established the partition of Palestine, creating Israel, that the neibouring nations not only attempted to strangle the infant country at birth, but twice further attempted this again, and to this day most of these nations refuse to accept the concept of Israel as a “Jewish” state (i.e. without Israel accepting the return of all the descendents of the original “refugee” Palestinians). For Israel to do so would obliterate the nature of Israel as a “Jewish” state.
It is my understanding that a key recommendation of the Oslo Accords that the Palestinians were to enact was to change their charter (constitution?) to exhibit a willingness to accept Israel and that this has never been done.
The “settlements” certainly complicate negotiations, but territorial disputes surrounding this issue can be resolved and reports and speculation on the negotiations between the parties indicate that the framework of land swaps and the elimination of some “settlements” is already known to the parties. Israel’s willingness to remove “settlements” was shown by Sharon’s forcible removal of Israeli Jews from Gaza going so far as to use the Israeli army to do so.
I believe a resolution of this conflict will come only when the Palestinian representatives, and their allies in the neighborhood, are willing to formally recognize the “Jewish” state of Israel in their midst. Unfortunately, this day may still be years away. The United Church approving an ill advised boycott will not advance it by a day.
Kenneth’s Comment
Last Saturday, July 28, The Globe and Mail, our national newspaper (to many people, its most reliable) ran a column by Margaret Wente, one of its senior journalists, taking issue, not with the boycott proposal treated here, but with the United Church of Canada, saying the boycott proposal doesn’t matter because: “Fortunately, nobody cares what the United Church thinks about Israeli settlements or anything else for that matter because the United Church doesn’t matter anymore.” Ms. Wente –- I once wrote for her when she was a Globe editor -– continued in that vein: “The church’s leaders are like the last of the Marxist-Leninists: still convinced they’re right despite the fact that the rest of the world has moved on.” It was so provocative I asked a United Church member of the family and a lawyer specializing in intellectual property, (hence well versed on libel issues,) if it had crossed the line. She read it carefully then shook her head. No. Moreover, having years ago also been a Globe columnist, I’m pretty certain the paper’s own lawyers had vetted it.
In any case, for those who didn’t see it, it’s available through this link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/the-collapse-of-the-liberal-church/article4443228/ . It should be read. Years ago, a politician friend David Crombie once told me: the media mirror sentiments already in the public sphere. If therefore a columnist of Ms. Wente’s stature takes a strong position, chances are she’s reflecting a view that’s not just hers alone.
Thus far I’ve never taken a position on the matter of the alleged leftist political philosophy of UCC leadership. (My recent blog was on a single and specific issue: the practical viability or lack thereof of the proposed church boycott of goods from the “Israeli settlements.” That and that alone. Nonetheless, I feel Ms. Wente’s claim that the leadership echoes Marxist-Leninist views, isn’t just hysterical nonsense worth nothing more than derision and dismissal. Perhaps the recent book, “The United Church of Canada: a History,” edited well by Don Schweitzer, should, if there’s a second edition, include a scholarly treatment of the evolution of the political culture of United Church leadership. At certain points, it’s not without some highly provocative political aspects.
Along with the link to Ms. Wente’s column, I include a letter-to-the editor written as a response by Rev. Cynthia Scott. Her view of the historic life of the church is very apt. Considering that aspect of the United Church recalls words spoken by the late Peter Marshall a noted minister in Washington years ago. He was speaking of the public culture and said: “While much is wrong, more is right.” That may, to a degree at least, apply to the United Church. Perhaps we should look at the so-called big picture, including our past, and recall Marshall’s thoughtful counsel.
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Letter to the Editor by Rev. Cynthia Scott, sent July 29, 2012
Dear Editor
Margaret Wente’s article on The Collapse of The Liberal Church contains insights and truths that must be conceded, as far as they go, but lacks context seen by church members who observe and participate. This is my 30th year as a United Church minister in Toronto – the second woman in sole responsibility of a United Church in Metro Toronto. I am also a long-time member of Christian Jewish Dialogue of Toronto who whips into action to oppose the lack of balance and fairness of my church’s proposals on Israel/Palestine. But “here I stand’ despite your article’s truths: here I stand to marry gay couples now because of my Church’s own 1988 stand that all persons regardless of sexual orientation may be considered for ministry; here I stand to affirm the first church in Canada to ordain women ministers in 1936; here I stand to affirm Jesus who took so many stands that the Roman authorities had him put to death on a cross. Instead of carping at the church from outside, I urge people to come inside and see the work that church, synagogue and mosque do for both our personal and political lives. Then you will be really equipped to not only receive its benefits but support them.
Reverend Cynthia Scott