When Rabbis Turn Bigot

Denver Bronco's Quarterback Tim Tebow is one notorious fellow these days.Imagine...someone who not only made fools out of his critics in the best way possible, but is *gasp!* a believing Christian who openly professes his faith and is unashamed about it.

Apparently that was just too much for Rabbi Joshua Hammerman.He wrote an amazing bigoted screed in the publication Jewish Week ( since pulled from both Jewish Week and his blog, but Yid With Lid has it here) saying that if Tebow, who he refers to as "a poster boy of the Christian right" led the Broncos to the Superbowl, Christian mobs would be indulging in "burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants."

According to Rabbi Hammerman, a Broncos Superbowl victory would "give fodder to a Christian revivalism that has already turned the Republican presidential race into a pander-thon to social conservatives, rekindling memories of those cultural icons of the ‘80s, the Moral Majority and “Hee Haw.” "

From the above, you can tell exactly whom Rabbi Hammerman is pretty easily....a self-identified, hate-filled 'progressive' who heads a left leaning synagogue in a deep blue state, a member of the George Soros funded J-Street Rabbinical council and undoubtedly part of Rabbis for Obama, which he means he was likely one of the rabbis partaking in one of those conference calls with the Dear Leader telling him how to work talking points for ObamaCare and voting Democrat into his High Holidays sermons. In other words, George Soros and the Left own him body and soul.

As far as I'm concerned, after what he wrote, it's a testimony to what a force for good Christianity is in this country and how tolerant most Americans are of their Jewish fellow citizens that some of those Christians he demonized didn't react violently to his poisonous diatribe.One can only imagine what would have happened if he had written the same thing about a Muslim athlete. But Christians?They represent a soft and easily maligned target.

Both Rabbi Hammerman and Jewish Week - a notoriously left leaning publication, where Rabbi Hammerman and his ilk are regular contributors - ran apologies after they saw the reaction this got, from Christians and from Jews who have stopped drinking the Kool-Ade. Rabbi Hammerman's 'apology' in particular was an afterthought as his initial smirking reaction ( also since removed) was: "my Tebow piece is generating the expected outrage from the evangelical right (cant' wait for Jews to begin chiming in!)".

As far as I'm concerned, both apologies were inadequate.

There's an old Chassidic story about a Jew in a small village in Poland who passed rumors and slandered the local rabbi and later found out what he had said was totally unjustified. Approaching the rabbi, the man apologized and asked how he could repair the damage he had done.

The rabbi instructed him to take a pillow filled with feathers and walk to the top of a local hill with him. When they reached the top the rabbi instructed him to cut it open.

After the feathers had scattered, the rabbi then told the man to gather them back up and replace them in the pillow case. "That would be impossible rabbi", the man replied.

"Yes", the rabbi told him, "And it will likewise be impossible to repair the damage you have done to me."

One of Judaism's central tenets is to avoid Lashon Hara, literally 'an evil tongue'. Perhaps they skipped that concept where Rabbi Hammerman went to seminary.

As a Jew and a non-football fan, it not only embarrasses me that someone with the temerity to style himself 'rabbi' would write this sort of thing, but it also strikes me as the height of ingratitude.

America, by and large has always blessed its Jews, as opposed to Europe. There has always been a certain amount of Jew hatred present, but the difference was that is was never a matter of law, never a matter of government policy. There were never ghettos where Jews were literally locked inside at sundown, and no quasi-legal pogroms in America as there were in Europe,with the police turning a blind eye while Jews were raped, pillaged and slaughtered.

Even in the 1920's and later, when there were de facto quotas on admitting Jews to universities and restrictions on buying homes in many areas, when many major firms in law, insurance, and manufacturing refused to hire them, America always provided its Jewish citizens with a way upward.

They were always free to worship as they chose, and have been since George Washington wrote a letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport Rhode Island saying that the children of Abraham would always be welcome here.

Most Jews have amply repaid that generosity of spirit, and the role of America's great and accomplished in every field reflects a contribution that far outweighs their numbers. It even extended to popular culture. Back when the Jews actually owned Hollywood, they made movies that celebrated not only America's history and its greatness but its Judeo-Christian roots. It was a Russian Jewish child who witnessed his family's home being burned to the ground in a pogrom who later immigrated to America and went on to write not only "God Bless America" but "White Christmas" and "Easter Parade".

But then, there are Jews like Joshua Hammerman.

The normal reaction of a man of G-d to a young athlete whose fame is based on his courage in openly showing his gratitude and his allegiance to the Almighty no matter what anyone thinks about it would be admiration and applause.

But then, Rabbi Hammerman's true allegiance isn't to G-d, but to the Left.

Since my Christian friends are unlikely to get the teshuvah ( repentence) and apology from Joshua Hammmerman they deserve, please allow me to apologize humbly in his stead from the bottom of my heart. He is a bigot and an embarrassment to my faith, and indeed to the Judeo-Christian values of America most of us hold dear.

I realize many of you will forgive him, but I can't. Unlike those famous Romans, he knew exactly what he was doing.

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