Denial is great… until it isn’t.

Rabbi Jim Rosenberg (March 2025) flashed me back to my own reactions to David Brooks’s opinion pieces.

I learned about Christianity’s inherent antisemitism in the 1950’s crucible of, “Leave It To Beaver/ Joe McCarthy/ We Are One Big American Family Melting Pot,” lie built on the expulsion from Spain, the Crusades, the pogroms and the Shoah.

Religion by our culture’s Christian definition, is identical with belief. But that doesn’t fit Judaism. The conflict Rabbi Rosenberg describes between Christianity and Judaism is the same; the conflict between belief and action.

In Daniel Kahneman and Adam Tversky’s book, “Thinking, Fast And Slow,” they describe Systems One and Two; System One using rules of thumb for judgments like driving on the right side of the road. System two for more complicated things, like a constitution. They developed these ideas on long, slow, walks in Israel.

By declaring System One’s love, passion and emotion the evil opposite, instead of complementary, System Two’s tedious law, Christianity has become the world’s most powerful societal organizing system: 72% of White Protestant or other Christian voters, and 82% of White born-again or Evangelical Christians voted for the liar, felon and sexual predator who is now the president of this United States. Through their contempt for System Two, they hold in contempt one history’s supreme Talmudic documents – The United States Constitution.

David wants to work across the aisle with Red and Blue America? Unfortunately, there is only one party. What used to be a political party is now a death cult. Vitamin A for measles anyone? Until we have two parties again, there is no aisle to work across.

Howard Newman

Newport, RI