Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, was disinvited by the Denver Jewish community, or at least by part of it, from being the featured speaker at the Mens Event of the Allied Jewish Federation.
Pastor Hagee is one of the strongest and most eloquent pro-Israel speakers in the world. He was not good enough for Denver because of some of his domestic policies, and perhaps also because of his style.
What opponents of Hagee’s appearance in Denver apparently do not realize is that the Pastor Hagee of this event is the Rabbi David Saperstein of two events ago. Hagee was supposed to speak this year; Saperstein did speak in 2009. Ones views are offensive to one group; the others views are offensive to a different group.
Except.
Except that Rabbi Saperstein was courteously welcomed at the Mens Event, as he should have been. There was no outcry let alone a disinvitation by those who consider some of his views on domestic policies damaging to Judaism and the Jewish people.
Rabbi Saperstein was welcomed by some, and tolerated by others. Read related news coverage from Andrea Jacobs
Pastor Hagee was welcomed by some, and not tolerated by others.
Tolerance, however, runs two ways.
Tolerance of Saperstein and tolerance of his opposite.
To be sure, some will see the mention of the urbane Saperstein and the bombastic Hagee in the same sentence as incongruous at best, fallacious at worst. Saperstein favors reasoned argument; Hagee favors impassioned preaching. Saperstein controls his words; Hagee is sometimes insulting. Yet, opponents of Hagee, who see his domestic policies as drastically retrograde, dont seem to understand that their strong feelings are mirrored, in reverse, in opponents of Saperstein, who see some of his domestic policies as dangerous to Jewish integrity.
One mans hero is another mans anti-hero, and vice-versa.
Except.
Except that one of the heroes (or anti-heroes, take your pick) was allowed to speak; the other, not.
In this, the Denver Jewish community should not wonder at its damaged reputation. Consider the context:
Pastor Hagee has been invited to speak before the single largest Jewish gathering in the country, the AIPAC national policy conference.
Good enough for AIPAC but not good enough for intolerant Denver.
Pastor Hagee was good enough to be included on a pro-Israel video with the likes of Elie Wiesel and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.
Good enough for Elie Wiesel and for the Conference of Presidents but not good enough for intolerant Denver.
The Denver Jewish community needs to acknowledge its deep internal differences, and to learn to live with them. The Denver Jewish community needs to mature.
On a college campus, all views are aired. Listeners take them or leave them. Nobodys afraid of the exchange. Is our community supposed to be less free, and more fearful, than a college campus? We hope not.
And if not, there will be no repeat of the disinvitation of last week.
In the disinvitation process of Pastor Hagee, the phrase Jewish values was bandied about quite a bit.
Jewish values do not derive from secular values. Jewish values are not biblical eisegesis.
Jewish values derive from the Jewish Hebrew and Aramaic sacred literature.
As a Christian, Pastor Hagee is obviously not a font of Jewish values, but on some issues, even beyond Israel, Pastor Hagee does come a lot closer to the Jewish Hebrew and Aramaic sacred literature than some of his Jewish critics. And, like his positions or not, Hagee does pay the Jewish tradition the respect of sitting down with rabbis to study serious Jewish theology. Can the same be said for all of his detractors?
Where Pastor Hagee clearly diverges from Jewish values is in his claiming the powers of the prophet, claiming to know, very specifically, the divine intent in contemporary events, such as Hurricane Katrina. This is apparently a general evangelical approach. Pat Robertson commented in 2006 that Ariel Sharon suffered his stroke because he was dividing G-ds land. In Jewish tradition, prophecy ceased shortly after the destruction of the first Holy Temple, some 2,500 years ago.
Be all this as it may, there is one Jewish value that Hagees critics trashed: not to disinvite. Whether Hagee should have been invited in the first place is a legitimate debate, but, once he was invited, the matter accordingly to Jewish values was closed. Some one million Jews were murdered by the Romans at the time of the destruction of the second Holy Temple in Jerusalem stemming from, at least in part, an incident in which a Jew was disinvited. Shamed and angered, this Jew stoked the Roman rage. See Gittin 55b-56a.
From what we gather, Pastor Hagees love of Israel is sufficiently self-validating that he might not be provoked by his humiliation on the part of the Denver Jewish community, or some of it. Hagees ultimate response is unknown; in any event, this hardly suspends Jewish values, such as not to disinvite.
We hope that the day is not far off when Pastor Hagee will speak on behalf of Israel in a Jewish venue in Denver. Never having heard him speak, we are curious to see what this man with the outsized pro-Israel reputation sounds like. When he does speak here, it will likely be a banner day for Israel. Sadly, his appearance will not likely be under the auspices of the Allied Jewish Federation, some of whose polar opposite factions cannot extend to Pastor John Hagee the same courtesy and tolerance they all extended to Rabbi David Saperstein.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
