JCRC responds to Senator’s tweet
On July 4th, Sen. Josh Hawley tweeted the following quote, which he attributed to founding father Patrick Henry, “This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
This quote was not from Patrick Henry and was, in fact, from the editorial board of the April 1956 edition of the virulently antisemitic, white nationalist magazine The Virginian. Both the source and the quote itself are deeply troubling to the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish constituents Hawley represents throughout Missouri.
On July 10, JCRC sent the attached letter to Hawley expressing these concerns.
Dear Senator Hawley,
We are reaching out to express concern about your recent tweet, which you attributed to founding father Patrick Henry, quoting, “This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
As has been pointed out by historians, the line was never said by Patrick Henry or any other founding father; in fact, it comes from the editorial remarks of the publishers of The Virginian in 1956. This publication was known to support white nationalist and antisemitic views.
As representatives of the Jewish community and your constituents, we are particularly troubled by this tweet not simply because of its connection to a hateful periodical that specifically targeted Jews, but because any language that seeks to promote America as a country built by and for Christians alone disenfranchises and erases millions of people, including our Jewish community. For millennia, our Jewish community has been expelled from countries in which they have lived and denied citizenship on the belief that we could never truly belong. The United States is the first modern country that has provided our community with the rights and liberties that have allowed us to truly thrive — across the country, and in our wonderful state of Missouri.
We welcome the opportunity to meet with you in order to continue to strengthen the relationship between you and leadership of our St. Louis Jewish community and to discuss the priorities of our community — including fighting antisemitism, a goal that we know from prior interactions that you share.
Joel Iskiwitch, JCRC Board Chair
Rori Picker Neiss, JCRC Executive Director
Readers respond to rabbi’s commentary on Jewish families, marriage
Over the course of my career as a scholar and teacher of literature, I’ve come to recognize a type of reader who looks to a proof text to confirm their own biases, and then uses that confirmation to justify their own bigotry. This practice is particularly associated with medieval Christianity, where it was used repeatedly against Jews. Never did I expect to find it in the pages of the Light, practiced by Rabbi Ze’ev Smason as a cudgel against the LGBTQ+ community (July 12 commentary, “Look to ‘eternal truths of the Torah’ for Jewish view of marriage, family”).
Would that he were willing to learn about the lives of others, but instead he announces the “truth,” as if from Sinai, to those he seeks to marginalize, who are now expected to undo our lives, dissolve our marriages, disown our children, rewrite our identities, all to fit his narrow-minded view of human life. With his closure to the wonder and complexity of humanity as God created it, and the real harm to actual human beings that his argument intends and effects, he dishonors his title.
Michael Sherberg
St. Louis County
Thank you for printing Rabbi Ze’ev Smason’s opinion piece “Look to the Eternal Truths of the Torah for the Jewish View of Marriage and Family” in the July 12 edition. The ideas expressed in the article resonate strongly with me. I also believe that most of the St. Louis Orthodox community as well as many other traditionally minded Jews would appreciate Rabbi Smason’s presentation of the timeless Torah values of Jewish marriage and family. I commend the Jewish Light for printing a Torah-oriented view of a contemporary issue.
Martin Olevitch
University City
Rabbi Smason’s eloquent essay on the Jewish view of marriage is in fact a bitter monologue that would, I am sure, bring tears of joy to the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green and Sen. Josh Hawley. Congratulations Jewish Light for joining the culture war.
John S. Daniels, M.D.
Town and Country
Jewish marriage and gender are clearly defined in the Torah. One can live and let live in secular circles, but some things in my opinion are incompatible with traditional Judaism.
Everyone can still and should be treated with compassion, and no one deserves more compassion than the parents of children who are going through a mental health crisis and seemingly questioning their gender. However, should children be allowed to make irreversible choices about their bodies, even by proxy? As adults, do you make the same decisions or have the same beliefs about what is best for you as when you were 12? Probably not.
It is well documented that the brain doesn’t completely mature until well into the mid-twenties. What about non-surgical gender-affirming care? Are we saying that puberty blockers and hormones do not have profound and permanent effects on a young person’s physiology and psyche, even if treatment is stopped later?
Yes, youths experiencing these types of crises should be helped, but how they should be helped is what I question. It seems to me that calling them trans overly simplifies what could be much more complex underlying issues that require different, more complex treatments.
Carole Granillo
St. Louis
