The Campaign to De-Judaize Jesus’ Birth and Birthplace Escalates
By Michael Oren
Though many of the most famous Christmas songs—”White Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” to name just a few—were written by Jews, Yuletide was never a very bright time for Jews. In contrast to my college roommate who decorated his Christmas trees with dreidels, the vast majority of Jews regard December 25 with a feeling of anomie, if not unease. It’s like some luminous party to which everyone has seemingly been invited but us. Indeed, the only joy we can derive from the day is by wishing warmth and fulfillment to our gentile friends and by subscribing to their prayers for peace.
This Christmas, though, is different. Along with the sense of being left out, a great number of Jews feel threatened. This is the second Christmas of the Middle East war, the second in which antisemitism has once again become a reality of Jewish life. From Amsterdam to Australia, Columbia University to Colombia, South America, Jew-hatred remains on the rise. And what better time to target Jews than Christmas?
That is the holiday in which hundreds of millions remember a baby born 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, and the opportunity for antisemites to deny that baby’s Jewishness or the location of his birth in the Land of Israel.
Such efforts are hardly new—the late Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, once referred to Jesus as “the first martyr [and] the first Palestinian.” The fact that the word Palestine, coined by the Romans a century after his death, would not have been known to Jesus, did not deter Palestinian officials and anti-Israel propagandists such as Linda Sarsour from proclaiming, “Jesus was a Palestinian from Nazareth.”
Now, as war in our region still rages, the efforts to de-Judaize Jesus and the entire nativity story have resurged. Millions online have responded to calls to boycott the new Netflix series, “Mary.” The crime: producers’ decision to cast an Israeli, Noa Cohen, in the leading role, with other Israelis supporting her. The same people who’d be outraged by a Western actor playing an Asian character or a straight man playing a gay man are incensed when a Jew plays a Jew. “A film about a Palestinian woman played by actors from the settler state that is currently mass slaughtering Palestinian women,” one massively viewed tweet protested. “Oh the disgusting audacity.”
Meanwhile, in the Vatican, a creche designed by Palestinian artists and viewed favorably by the Pope posed the baby Jesus wearing a keffiyeh. The message was unequivocal: just as the Jews killed the Palestinian Christ, so, too, are they murdering his innocent descendants.
No, Christmas is not always the easiest time for Jews, and notably not this Christmas. In a relatively easier season, during my time as ambassador to Washington, I wrote an op-ed about those challenges. While acknowledging its religious significance for Christians, I emphasized our shared values of freedom, tolerance, and devotion to family. I also stressed the historically undeniable connection between Hanukkah and Christmas. Without the first, I wrote, the second would not have occurred.
This year, especially, it is crucial to remember that tie, and not only because Christmas corresponds with the first night of Hanukkah. This year, along with wishing a most Merry Christmas to our non-Jewish friends, we must recall the ideals that bind us and fortify us all in the face of common threats.
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