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A
Rabbi Defends Christmas
by
Jan
Markell (12/19/05)
With the controversy
surrounding the "war on Christmas," I wish to pass on comments
by Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Lapin. He is addressing the National Press Club
but doing it a bit in drama form as though he is talking to his great
grandfather who would never understand why Lapin would be so
pro-Christian and pro-Christmas. His speech is abbreviated.
"You must be puzzled, great-grandfather-Lapin, so I will give a few
reasons why I believe Christians should celebrate Christmas publicly.
You never expected a descendent of yours to stand before television
cameras encouraging Christians to celebrate Christmas.
"Today in this blessed land of America, the choice is between
living among people practicing aggressive secularism or living among
benign, Bible believing Christians. I am a descendent of ancestors who
stood at the foot of Mount Sinai over three thousand years ago and
promised God that they, and their descendents, would guard the Ten
Commandments. How could I ally myself with secularists who would make
God's commandments irrelevant to society? Worse, how could I stand by
and say nothing while those Americans who venerate the Ten Commandments,
Christians, are under attack? In the choice between a society of secular
Americans or one of Christians, it is not hard to see where Jewish
values must guide.
"Anti-Semitism has been a scourge on the face of the earth for
millennia. Well, so is anti-Christianism. If anti-Semitism is evil and
must be resisted, the same applies to anti-Christianism. Rabbi Weinberg
wrote in 1965 that we are entering a period in which there is far more
anti-Christianism than anti-Semitism. In order to retain both
intellectual and moral integrity, Jewish values require Jews to protest
anti-Christianism just as we have so often entreated American Christians
to protest anti-Semitism.
"We Jews have long enjoyed tranquility and prosperity in America of
a kind that we have never been offered by any other society in the past
two thousand years. America has welcomed Jews not in spite of its
Bible-based Christian values but precisely because of them. Judaism
would expect all its devotees to express gratitude by standing alongside
those Americans who take seriously the words, 'And
I will bless those that bless you' (Gen. 12:3.)
"I think if you were still with us, great-grandfather-Lapin, you
would be right here alongside me today, cheering me on and doing all you
could do to help defend the public celebration of Christmas in
America."
Rabbi Lapin is President of "Toward Tradition" and hosts his
own television and radio shows.
