Dear EN,
I returned to the UK in March 2011 after ten years in Sydney, Australia. Before I left I used to read regularly The Jewish Chronicle, the weekly newspaper of the UK Jewish community, and now I have returned I enjoy doing so again.
What has been no pleasure for me is to observe the significant increase in news items, comment and essays on the subject of anti-Semitism. It has shocked me. Not that I was unaware in Australia, but it has underlined to me how much the Jewish people in the UK feel this rise in hostility.
Your recent article on Bonhoeffer (June EN, p.14) closes with the question, what would Bonhoeffer have to say to the churches of Britain? And one part of the answer was to care for the persecuted, Christian and non-Christian. That must surely include the Jewish people (it certainly did for Bonhoeffer). As long as the world exists there will be anti-Semitism because the Jews are a witness to the existence and character of the living God (Isaiah 44.8, 43.8-13), and, although anti-Semites may not be conscious of it, there is an element of opposition to God’s truth in their attitude.
Christians come in for the similar treatment, which we rightly perceive as hatred of the light. There is a sense in which Jews and Christians are in this together and should support each other, and churches should have a particular concern for Jewish believers among them. Of course, the faults of Christians and the faults of Jewish people will muddy the waters, but that does not detract from the need to discern opposition to the one, true God and to support those who suffer for it.
Yours,
