If Jesus walked into a synagogue today

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Visiting Germany for the first time in 1996, I was startled to discover that synagogues and other Jewish sites had to be guarded round-the-clock by police. To attend Shabbat services at the Orthodox synagogue on Berlin's Joachimstaler Street, I had to pass an armed guard and a metal detector. During a trip to Guatemala City seven years later, I found even tighter security. In order to be admitted to a synagogue, I had to register in advance — a process that involved faxing a copy of my passport and travel details.

In those days, such things were virtually unknown in America. Naively, I supposed they always would be. I used to scoff when some American Jews, responding to opinion surveys, would claim that antisemitism in the United States was "a very serious problem." Their anxiety, I thought, was baseless. After all, Jews had been blessed in America with a degree of tolerance and goodwill virtually unparalleled in the many generations of Jewish wandering.

There was a reason for that acceptance. America's story was rooted in Judeo-Christian soil. The founders of the American republic were profoundly influenced by the Hebrew scriptures and believed that they, like the Israelites of old, had been taken out of bondage by God and led to a Promised Land. The American understanding of liberty was steeped in biblical language and imagery, and that religious frame made Jews seem not alien, but familiar — the original protagonists in the very story the founders believed they were continuing.

That is why, from the earliest days of the republic, Jews were not merely tolerated as an eccentric minority, but embraced as heirs to the scriptures Americans revered. A nation that identified itself with Israel of old could hardly view the children of Israel as interlopers. The presence of Jews in America validated the country's own sense of mission, confirming that its experiment in ordered liberty was aligned with the G od of the Bible.

Over time that affinity translated into a remarkably philosemitic culture, especially after World War II. As I have written before, the postwar era was a kind of golden age for American Jews. It seemed natural to suppose that this was the new normal, that the alliance between Jews and their overwhelmingly Christian fellow citizens would endure, and that the promise George Washington expressed in his famous 1790 letter to the Jewish community of Newport, R.I. — that in America, every Jew would live safely "and there shall be none to make him afraid" — had no expiration date.

But the golden age has been replaced by a grim new reality in which antisemitism is being normalized with terrifying speed. Today, American synagogues and Jewish schools must spend a fortune on security. Jewish-owned businesses are targeted by antisemitic mobs, podcasters with huge followings platform Holocaust deniers, and social media is awash in anti-Jewish venom. Though Jews account for just 2 percent of the US population, they are now more likely to be targeted in a hate crime than members of any other minority group.

As the shadows lengthen, I can't help wondering: Can American Jews still rely on the goodwill and solidarity of their Christian neighbors?

That's the question at the heart of a plea by the Rev. Daniel Joslyn‑Siemiatkoski, an Episcopal priest and the director of the Center for Christian‑Jewish Learning at Boston College. Writing in the days before Christmas, he described the starkly different conditions under which Jews and Christians now gather for prayer — and what that contrast ought to demand of Christians of conscience. His message, addressed to his fellow believers and shared with me last week, is worth quoting at length:

Last month I attended two events offered by Lexington United Against Antisemitism, a local interfaith group. Both gatherings were large, with a shared meal, conversation, and learning. The more recent event was at a synagogue. Arriving, I noted that the door was locked and guests were admitted by staff. It was not an unusual sight; I have visited many synagogues with rigorous security protocols. Yet when a similar event was held a few weeks earlier at a nearby church, people were free to walk in and out of the open doors without needing to check in or be admitted.

The contrast is stark. Jewish and Christian neighbors, so deeply connected, have radically different ways of simply entering their houses of worship.

Why are we Americans willing to live like this? Why are Christians, who worship Jesus the Jew, willing to stand for this? Why do we stand by as Jews in our communities are threatened by antisemitic graffiti, as Jewish children are bullied in their schools, and as more and more Jews feel they must hide their Jewish identity for fear of harassment — or worse? We have seen terrible violence against Jews at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, Calif.; the killing of two young Israeli embassy staffers at a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C.; and the brutal stabbing of a rabbi at a Jewish day school in Boston. Last week's bloodbath at Bondi Beach in Australia reminds us yet again that hateful speech has deadly consequences.

I think a lot about my Jewish neighbors, friends, and family members. As a scholar of Christian-Jewish relations and as a pastor, I believe that Christians have an obligation to act against antisemitism. We need not just prayers and words but also deeds. In 2022, the center I direct at Boston College was one of 30 signatories on a document calling on U.S. churches to confront the crisis of antisemitism. "We implore all churches to redouble their efforts to denounce antisemitism publicly as antithetical to the very essence of Christianity itself," it said.

But three years later, it is painfully clear that antisemitism in the United States has only accelerated. On the left, we see it in the demonization of Jews for embracing Zionism and the Jewish state. On the right, we see it in the prominence of self-styled "groypers" like the avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes. Antisemitism is making a ferocious return in America, especially among young men.

What will American Christians do about this? We are on the cusp of Christmas, which celebrates that God became human in a Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. Christmas celebrates divine love drawing near in human form. Jesus lived as a Jew and taught as one. The gospels recount that one of the first acts of his public ministry was to teach in his home synagogue. If Jesus were to reappear today, what would he make of armed guards and locked doors at the entrance of US synagogues? What would he say of his non-Jewish followers who do little to protect vulnerable Jewish communities? The gospels show Jesus getting angry at injustice many times. How angry would he be today?

Churches will be full on Christmas Eve. Maybe there will be a prayer said for the victims of Bondi Beach. That would be a meaningful sign of solidarity with Jews. But the time has come for Christians to add actions to our prayers. More must be done to combat the surge of anti-Jewish bigotry in our communities, in our schools, and from influential personalities. For starters, Christians can work with Jews and other partners to create community organizations like Lexington United Against Antisemitism.

Antisemitism threatens all of us. Rarely do those who target Jews with persecution, threats, or violence stop there. They come for others, whether people of color, immigrants, or LGBTQ people. Antisemitism is the warning sign of authoritarianism. To fight antisemitism is to fight for human dignity, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Jesus would not avert his gaze from the rising tide of hostility aimed at Jews in America. Jesus would not keep silent at the sight of Jewish worshipers who need armed guards to pray in safety. So how, as we mark the birth of the Jewish baby Jesus at this sacred Christmas season, can we?

Joslyn Siemiatkoski's words capture something Jews too rarely hear from their Christian friends and neighbors: not just sympathy, but clarity — the clarity to see that when we walk into synagogue past an armed guard, when we see mobs chanting against "Zionists" and know they mean all Jews, we are not being paranoid or overly sensitive. We are reading the moment as it truly is. In the most welcoming country Jews have ever known, it is a lonely thing to realize how few non‑Jews truly understand this intensifying unease.

What gives Joslyn-Siemiatkoski's plea its moral force is that it asks something of Christians — not as allies, but as disciples. He does not reassure them that a few prayers and statements will suffice, or urge Jews to calm down. He tells his own community that Jewish fear is legitimate, that Christian silence is untenable, and that defending Jews is not a matter of optional allyship, but an obligation rooted in the gospel itself. Coming from a Christian pastor, that is not condescension and not charity.

It is solidarity — and it is exactly what so many of us wish we could hear more often.

Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission.

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