Senator Rubio is feeling blue and philosophical:
The debate after #Parkland reminds us We The People don’t really like each other very much.We smear those who refuse to agree with us.We claim a Judea-Christian heritage but celebrate arrogance & boasting. & worst of all we have infected the next generation with the same disease
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 28, 2018
But Reform Rabbi Ruttenberg, author of the recent Washington Post op-ed about how the DACAites morally require that we be getting Purim on Trump’s ass, is not having any of Marco’s philosophizing:
MY JEWISH HERITAGE TEACHES THAT WE DO EVERYTHING IN OUR POWER TO SAVE LIVES.
— Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) February 28, 2018
Get my tradition out of your mouth while you’re taking that blood money. https://t.co/TwolPFavYl
Reading the bio of Rabbi Ruttenberg, a Religious Studies major at Brown, is exhausting. I had this naive assumption that being a rabbi was the last of the pleasant sinecures for non-self-starters, like being a curate in an old English novel. But intense Tiger Daughters like Ruttenberg are taking over the rabbi racket too, just like all the other SJW jobs.
Anyway, Marco’s rather affecting lament merely reminds Rabbi Ruttenberg that gentiles using the phrase “Judeo-Christian” just drives her crazy with anti-Christian animus:
This might be a good time to note that “Judeo-Christian” is not a thing and we Jews would like you to stop conflating our tradition with your American Christianity.
— Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) February 28, 2018
I looked up the use of the term “Judeo-Christian” on nGram (along with its rival “Anglo-American”):
“Judeo-Christian” is occasionally used in the 19th Century, such as by Nietzsche as a term of abuse, but it really takes off in the nice, tolerant American late 1940s as a term of inclusion.
The Coen Brothers’ most recent movie, Hail, Caesar! about a movie studio making a Biblical epic around 1950 has a scene in which the studio’s Irish Catholic fixer (Josh Brolin), whose main job is networking with Catholic cops to let movie stars off on drunk driving charges, hosts a meeting with representatives of Los Angeles’s four major religions to get their approval of a Bible movie. What’s striking is how much less than maximally satirical the Coens are in this scene: you get the impression that Coens basically are impressed with the 1950 clerics’ characteristic commitment to “Judeo-Christian” ecumenical goodwill and the filmmakers’ outreach to organized religion.
The naked expression of anti-gentile animus that motivates Rabbi Ruttenberg would have been considered in bad taste in 1950. But that era of goodwill and self-restraint appears to be slowly ending.
