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were talking. T he priest said: we feel about abortion the w ay you

feel about Israel. I think we can talk, said the rabbi. It is in the

interests of male Jew s (the power structure) to increase the population of Jew s. The trade-off—abortion for Israel— is in the interests of Jew s both for the sake of Israel and for the sake of rebuilding a

Jewish population in the easiest w ay— through male domination.

Second, there is the effort to dissociate the Jewish men from any

perception of fem ininity, being less masculine. Israel, of course,

makes Jew s more male: owning land, controlling a state, having a

nation, having an arm y, having borders to defend and to transgress. In associating with the Christian Right, there is a repudiation of homosexuality, liberal social tolerance of it (still blamed on Jews), a strong move against women (reestablishing male dominance), and in general making an alliance with the rulers— with the

Christians who run a Christian country.

Third, there is the fact that suffering has not made Jews good,

which means that there are greedy Jews who think that power

means safety and also who take pleasure in power. The Christian

Right offers Jews not only a means of dissociation from homosexuality but also real dominance over women, if the social order the Christians want is effectively legislated.

Fourth, there is the fact that suffering has not made Jews good,

which means that there are Jews who hate homosexuals, women,

blacks, children, reading, writing, air, trees, and everything else

the Christian Right seems to hate.

Fifth, the right-wing emphasis on the importance of property

offers Jews a way of changing the history of Jews with respect to

property—whether the property is Israel or land or housing or factories or farms. The protection of property suggests to Jews that they will not be driven off what they own.

Sixth, religious conservatism has its analogue in social conservatism, in that both particularly uphold the rights of men to ownership of women and children. Right-wing Jews who are religiously orthodox see the secular pluralism of Western society in general and the United States in particular as taking Jews away

from Judaism: this, despite the emphasis that Judaism puts on

learning, makes them hostile to secular learning, secular intellectuals, secular Jew s, any education that is not strictly and explicitly Jewish. This brings them into a harmony of values with Christians

who do not like Jews because Jews represent learning: the right-

wing Jews are under the illusion that they and the Christian Right

dislike the same Jews for similar reasons.

Seventh, strangely enough it is in this quasi-religious coalition

with the Christian Right that right-wing Jews seek to find the assimilation that has always been the hope of Jews. We feel the same way you do, they say; we have the same values you have, the same

ideals, the same goals, and we are doing our share. It has been

brilliant strategy on the part of the Christian Right in the United

States to welcome the participation of Jew s, to support the state of

Israel, and to use pedestal anti-Semitism: rather than being ground

under stomping boots, Jew s loyal in their right-wing values are

being lifted up onto a pedestal— where the footing is always precarious, as women know. Believing they can fit in— assimilate

—these Jew s are turning to the one group of people— the fundamentalists— who w ill never forget that “the Jew s killed C hrist. ”

Anything not to be that castrate, that homosexual; there is more

dignity in the killing of Christ than in the concentration camps

when the measure is masculinity.

In the contemporary world, Jew s have an extra burden as creators of culture: Freud and Marx were Jew s. The ideas of both are repugnant to the Christian Right. Freud, right or wrong, made sex

a central social issue. Marx brought half the world to revolution. It

is Marx that the United States government and the Christian Right

are fighting; armies are raised and missiles are built to do it. It is

Freud who asked w hy the family works the w ay it does and suggested that the fam ily was a sexual unit. The intellectual Jew Freud had ideas that undermined what the Christian Right regards

as the cornerstone of Amerikan life: the family. The real question,