Tomorrow, as much of the U.S. celebrates a major Christian holiday, Jews may find themselves in an uncertain position. Such discomfort was expressed earlier this month by Michigan’s Jewish attorney general Dana Nessel, in a since-deleted Tweet:
I remember the first time I was at a store with my son and an employee said “Merry Christmas” to us. My son looked devastated as he asked, “Are we the only people who don’t celebrate Christmas?” I answered ‘No, and we are just as American as everyone else.” [I’m] glad Joe Biden knows that.
To Liel Leibovitz, this comment “manages to misunderstand America, Christianity, Judaism, the concept of religion in general, and also what it means to live with other humans.” He writes:
If you believe that even a greeting that mildly smacks of religious belief has real power to harm minorities, you must then also believe that such niceties ought to be censored for the safety and well-being of our most vulnerable friends and neighbors. Which, of course, means that you now giddily support banning more or less all forms of religious expression in anything that could even remotely be understood as the public square, or, in other words, that you find the whole “freedom of religion” thing as troubling as, say, the freedom to own firearms.
Indeed, it’s starting to feel a little strange to keep avoiding the obvious truth: the problem . . . is with religion qua religion, and, too often, they are using Jews to broadcast to everyone else how unnecessary—even toxic—religion truly is.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/merry-christmas-merry-christmas