In my last Letter, I advocated resetting the traditional alliance between the Jewish community and the African American one. I know, of course, that there are lots of black Jews, who straddle both communities. But my focus was on reaffirming the old alliance between Blacks (who are mostly not Jews) and Jews (who are mostly not black). Now I turn to a new alliance that ought to be pursued: between Jews and Evangelicals (who are mostly white).
Commentary magazine too has recently argued for such an alliance,[i] but on the grounds that we should join evangelicals in their fight against rampant secularism; more specifically, we should welcome the weakening of the “secular-Jewish alliances built on principles that elites would wield against whites, Christians, and men.”
I regret that analysis of the problem for a whole host of reasons, but it didn’t take Commentary to convince me of the need to reexamine our relationship with white evangelicals. I’ve been saying that for some time.
In my last letter, I decried the tendency of official communal institutions (both African American and Jewish) to oversimplify, and even demonize, one another, as if all Blacks and all Jews are any one single thing. The same institutional tendency is evident when we assume, for example, that all Evangelicals are white Christian nationalists; or bent only on converting us.
Of course there are differences between us. We cannot ask evangelicals to give up the essence of their Christianity, which insists on salvation only through Christ; nor their commitment to those ethical stands that differ from ours (abortion, for example). But the whole point of an alliance across boundaries is the willingness to bypass some differences in order to accentuate those commonalities that might lead to the betterment of both parties, and, for that matter (since we are religions, after all) the betterment of the world.
To be sure, the gap between us Jews and some Evangelicals may be more like an unbreachable ravine. Evangelicals may say that about some Jews as well. But the operative word is “some,” not “all.”
Henry Kissinger is often quoted as saying that countries “have no permanent friends, only interests.” But some eminently quotable quotes are oversimplifications. Neither interests nor friends are necessarily forever, after all; and friendships sometimes survive even when interests differ. I have friends who oppose abortion; or who question the severity of Israel’s war in Gaza. Because we are friends, however, we can discuss these matters respectfully; they hear me out on Israel, and even modify their opposition, or at least question it – even as I hear them out about abortion and concede at least the moral complexity of the issue.
What we need, then, is personal friendships across religious lines, friendships founded on mutual regard and even fondness for one another. The alternative (for both of us) is to hunker down among “our own kind,” taking refuge in gated communities of the mind where anyone substantially different is labeled “Dangerous.”
Friendships, however, require a common language, and evangelicals use theological language – precisely the language that the liberal Jewish tradition finds difficult. But there is nothing un-Jewish about discussing ultimates like God, Jewish Peoplehood, and the like. Indeed, the doctrinaire avoidance of such conversation is a failing that we ought to correct for our own sake as well. How, then, might we reintroduce ourselves theologically to serious Christians?
To begin with, we might highlight theological parallels between us. Christians herald the gospel’s “good news.” The Rabbis also believed in “good news,” for which they even provided a blessing (“Blessed is God who is good and does good”), by which they meant not just receiving a nice Hanukah gift but the eventual inheritance of a world to come, actual life after death. We differ on whether the “good news” is realized through Torah or through Jesus of Nazareth. But at least we ought to see the functional equivalence of Torah for Jews and Christ for Christians. We share, as well, an affirmation of human sin and the need for repentance and pardon. The rabbis even believed in grace – witness our prayer Avinu Malkenu with its request choneinu — not just a plea that God “act graciously” (the usual translation) but that God “show grace” to us.”
We might go even farther and invent a new theological metaphor. Are we Jews and Christians simply accidents of history, two communities who arose side by side and who then, by chance, moved through history together?
Not necessarily.
Perhaps our two communities are a theological double helix, making our corner of human history a working-out of some double-stranded spiritual DNA — the unfolding not just of historical events on the ground but of God’s will as well. Historically, after all, we seem indeed to have been slated to circle each other perpetually, and in close proximity, neither separating completely nor becoming one another, but circling, ever circling, so that we might someday act together for a greater good that we call Divine.
Here is a metaphor that accounts for our common history and that also leads us further (and higher) in our own distinctive callings. To be sure, much of our historical path has not been trod as equals. But the age of blood libels has passed, and here we both remain, graced with the chance to embrace a common commitment to a fateful and faithful partnership, the next step in our 2000-year-old history together.
As I said above, Jews fear that Evangelical Christians harbor proselytizing purposes. But Jews have often treated Evangelicals with intellectual contempt. Hence the importance of this moment, when (to speak theologically again) both of us become Abraham, hearing God’s invitation to “a land that God will show us.” We may not yet know the path to get there, but the world has changed enough for us to suspect that we are unlikely to get there alone. If we always think the way we always thought, we will always get what we always got; and it is time to “get” something new.
[i] Tal Fortgang and Ella Fortgang,, “The New American Jews,” in Commentary (January 26, 2026). See https://www.commentary.org/articles/tal-fortgang/new-american-jews-manifesto/?utm_source=envelope&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=SocialSnap
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D. 