Dear Revealer readers,

The first time I visited Israel, at age 19, I toured the country from the Golan Heights in the north to Masada near the Jordan border. One evening I was on a coach bus with a group of American Jews coming back to Jerusalem from an excursion near the Dead Sea. Our driver, an Orthodox man who wore a black velvet yarmulke, decided to take a shorter route and drove us through part of the West Bank. As I was drifting to sleep, I heard what sounded like an explosion. Someone threw a large rock, about the size of my head, through the bus’s windshield. The glass shattered, but the driver did not stop in case more people were prepared to attack the bus. Everyone onboard was fine physically, though clearly startled. The trip’s leaders, all people living in Israel, apologized for what happened and complained that the incident was evidence that antisemitism was still alive and well.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

No one in the group protested that explanation for why someone in the West Bank might hurl a rock through an Israeli bus with a visibly Jewish driver. And I will be honest, I did not give it considerable thought at the time. Much of the world, in various times and places, has been hostile and murderously violent toward Jews. But that fact does not explain Palestinian frustration at Israel for the restrictions placed on their lives or their rage at Jewish settlers who have taken over large swaths of the West Bank.

In the years after that trip my ambivalence about Israel grew. I eventually read the book New Jews by Caryn Aviv and the late David Shneer. In one chapter they address something I had long felt but had never been able to articulate: Israel is not central to Jewish identity for many Jews. Instead, many American Jews see New York City as their kind of Zion, as the place where Jewish culture thrives and that has abundant space for queer, leftist, food-obsessed, humorous, Hasidic, and secular Jews. New York City as the epicenter of the Jewish world made sense to me.

But making New York City my proxy Zion meant I stopped paying close attention to Israel and Palestine. I even got annoyed when people asked my opinion on the area, as if every Jew should be an expert on Israel’s political workings or expected to justify the Israeli government’s actions.

Like others, any distance I tried to put between myself and Israeli politics came to a halt in the months following October 7. At first, I was horrified by the atrocious violence Hamas committed. I remain aghast by what they did to Israelis and by the danger they knew they were bringing to everyone in Gaza. And I have been alarmed by the rising antisemitism that pre-dates this attack, but that has become more visible since October.

And then there is Israel’s retaliation, which appalls me in its excessiveness. Israel has effectively destroyed Gaza and killed more than 30,000 civilians in the process. Even when Israel finally agrees to a cease-fire, which many Jewish groups and people around the world have been demanding, then what? There is virtually no functioning or livable Gaza for the remaining people on that small strip of land to return to when this ends, not really. The destruction is on a massive scale, as is the loss of life. A cease-fire, while necessary and urgent, is but a mere respite in a profound problem that will not end until Palestinians have their own sovereign state.

I know I am not alone in having mixed emotions when I try to process the situation in Israel and Gaza. Students in my graduate course at NYU this semester reported that they are afraid to say anything about the conflict in other classes for fear of causing offense or saying something ill-informed. That fear is not good for any of us, or for finding viable solutions for our divisions abroad and at home.

With these complicated thoughts in mind, The Revealer’s March issue explores, from perhaps unexpected vantage points, issues facing Palestinians, how to better comprehend the conflict in Gaza, antisemitism, and evangelical politics. Our March issue opens with Ken Chitwood’s “From Puerto Rico to Palestine, with Solidarity,” where he investigates the reasons for alliances between Puerto Rican and Palestinian activists and how they are responding to the war in Gaza. Following that, in “From Scrolling to The Scroll: A Model for Learning about Crises that Demand Our Attention,” Sharrona Pearl reflects on how people can better understand the situation in Israel and Palestine by resisting hot-takes and focusing instead on slow learning to address such complicated issues.

The March issue also explores instances of antisemitism in popular culture and how they not only reflect but influence actual life. In “Oppenheimer, or How to Use Jews to Justify the Atom Bomb,” Noah Berlatsky considers how Oppenheimer uses antisemitism as a way to rationalize the United States developing and using atomic bombs, even though antisemitism had nothing to do with why the U.S. dropped bombs on Japanese cities. Berlatsky compares this logic to how the Biden administration has supported violence in Gaza. Then, in “Crucifying the Musical Christ,” Ian Mills surveys two Broadway musicals, Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, and highlights how each presents Jews as partly responsible for Jesus’ death, a narrative that has led to violence against Jews for centuries.

And, for our final examination of religion in popular culture, in “Music to Make People Believe: The Soundtrack of White Evangelical Culture,” an excerpt from God Gave Rock and Roll to You, Leah Payne shares what Contemporary Christian Music reveals about conservative Protestant hopes and aspirations in the United States, both religious and political.

The March issue also includes the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Contemporary Christian Music’s Political and Religious Messages.” Leah Payne joins us to discuss why evangelical leaders invested so heavily in this industry and why they especially wanted it to resonate with teenagers. We discuss the racial, religious, and nationalistic ideas this music broadcasts, the music’s messaging about gender, and what Christian pop culture reveals about what conservative Christians want in the 2024 U.S. election. You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

When the fighting in Gaza concludes, I hope many of us do not lose sight of what the people of Gaza need. First, they will need safe homes, food, and hospitals. They will need new schools and counseling centers. They will need to rebuild a society that has been mostly destroyed. And hopefully, in time, the people of Israel will find ways to heal from the October 7 attacks and elect a government that sees the necessity of Palestinians governing their own state as an urgent imperative and understands their obligation to make sure Palestinian lives can flourish too.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.