Orson Hyde dedicating the Holy Land for the return of the Jews in the style of Jewish artist Chagall
While the confidence intervals are large, a relatively recent Pew survey suggests that Latter-day Saints are the most pro-Jewish religious group besides Jews themselves, and an older Gallup survey shows that Latter-day Saints are the most pro-Israel religious group besides Jews.
(Yes yes, I know that being pro-Israel does not equal being pro-Jewish necessarily, but still, in this case I think the two are at least related.)
Our philo-semitism does not surprise me. Our own religious aesthetic has Hebrew overtones; when you’re standing by an altar in your temple robes in the temple it’s easy to see yourself as a Levitical priest. We love Fiddler on the Roof and Chaim Potok novels (perhaps in part because it speaks to our own struggles balancing tradition with modernity), and we have a sort of sacred envy for the Jewish religious-intellectual tradition. When I was at BYU taking Biblical Hebrew was what the cool sophisticated gospel scholars did, perhaps even more than taking ancient Greek.
Of course there is a long pedigree of this philo-semitism going back to the early Church.
- In The Evening and Morning Star the Jewish people are a common topic of discussion by WW Phelps. In the 3rd issue Phelps (I believe it’s Phelps) actually disclaims attempted mass conversion of the Jews, a holy grail of Christianity since the Middle Ages, echoing the D&C 45 eschatology where the Jews aren’t converted until Christ splits the Mount of Olives in two.
- In the seventh issue Phelps develops the two gathering places theology implied in D&C 133, where Latter-day Saints are called to gather to Zion while Jews are called to gather to Jerusalem.
- In the 9th issue The Evening and Morning Star carried a call for donations for Jewish community in the Holy Land. Interestingly, its main sponsor was a Christian society working for the conversion of the Jews. The quixotic political alliance between Jews and evangelical Christians wanting to convert the Jews but for whom the Jewish nation plays a role in their eschatology is much older than I thought.
- In Kirtland Joseph Smith spent scarce resources to hire a Jewish teacher of Hebrew.
- D&C 68 and 107 in a sense recognizes the current validity of the Jewish priesthood. (I am surprised there isn’t more 3 Nephites-type Mormon folklore about the hidden high priest who is the rightful heir to Aaron and doesn’t know it.)
- And then finally, to top it all off Orson Hyde dedicated the Holy Land for the return of the Jews.
So our history of Zionism runs deep, and our theology on the matter is a bit more on-the-nose than it is for other Christian groups, and it’s not surprising that we are supportive as we are of Israel. (On the flip side, however, the same survey showed that we are the most anti-Palestinian religious group, something that I’m sure chagrined my Palestinian BYU Middle Eastern politics professor Amr Al-Azm.)
Admittedly this Latter-day Saint brand of philo-semitism can lead to some cultural appropriation and patronizing cringiness (maybe my Chagall portrait of Orson Hyde fits into that category). For example, the popular Mormon custom of doing an alternative seder, and then there’s that common belief that the rebuilt, pre-millennium Temple Mount temple will be an LDS one. And yes, if you are really motivated you can find examples of Church leaders, materials, or members saying classic anti-semitic things, but on the whole I don’t get the sense that classic antisemitism is nearly as much of an issue in the church as, say, anti-immigrant or racist attitudes. There isn’t a lot of folklore, innuendo, or uncouth remarks over the pulpit about financial cabals (it might strike a little close to home–LOL JK).
In part, I suspect some of this is because the Mountain West Latter-day Saint cultural hearth is about as far away as possible from the Jewish American cultural hearths (to be clear, I’m not saying that this is because interactions will confirm stereotypes), so the Jewish community is an abstraction for many members. Utah Latter-day Saints know about Jews because of their religious importance, but they just don’t loom large in day-to-day experiences in the Mountain West; asking a 16-year-old in Utah what they think about Jews is like asking them what they think about Azerbaijanis. As a Utah high schooler I could tell you about all the Pacific Islander or Hispanic stereotypes, but I was a little fuzzy on what the Jewish stereotypes even were (and even now it was only in the past five years or so that I found out about the “Jewish mother” trope). So in a sense Latter-day Saint takes on Judaism can be a patronizing abstraction, but on the other hand we do have relative warm feelings towards them (and their country, although that’s a whole other can of worms).
Leave a Reply