Last night gave another example of antisemitism in TEC. A prominent Episcopalian writer tweeted about a “conversation with a Rabbi friend” that a young Jewish women knew couldn’t be accurate/true and so she replied saying as much and why, expressing righteous indignation that...

...once again, a Jewish person has been used as a prop to support someone’s argument. This could have led to a healthy dialogue, perhaps even to an honest admission of guilt and an opportunity for genuine forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation...

Instead, the prominent figure’s response was to delete the tweet (will this incident be denied if it’s every brought up again?) and the young Jewish woman blocked, initiating a block chain.

Now, in case you’re wondering if I may be committing the same offense, that young Jewish woman is my wife and I am so proud of her for speaking truth. She has been nothing but honest with me about what she sees in our denomination (we won’t discuss the last GC here)...

...and it has helped me immensely in my growth as a person, a husband and father in an interfaith marriage/family, and a small-time leader in our Church.

Fellow Episcopalians, it is long past time that we seriously examined and addressed antisemitism in TEC. We require anti-racism/diversity inclusion and safe church training for all ordinands and lay leaders in the Episcopal Church.

It’s time that we also require training, at least for ordinands (at least!) around antisemitism. I do not want my girls (who are Episcopalian AND who are and always will be Jews) to grow up in a Church in which antisemitism infects it’s preaching, teaching, deliberation, and...

...social media discourse (and wherever else this dark spirit creeps into our ecclesiastical life together). It often goes unnoticed. It is rarely spoken against directly when it happens. And I cannot begin to tell you the number of times that my wife has simply been silenced...

...and dismissed as some sort of interloper when she’s brought it up. We’ve seen the ways our Church rightly responds when it witnesses racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

Why can’t we be as critical of the antisemitism within our own Church? Because too often we don’t see it. Why don’t we see it? Because we haven’t done the work. Enough is enough. It’s time to do the work.

Unfortunately, I expect this thread to go largely ignored, because that’s what we typically do with antisemitism in the Episcopal Church.