JERUSALEM – The Muslim Brotherhood did not initiate the current upheavals in the Middle East, but the Islamist parties in Egypt, as in Tunisia and Libya, are the chief beneficiaries of the collapse of North Africa’s authoritarian repressive regimes.

In Egypt itself, the two largest Islamist groups — the Brotherhood and the Salafists — overwhelmingly won the second round of legislative elections held in December, battering the secular and liberal forces.

The Brotherhood (with over 40 percent of the vote) was founded in 1928. It has never deviated from its central axiom: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

WASHINGTON – About a year and half ago, I participated in a fact-finding mission to Israel sponsored by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arabs (IATF). Established in 2006 as a consortium of some of the major organizations in American Jewish life — including the Joint Distribution Committee, the Conference of Presidents, Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee — the IATF is committed to raising awareness of the circumstances of the 20 percent of Israel’s citizens who are Arab.

The issue was not new to me. A large part of my rabbinate has been devoted to advancing human and civil rights at home and abroad. Because I love Israel deeply, I was long concerned that issues of human and civil rights were raised only by progressive organizations, both in Israel and abroad. It was long overdue for the Jewish communal establishment to understand why the rights of Israeli Arabs should be a priority for anyone concerned with Israel’s future.

When Rabbi Shmuley Boteach approached me to read the manuscript of his newly published book “Kosher Jesus,” I was reticent and even a bit cautious, given the massive and diverse audience of people likely to be affected by his unique perspective on the subject of Jesus. Having now read the book, however, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised to find that his approach resolved many outstanding questions that I myself have struggled with in my religious studies, particularly as they relate to Christianity and its impact on Judaism throughout history.

Still, I felt the need to interrogate Boteach further in order to discover what his intentions had been for penning this latest work on a conspicuously controversial topic. As it turns out, his earliest efforts to uncover the real facts regarding the origin of Christianity stemmed from his exasperation by the treatment unsuspecting Jews received from Christian missionaries who would target them in an attempt to convert yet another Jew to Christianity. So alarmed was Boteach at the pervasiveness of this kind of missionary work that, as a young scholar learning in yeshivah, he was often memorizing long passages of the New Testament in his Hebrew Bible classes. After all, how could he counter the words of others if he had no real knowledge of what they were saying and why they were saying it?

There was a time when no one living in Israel needed a reminder of what was at stake when the Jewish state was created in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II and the Shoah. After our near-ruinous encounter with European anti-Semitism, Israelis and Jews the world over knew that the survival of the Jewish people depended on the ability to have a home to return to.

There was also a time when the words “Hitler,” “Nazi,” and “Gestapo” were not thrown about recklessly, when images of the emaciated inmates of Nazi concentration camps were a reminder to the Jewish people and the world at large of the terrible turn of events that led to the death of six million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust.

We live in a world in which revolutions form in part because of digital media. It seems that everyone today has digital media to amplify whatever noise they want to make — good or bad — and can utilize media without a filter.

The right to make “noise” is not absolute. To paraphrase a well-known U.S. Supreme Court decision dealing with limitations on free speech — when the speech in question is imminently dangerous and has no conceivable purpose — “Shouting fire in a crowded theatre” is not allowed.

Every Jewish school — be it a day school, yeshivah, congregational school, confirmation class, or post bar/Bat Mitzvah class — has the same quandary: what to teach in the time allotted for instruction. A future column will discuss how to prioritize and how to determine what a student should know upon graduating. Given all the possibilities, however, what should be taught, for how long, and how often?

Each school must define its own priorities. For some, learning how to read Hebrew is important. For others, it is mastery of text. Still others may opt for social action activities. Each school will define what is important to it. Regardless of the definition, however, everyone agrees that there is not enough time to accomplish what needs to be accomplished.

Each year, the editor of our neighboring publication, The New Jersey Jewish News, waxes poetic, so to speak, as he summarizes the year gone by. With rhyme, if not reason, we offer his ode to 2011.

From Irene’s winds to autumn’s snow,

The past year put on quite a show.

An earthquake made us all lose focus.

What’s next? A plague of swarming locusts?

Or maybe just a rain of frogs.

Like Sarkozy, if that name jogs

A memory of public gaffes

When he and POTUS shared some laughs

And said what everybody knew

About Binyamin You Know Who.

A tip for parents and for tykes:

Don’t tell the truth near open mics.

In truth it was a rocky year

Between Barack and the premier.

We wondered how the prez could let a

Trusted aide like Leon Panetta

Lecture Israel while on a visit.

A “family feud,” they said, or is it?

At least when my folks disagree

They try to keep it off TV.

In Tel Aviv there were events

That showed its people were in tents,

With protests that would soon inspire

Many a foreign Occupier.

With pressure building, Bibi found

A need to speak on friendly ground.

After looking hard and long, res-

cue came from the U.S. Congress.

From Tripoli to Tahrir Square

The Arab Spring was in the air;

Said every emir, king, and sultan:

“Look, our people are revoltin’.”

The West looked on with fear and glee

Rooting for democracy

And worried that the ballots would

Benefit the Brotherhood

(And not the kind you find in shuls

But those who love Sharia’s rules.

Our guys — or at least my hunch is —

Much prefer their bagel brunches).

The news was twisty, dark, and weird,

And that’s just Matisyahu’s beard.

When he announced his plans to shave it,

Millions called on him to save it.

Had this chasidic king of reggae

Become a secular shmeggegge?

“God forbid,” he told his buffs.

“And don’t forget to buy my stuff.”

The year just past was tough on ritual

And customs that we find habitual.

In San Fran it was hit or miss

Whether they would ban the bris,

While Holland’s folk rose up in order

To ban the right to kosher slaughter.

It’s not the Jews, opponents said;

It’s just the things they do instead.

Our enemies loomed far and nearier,

From Lebanon to Assad’s Syria,

To Tehran, where Islamic moms

Have visions of atomic bombs.

But no foe, never mind his crimes,

Scared us like The New York Times,

As if Tom Friedman and his advice is

Israel’s single biggest crisis.

But let’s not end with disagreement.

Instead consider the achievement

Of folks like Gabby Giffords who

Beat the odds and soldiered through.

Or Debbie Friedman, rest in peace,

Whose music gave us sweet release.

Greet the year with fresh demeanor,

And never mention Tony Weiner.

In the middle part of the last decade, mainline Protestant churches in the United States attacked Israel hammer and tong. When Israel built a security barrier to stop suicide bombers from sneaking into Jerusalem from the west bank, these churches screamed bloody murder.

One church — the United Church of Christ — passed a resolution calling on Israel to take down the barrier without demanding that the Palestinians stop the attacks that prompted its construction.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) called on the denomination to initiate a process of divestment from companies that did business with Israel. The assembly even stated that the “occupation” was at the “root” of violence against innocents on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In other words, when Hamas killed Israeli women and children, it was Israel’s fault.

Given the outrage these churches expressed over the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Jewish state, you would expect them to be up in arms over the violence against Christians in Iraq and Egypt. You would think that these churches would be screaming loudly about the misdeeds of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has killed close to 5,000 of its own citizens in the past few months.

You would be wrong.

Mainline churches have offered nary a word of criticism of the extremists who have murdered Christians in the Middle East, and they have remained nearly silent about events in Syria. There are a few articles on the website of these denominations about the anti-Christian violence, but not very many, and the articles themselves are written in the language of lament and concern. The perpetrators are simply not held to account. The churches that demonized Israel pass over the sins of Islamists with a very light touch.

This is astonishing, given what is at stake.

Christians in Iraq are the target of a largely successful Islamist campaign of ethnic cleansing. In 2003, there were more than 1.5 million Christians in that country. Today, most estimates peg the Christian population in Iraq at fewer than 500,000. This drastic reduction is the result of attacks such as the one that took place at a church in Baghdad on Oct. 31, 2010, that resulted in the deaths of several dozen Christians. One of the killers told his victims that killing Christians was sanctioned under Moslem law.

For some reason, mainline churches offered very little, if any, criticism of the extremists who perpetrated these attacks and the Iraqi and U.S. officials who failed to prevent them.

Mainline churches have said little about ongoing violence against Egypt’s Coptic Christians, as well. Approximately two dozen Copts were murdered in a bomb attack in Alexandria a year ago, on Jan. 1, 2011, and while the churches lamented the attack, the outrage, which was so evident in statements about Israel, was largely absent.

When two dozen Christians were murdered in the streets of Cairo on the night of Oct. 9, 2011, it was not mainline Protestants, but the American Jewish Committee that responded first, condemning the failure of Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces for its failure to keep Christians safe.

The Anti-Defamation League, which has condemned the Coptic Patriarch for anti-Semitic statements over the years, also has been vocal in its defense of Egypt’s Christians over the past year.

The conclusion would seem to be inescapable. Mainline churches in the United States — Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Episcopalians — appear to care very little about suffering in the Middle East if it cannot be blamed on Israel.

JointMedia News Service