Apparently, Lots of People Dislike This Times Columnist
My piece on David Brooks touched nerves I didn’t even know people had
After reading my post on David Brooks yesterday, many of you sent emails—thoughtful ones, funny ones, in a few cases abusive ones—and I thought I should check in for a second day in a row and offer some follow-up thoughts, reflections, and holiday cheer.
First, because yesterday I used a ChatGPT illustration of a David Brooks–like figure with a menorah on his head and a Christmas tree in the background, it only seemed fair that today I offer you a ChatGPT illustration of myself, journalist Mark Oppenheimer, with a dreidel on my head (so as not to over-use the hanukkiah theme) and a Christmas tree in the background. Here is what the AI overlords cooked up for us, and I have to say, I dig it!
Because we have more important business to get to—Brooksian business—I will just quickly note that Señor ChatGPT made two awesome moves: 1) Took all the gray out of my hair, 2) Gave me a Fair Isle–patterned sweater of the kind that—no joke, I swear on the memory of Grandma Rebekah—I have been looking for in my late-night Anglophilic-trad-clothing shopping web expeditions! The sweater that is so expensive that I can’t permit myself to buy it in real life, what with five children’s college tuitions coming down the pike, was placed about my shoulders, with a nice trim fit, by my AI buddy! With a modified V-neck and a nice wool knit, to boot. After having been appropriately chided by some artists I know for using AI to produce images for Arc (the magazine I edit; check it out), and having sworn not to do that anymore, I am limiting my AI usage to this newsletter, and boy did it come through with this illo! I am so chuffed.
And wait—holy cow—Señor ChatGPT even put—I just noticed this!—a yarmulke under the dreidel. I don’t wear a yarmulke, except to synagogue, but man, that is an appropriate touch, given the topics I am about to discuss. Maybe we really should fear AI’s intelligence. When we’re not reveling in it.
With that important business out of the way, let’s get on to your responses to the column. First off, a small sampling of the critical pushback. This gent, who posted this note on Substack, thought that I misconstrued Christian culture:
“It’s the definition[, Oppenheimer writes,] of a Christian: one who believes in the Old and New Testaments.” If only this were true. This post vastly overestimates how available knowledge of Judaism is in mainstream Christian circles. Shockingly many Christians lack what most Jews would consider basic knowledge of the so-called Old Testament, the foundational knowledge that Jesus was Jewish, or what a Jew even is. Let alone high holidays, Shabbat observance, or Soloveitchik. The foreignness of Jewish theology to Christians is not representative of the antisemite wing of Christianity (which does actively study Judaism, but from a place of hatred); in oblivious ignorance, the overwhelming majority of churches just never bring up Heschel, Kashrut, or Halakha. The Christian theologian that actually cares to learn about his own religion’s pre-Jesusonian roots is an extreme outlier. This is all to say that while attempts at reconciling Judaism and Christianity is generally more of a Christian project than a Jewish one, it’s still an uncommon (and an absurdly under-informed) one.
I take this point. I’m not going to judge the Hebrew Bible (or, as Christians say, Old Testament) literacy of the Christian community, but I’ll take his word for it. To which I will simply say this: While most Christians (like most Jews) may be low on their Jewish knowledge (and on their Christian theological knowledge), we must admit that Christians, even low-information ones, turn to the Old Testament for their creation story, Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, the Psalms, Proverbs, etc. It’s not as if Christians are ever New Testament–only.
That last one wasn’t terribly relevant to David Brooks, but here’s one that is, from another reader who posted to a Substack thread:
I’m a bit puzzled by the piece I have to say. Many atheists retain a sense of their Jewish identity, so do those who have an interest in Eastern religions. So why can’t someone be a Christian Jew? Or a Jewish Christian?
Mark uses Simone Weil as an example of Brook’s (problematic?) tendency to engage with both Christian and Jewish thinkers—putting her on the Jewish side since she “was Catholic-curious, but never baptized”: an odd characterisation since she rejected baptism because she felt the Catholic Church was still too Jewish in its exclusivity. Universalism is a theological doctrine that can be accepted or rejected, but it hardly seems like the most pressing target at the moment—presumably those wishing to (re)settle Judea and Samaria are Jews in good standing.
To which I replied:
I think [the writer] is missing my point a bit. Plenty of Jews are atheists and vice versa. Plenty of Jews do nothing Jewish. But David Brooks has declared himself to be a Christian, and Christians have a specific set of commitments at odds with, or very much in tension with, Judaism and Jewishness. Without going down theological rabbitholes, and with caveats that /not all Christians agree on this/, they seek to convert Jews, in order to save our souls (this is certainly true of the Christians who brought Brooks to Christianity, as name-checked by him, including Michael Cromartie and Tim Keller, both recently deceased, and FWIW said to be lovely, kind human brings). And there is a very fraught, sometimes ugly history of Jews for Jesus and other messianic Jews converting Jews, or attempting to convert us, in part by saying, “It’s okay, Christians are just a kind of Jew! You won’t actually be leaving your old community behind!” But that’s not really right. For reasons I tried to point out.
I’m not sure what the point is about settlers including “Jews in good standing.” I don’t judge who’s in good standing or not—I take issue with essays written for public consumption, and respond as a fellow writer. If the point is that adhering to a specific religion doesn’t mean one is a good person, that is true; there are assholes everywhere, including in synagogue.
Anyone who knows me knows that I abhor gatekeeping, and don’t care for authenticity politics, and don’t believe there is such thing as cultural appropriation (any Christian is free to cite from the Psalms, as far as I am concerned). But it’s worth pointing out when a piece seems not to take the Jewish point of view seriously (just as it’s worth pointing out when, say, a straight writer does not take a gay POV seriously, etc.). I tried to explain how Brooks failed in that regard.
But mostly, I got dozens of emails and direct messages thanking me for writing the piece, often with some version of, “I have been uncomfortable with Brooks’s religious musings for a long time, and I am glad you put your finger on what I was feeling.” These notes came from rabbis, lay Jews, Christians, etc. Some of the most positive feedback came from Catholics and evangelical Christians who felt that Brooks’s all-sides-ism fails to take Judaism or Christianity seriously.
One witty wag wrote:
My main gripe is that indeed his conservatism and oh-shucksism works perfectly with divine grace. He never really had much appreciation for anything to do with justice or redemption. It was always about letting all the contradictions stand and not getting terribly worked up about any of it.
You know who didn’t like my piece? I’d say the three angriest, or testiest, emails I got were all from passionate liberal Protestants—what you might call the Marilynne Robinson wing of liberal Protestantism. I hope I am being fair to them when I summarize their feelings thus: They really loved the universalist tone of Brooks’s piece. The idea that you could be a little Jewy, a little Christian, and a little pantheistic or eco-religious, see awe everywhere, wonder at creation—it touched the Emersonian in them. It seemed like Brooks was describing the kind of religion that, if we all adhered to it, would dissolve differences, so we could all get along (maybe they’re right). Brooks’s religion sounded like—I am not being glib—a means to end war in the Middle East, and perhaps in the world. It seemed to them to be in the post–Great War, League of Nations, United Nations, American Friends Service Committee, peace-on-earth tradition.
And to such people, my attack on Brooks—whose column they had read and really loved, perhaps just minutes or hours earlier—read like an ethnocentric, chauvinistic rebuke to Brooks’s wish that we all just get along. They really, really didn’t like what I had to say.
But that’s okay.
For what it’s worth, and I think it’s worth a lot, one notable public intellectual, someone younger than I am (I’m fifty), told me how kind Brooks has been to him, how supportive over the years. I believe that. I don’t know Brooks, having only met him twice for a total of about three minutes, but I believe he is a nice guy, maybe even a great guy. One friend wrote to me, after reading my piece, “Remind me never to get on your bad side!” But I wasn’t trying to write a take-down, not in the Christopher Hitchens, Dale Peck sense of a take-down. I think Brooks’s thinking is sloppy on this topic, and I wanted to point that out, and also to say some things that a lot of people have been talking about but not saying publicly. But I have no personal beef with Brooks, and we should all be grateful that he coined the terms “bobo” and “patio man.”
My good Christian buddy Scott Jones invited me on his podcast to talk about David Brooks. It was a fun conversation. Have a listen!
Not much gives me more joy that comedy writer Jeff Maurer’s podcast. Here’s his latest missive, and here’s the Steve Martin monologue he is talking about in his newsletter:
OK, finally finally. A whole bunch of you have upgraded your commitment and became paid subscribers. I like to think that many of them see my newsletter as an important business expense, and are taking a just-in-time tax deduction. But whether that describes you or not, I hope you will become a paid subscriber. It adds up, and means a lot to me. Thank you.