The audio version of this story is AI generated and is not human reviewed. It may contain errors or inaccuracies. I wrote this lament, which mentions our beloved Beth Israel, nearly a month ago in the days following the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre in Australia. It originally appeared in the Baptis t News Global before the attack on the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson. As a former Jacksonian, and a friend of Beth Israel, I offer it today, acknowledging the fact that it is timebound to December of 2025 and grieving the fact that it remains, tragically, relevant to January of 2026. Many mornings, I go on a long, slow, sunrise prayer walk – what the mystics call “goal-less walking” or “life lived at three miles an hour.” These days, in the neighborhood where I walk, there are a number of delightful inflatable front-yard Christmas decorations: Santas, Rudolphs and Frostys, joined a few days ago by a new, minority inflatable among the many Yuletide blow-ups– a massive, 8-foot-tall Hanukkah bear, complete with a dreidel, a star of David and, of course, a menorah with nine inflated flames, one each for the eight days of Hanukkah, with the taller Shamash candle in the center, from which each of the eight others receive their light. In other years, I might have walked past the whimsical, inflatable Hanukkah bear with little more than a passing glance. But, needless to say, not this year. In the aftermath of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah Massacre of five days ago, every time I have passed the huge happy bear holding her HAPPY HANUKKAH sign beneath her brightly burning blow-up candles, I have stood still in the dawn and offered to God a prayer of solidarity with the two Beth Israel synagogues in my life – one in Macon, Georgia, the other in Jackson, Mississippi – and with all Jews in all congregations throughout the world; a sidewalk prayer of solidarity and lament. Solidarity, lament and repentance. Whenever there is another act of antisemitic violence, I always think, with deep sadness and quiet repentance, of all the ways the church has sown the bitter seed of bigotry against the Jews. Hitler did not create the ghetto; we did. It was the church which, as early as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, called for Jews to be segregated into confined quarters, the forerunner of the much later Nazi ghettos. A lighted dreidel is displayed in the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson in December 2024. Credit: Courtesy of Rachel Myers This, of course, came after the forced baptisms, synagogue burnings and massacres of Jews by Christians in the seventh through 11th centuries, and before Martin Luther’s dreadful sermon of 1543 in which he declared that, “Next to the devil, Christians have no enemy more cruel and venomous than a true Jew,” and Pope Paul IV’s declaration in 1555 that, “God has condemned the Jews to eternal slavery”. All of that antisemitic history was rooted in what I call “Christian onlyism,” the institutionalized arrogance of Christianity’s misguided assumption that we “replaced” Judaism, and that we – conveniently enough for us – are the only religion God recognizes, which has allowed us, at our worst, to dehumanize persons of all other faith traditions, including, especially, the Jews; all of which is all the more inexplicable when we remember that Jesus was, himself, a Jew, not only at his birth but also at his death. Every Christmas, Jesus is born again in a barn, again, with parents who are Jews, again; parents who will take him to the temple to be dedicated, and, when he is 12, back to the temple for Passover; the same Passover meal he will eat the night before he dies. And yet, somehow, with a Jesus who never abandoned his lifelong Judaism (and who, as far as we know, never mentioned starting a new world religion called “Christianity”), Christianity helped create the antisemitism which has borne the bitter fruit of anti-Jewish bigotry and persecution, all of which came back to me while watching a row of inflatable pretend Hanukkah lights standing in the heartbreaking Hanukkah shadows of the devastating Hanukkah massacre of last Sunday in Australia; antisemitic violence, not from Christians on Bondi Beach, but, sadly, on so many other times. So, before the waiting wicks of Hanukkah and Advent wear their last lights for another year, let us say, one more time, for the globe-circling, centuries-spanning church, to the globe-circling, centuries-spanning synagogue, “We are sorry.” Amen. Chuck Poole, former senior minister at Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson, retired in 2022 from 45 years of pastoral life during which he also served churches in Georgia, North Carolina and Washington D.C. The author of nine books, numerous published articles, one gospel song and the lyrics to three hymns, Poole has served as a “minister on the street” in Jackson, as an advocate for interfaith conversation, and as an ally to immigrant neighbors. Poole and his wife Marcia now live in Birmingham, Alabama, where he serves on the staff of Together for Hope. ...read more read less