Brother Nathanael - A Jew Transcends Self Examination
Aired: 2018-01-06
Duration: 03:19


=== Jew and Anti-Semite (02:23) ===

[00:00:01]  I've never asked myself, who am I? Jews don't do this.
[00:00:05]  They know who they are, especially when confronted with a challenge to their identity.
[00:00:12]  I once took a walk through Times Square, and when tempted to feel lost in the crowd, a young fellow with his pals shouted at me,''Hey Rabbi, doing some sightseeing?''''I'm not a rabbi,'' I answered.
[00:00:27]  ''Rabbis don't wear crosses.'' But you look so Jewish, he answered back.
[00:00:34]  What does a Jew do with this?
[00:00:36]  Does he blush? Get nervous?
[00:00:39]  Get hostile? I simply smiled and continued my walk that was soon interrupted by another encounter.
[00:00:47]  After giving me the evil eye, a Jewish guy gets in my face and said, We don't want you here in New York, you anti-Semite.
[00:00:56]  I've seen your videos and I'm going to shut you down.
[00:01:00]  I made the sign of the cross over him, tried to stay calm, and went back to the hotel.
[00:01:07]  There I did a little self-examination.
[00:01:11]  I'm still a Jew, I said to myself, even though I believe in Christ.
[00:01:15]  It's inescapable, since I do look Jewish.
[00:01:19]  How could it be otherwise? My mother once traced our family tree back eight generations, all Jews.
[00:01:27]  Hers from Russia, my father's from Austria, Hungary.
[00:01:31]  Am I then an anti-Semite, I thought?
[00:01:34]  How could I be?
[00:01:36]  I'm not against myself nor anyone because of their race.
[00:01:40]  For racially, I'm a Jew.
[00:01:42]  But religiously, I'm a baptized Orthodox Christian.
[00:01:47]  Once baptized, a Jew crosses the line.
[00:01:49]  He's now on the other side.
[00:01:52]  Do I think like a Jew?
[00:01:53]  I then ask myself.
[00:01:55]  Well, how do Jews think?
[00:01:58]  Basically, everything is filtered through the lens of us and them.
[00:02:03]  Woody Allen shows this in Annie Hall.
[00:02:07]  Sitting at a Thanksgiving meal with Annie Hall's Gentile parents, he's suddenly transformed into a Hasidic rabbi.

=== Essence of Orthodoxy (01:09) ===

[00:02:15]  It's funny, but brings out the us-and-them Jewish think, especially when Goyish culture throws one's Yiddishkeit into stark relief.
[00:02:25]  Do I think like this?
[00:02:28]  Sometimes in church, I'm in the Russian Orthodox Church, I get the feeling that some Ruski is looking at me and saying, what's this Yid doing here?
[00:02:38]  Maybe I'm paranoid, but this is a Jewish thing.
[00:02:42]  Now, in my self-examination, a kind of light bulb came on.
[00:02:47]  The essence of Orthodoxy, I thought, is otherworldliness.
[00:02:53]  If anything smacks of this world, then the Orthodox Christian instinctively combats it.
[00:03:00]  Deceit, bribery, blackmail, manipulation, censorship, underhandedness, influence peddling, hypocrisy, pushing sexual perversion.
[00:03:10]  These are marks of worldliness.
[00:03:14]  I'm not against Jews.
[00:03:16]  I'm against evil actions.
[00:03:18]  This is the mind of the Church.