I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Tricia Miller, director of the Partnership of Christians and Jews at CAMERA — the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis. Tricia holds a PhD in Hebrew Bible, has written for First Things, the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post Christian edition and many others, and has authored two books growing out of her work on the Book of Esther.
Our conversation ranged from ancient Persia to this morning’s headlines, but it kept circling back to a single question I think every believer should be asking right now: what does it actually mean to stand with the Jewish people?
“Perhaps for such a time as this”
We started with Esther, because Tricia did her doctoral work on it precisely to confront something uncomfortable — the long history of Christian antisemitism. As she put it, Esther is a story about an attempted annihilation of the Jewish people, but for centuries the way Christians interpreted the book carried its own quiet prejudice.
I confessed something to Tricia that has been bothering me. There’s one verse from Esther that nearly everyone knows,
“For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14, NKJV
We Christians love to quote it. I’ve heard it applied to someone taking over the church Sunday school. And while there’s nothing wrong with encouragement, I worry we’ve trivialized one of Scripture’s most serious moments.
Tricia agreed. Those words were spoken by Mordecai to Esther when he challenged her to risk her life. The Jewish people of the empire had been condemned by royal edict; permission had been granted to kill them all on an appointed day. Esther was queen, but she could not approach the king uninvited without risking death. Mordecai’s charge was not a motivational slogan. It was a call to step into mortal danger for the sake of her people. And Esther’s answer — “if I perish, I perish” — is one of the bravest sentences in the Bible.
If we’re going to keep that verse on our lips, we ought to keep its true, Jewish, context in mind.
The power of a lie
The lesson from Esther that struck me most was about the power of a single, well-crafted lie.
Haman, second in command of the kingdom, was offended that Mordecai the Jew would not bow to him. So he went to the king with an accusation — and he was careful. In chapter 3, he says to the Persian king,
“There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from all other people’s, and they do not keep the king’s laws. Therefore it is not fitting for the king to let them remain. If it pleases the king, let a decree be written that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who do the work, to bring it into the king’s treasuries.” Esther 3 8-9 NKJV
Tricia pointed out something I’d never noticed. The first part was true: the Jewish people did keep different laws — the laws given at Sinai. But the second part — that they did not keep the king’s laws — was the lie. We know it was false, because Mordecai held a prominent position in that very kingdom; he could not have done so while flouting royal law. A little truth, blended with a falsehood, made the whole thing believable. And on the strength of it, an entire people were marked for death.
Tricia’s warning to Christians today is direct: lies about the Jewish people and the nation of Israel are more pervasive than ever — in the news, on social media, in propaganda. The most effective ones aren’t pure fabrication. They mix a little truth in to make the poison go down easier. Discernment, she argued, is not optional for believers anymore. It’s a responsibility.
She and I both see the accusations against Israel as a modern example of that pattern. As we have written previously in How to Recognize 3d Antisemitism,
The unequal treatment of Israel is evident. Abba Eban, former Israeli diplomat, sardonically observed, “If Algeria introduced a [United Nations] resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass.”
This double standard is a form of antisemitism, where Israel is judged by a different metric, often facing exaggerated and unfounded accusations.
The discipline Esther teaches stands: weigh the claim, check it against what you actually know, and refuse to let a confident accusation do your thinking for you.
I’d add one more thing. We should never let theology smuggle in contempt. Some early voices in the church preached what we now call replacement theology — the idea that God is finished with the Jewish people and the church has taken their place. From Genesis to Revelation, that idea simply does not hold up. God’s covenant faithfulness is not a relay race where Israel hands off the baton and exits the story.
Ruth: where you go, I will go
From Esther we turned to another woman of the Hebrew Bible — Ruth — and here the lesson is for us Gentiles especially.
Ruth was a Moabite, not Jewish, yet her name appears in the genealogy of Jesus. When her Jewish husband died and her mother-in-law Naomi prepared to return home empty-handed, Naomi released her daughters-in-law from any obligation. One said her goodbyes and left. But Ruth refused: “Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Tricia noted the line that often gets left off: “Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.” This was no warm sentiment. Like Esther’s “if I perish, I perish,” it was a lifetime commitment made at real cost. And it points to exactly what I long to see in the church — Christians who identify with the Jewish people not in word only, but in genuine, durable solidarity. We are called to stand with the Jewish people, as the Gentile Ruth did, no matter what.
The deepest root of antisemitism
I asked Tricia why antisemitism exists at all, because at its core the hatred has no rational basis.
We landed somewhere that I found profound. We who follow Christ bear the image of God. But the Jewish people carry a particularly visible, embodied witness to the God of Israel — in covenant, in practice, in identity worn openly. So for many, rejecting the most visible sign of God in the world becomes a way of rejecting God Himself. Ultimately, antisemitism is not so much a rejection of the people of Israel as a rejection of the God of Israel. Understand that, and you understand why this hatred has been so stubborn, and why the church must never make peace with it.
Gleaning, then and now
I couldn’t talk about Ruth without talking about the work that brought me to this conversation in the first place.
When Ruth and Naomi returned to Bethlehem, they had nothing. So Ruth went out to glean — at real risk, as it wasn’t safe for a woman alone in the fields — gathering what the harvesters left behind. Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s, allowed this mitzvah, this commandment, to operate on his land. By God’s law, what fell to the ground and what was left at the edges of the field belonged to the poor.
That ancient commandment — leket, the gleanings — is the very heart of Leket Israel, Israel’s national food bank and largest food rescue organization. The principle hasn’t changed in three thousand years: everything we have ultimately belongs to God. We don’t take it with us. We are simply stewards, and part of faithful stewardship is making sure the needy are fed. Leket rescues surplus, nutritious food and delivers it to Israelis in need — Ruth’s story, lived out today.
Where to go from here
I’m grateful to Tricia for a conversation that managed to be both ancient and urgently current. If you’d like to keep learning, I’d encourage you to visit CAMERA at camera.org. Tricia sends out a short newsletter once or twice a month for Christians who want reliable information about Israel — you can email her to be added.
And if Ruth’s gleaners stirred something in you, I’d love for you to learn more about the work of Leket Israel and consider joining us in feeding Israel’s needy.
Esther was placed in the palace for such a time as this. Ruth bound herself to a people not her own. Both took real risks because they understood the moment they were in. May we have the discernment to recognize the lies of our own day — and the courage to stand.
God bless.