Thread by @TEStoneWrites

An educational thread on why Christians need to stop using 'Pharisee' as a pejorative or a slur. Much of what I'm going to say here owes a great debt to people like Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg and JSX, long gone from this site.

But I wanted to compile much of what has been said into one thread that can be a solid, easy refutation to when people encounter this issue in the wild, both Christians and Jews. So without further ado let's delve into this persistent form of antisemitism.

So why should Christians stop using 'Pharisee' pejoratively? The answer is simple. Because a term that is intrinsically rooted in Jewish identity, religious practice, Law, devoutness, and history should not be used to describe the vices and moral failings of non-Jews.

It is by definition dehumanizing, malicious, and cruel. That should be enough for most people. It isn't for most. So we must continue onwards.

So why shouldn't Christians use 'Pharisee' as a pejorative? Because most of y'all cannot define what a Pharisee even is. It's some nebulous umbrella term for a Jewish religious leader, or Jewish elite, or Jewish legalist, or just a Jew who Jewed Jewishly in the First Century.

So the term is necessary to define. A Pharisee was a member of a particular religious sect in the ancient Holy Land and the Roman and Persian Empires. They existed as such for about 600 years, from the Maccabees  to the completion of the Babylonian Talmud in 500 CE.

The Pharisees derived their authority from Moses, unlike the Sadducees who were the heirs of Zadok, and thus Aaron. They developed in the diaspora as well as Judaea. The most important thing to remember about the Pharisees is that they were devoted to the Torah above all.

The priestly caste believed that the Temple was the most important thing in Judaism. So long as the literal house of G-D endured, Judaism would survive. The Pharisees believed the same about the Torah, the literal word of G-D.

They were devoted to preserving not just the Torah, but its practice. And thus there were many other differences between the two sects. The Sadducees were Hellenistic and collaborated with empires and political power to preserve their own and the Temple itself.

The Pharisees were much more hard-line and liberationist. They hated the Romans in particular. The Pharisees accepted the authority of the Mishnah (the Oral Torah) while the Sadducees did not. But the Pharisees were most known for their righteousness and compassion.

When the Pharisees gained a period of power under the Maccabean queen Alexandra Salome, they radically changed much of the practice of Jewish law to make it centered around charity, compassion, and justice for the poor and oppressed. And the people loved them for it.

After all the Pharisees did not come from a priestly, royal, hereditary line. They were commoners themselves. Many worked blue-collar trades. Many traveled and taught Torah, democratizing it and making it accessible to the people. Sound familiar?

Some have hypothesized that Jesus himself was a Pharisee. While I don't hold to this belief (Jesus never claims rabbinic authority, or semicha), the Pharisees are certainly the group of Jews who raised and educated him. Jesus calls them righteous. So did Josephus.

After the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, the surviving Sadducees were enfolded into the Pharisaic tradition, which was the only one that survived. After all, all the Jews had left was the Torah and each other, but Judaism survived, as the Pharisees predicted.

After the Babylonian Talmud was compiled around 500 CE, Pharisaic Judaism had simply become what we know now as rabbinic Judaism. Which is 98% of modern Jews. And that's the point: modern Jews are Pharisees. Everything about us comes from the Pharisees.

Our rituals, prayers, practices, laws, traditions, feasts, legends, and very survival are a debt we owe to the Pharisees. So why is the best and largest part of the Jewish people and Judaism considered the worst thing a religious person can be, according to Christianity?

Well, lets talk briefly about Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus's conflicts with the Pharisees are largely Jews being robustly Jewish with each other. Arguing, debating, entrapping, denouncing, criticizing and critiquing are how we make Judaism better.

Jesus's main criticisms of the Pharisees he lived with were that some of them failed to live up to the standards of the Pharisees themselves. Understandable. No sect is perfect. No one is entirely righteous but G-D.

The Pharisees' conflicts with Jesus was that he claimed authority that was not his to overturn Jewish law (a legitimate criticism) and that he associated with violent Roman collaborators like the tax collectors (a legitimate grievance).

Left out are the facts that Jesus dined with Pharisees as he never did with the priests, and that the Pharisees conspired to save Jesus's life from Herod Antipas. There was clearly love between them.

But nevertheless, 'Pharisee' is not a synonym for a righteous Jewish teacher, but for a hypocrite, scoundrel, moralizer, legalist, unloving, uncompassionate, denier of the truth, oppressor of the people, and a thousand other slanders.

Conservative Christians consider a Pharisee to be anyone who challenges their authority, their interpretation, their command, and their biases about their own Scriptures. Progressives use 'Pharisee' as a stand-in for the bigoted, wealthy, political figures of their own religion.

Both are just Christian antisemitism. Both are rooted in a complete misrepresentation and malicious recasting of what a Pharisee is. Both are without excuse in the Year of Your Lord 2024. So now lets break down some common objections.

"Jesus condemned the Pharisees himself in harsh terms!"
You are not the Christ, nor a rabbi, nor a Jew. You do not get to insert yourself into inter-Jewish conversations, even if they were recorded in your own Scriptures.

"I'm not condemning Jewish people! My  Savior and all his disciples were Jews!"
If the only Jews you love are the ones who became Christians, you cannot possibly see the humanity in your living Jewish neighbors who remain Jews and practice Judaism as the Pharisees did.

"Paul, Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea were all Pharisees."
See the above response.

"If the Bible says it about the Pharisees, it's true!"
Even if everything in the Gospels is true, using it to cast villainy on all Pharisees is like listening to an argument at a keyhole for a single minute and thinking you can judge the character of those you're spying on.

"We are called to be like Christ."
And yet just because Jesus started a riot in the Jewish Temple doesn't mean you're called or entitled to rampage through a synagogue in his name.

"The Pharisees don't exist anymore."
We very much do, as previously explained. But there are many names for marginalized minorities that are not used anymore, and you would still NEVER use as a slur or a curse, because you understand how horrifically cruel that would be.

"It doesn't hurt anyone."
It hurts Jews. Go into any far-right space where antisemitism is much more openly expressed and you will see the Pharisees linked with every libel, every Neo-Nazi caricature, every racist trope, every disgusting cartoon (cont).

I do not encourage you to investigate these spaces. Trust me that the connection is real. And when you give credit to the inherent villainy of the Pharisees, you strengthen those who use that villainy to cast the same on the Jewish people at large. Every time.

"Antisemitism isn't the same as anti-Judaism. I have nothing against Jewish ethnicity"
Ok, just everything that makes us Jewish, our relationship with G-D, our entire history, our sages, rabbis, prayers, practices, survival, and joy. Gotcha. Great argument.

"I have Jewish blood."
We have more. We have Jewish bodies. We have Jewish bones. We have Jewish souls. The breath in our lungs is Jewish, the way we move through the world is Jewish. Your ancestry dot com results don't hold much credit here.

"I have a Jewish friend who doesn't see the problem." And yet this has been a plea from Jewish people for literally decades. There is a problem even if not everyone perceives it.

"I don't care. The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it."
Then you are unable to be educated, which is a tragedy, but you don't get to complain when we point out that your interpretation of your Scriptures is rooted in contempt for your neighbors rather than love.

"Christians have been using the term this way for centuries!"
And look at the relationship between Christians and Jews for centuries. Look and the violence, destruction, and hate. That's what you want to emulate? Or are we moving forward?

"I still don't understand" You don't need to understand something fully to show compassion and love when people point out what hurts them. With compassion comes understanding, not the other way around.
Fin.