Pete Buttigieg Calls Mike Pence a ‘Pharisee.’ Here's Why Jewish Scholars Are Upset
The Pharisees were one of several Jewish sects during the first century, but in Christian discourse they have taken on the role of hypocrites, fools and a brood of vipers
Pete Buttigieg has a word he likes to use to describe Vice President Mike Pence: “Pharisee.” Jewish scholars would like him to stop doing that.
Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, running a dark horse campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, has advanced the idea of liberal candidates using religious language to talk about their values.
The flip side of that, Buttigieg says, is that Republican leaders don’t practice the religious values they preach. He takes particular aim at Pence, who often speaks of his own conservative Christian values while serving under President Donald Trump. Buttigieg has criticized Trump for paying off an adult film actress with whom he allegedly had an affair.
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Buttigieg believes that reeks of hypocrisy, so he uses an age-old Christian metaphor for hypocrites: the Pharisees.
“There’s an awful lot about Pharisees in there,” Buttigieg told The Washington Post this week, referring to the New Testament while discussing Pence. “And when you see someone, especially somebody who has such a dogmatic take on faith that they bring it into public life, being willing to attach themselves to this administration for the purposes of gaining power, it is alarmingly resonant with some New Testament themes, and not in a good way.”
The Pharisees were one of several Jewish sects during the first century, the time of Jesus. They also include the rabbis of the Talmud and the creators of Rabbinic Judaism, the ideological ancestor of mainstream Jewish practice today.
But in Christian discourse, the Pharisees have taken on the role of “hypocrites, fools and a brood of vipers, full of extortion, greed, and iniquity,” wrote Amy-Jill Levine, a professor at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School, in an article in Sojourners magazine. That’s because the New Testament Gospels say Pharisee leaders criticized Jesus, and then lambaste them for hypocrisy.
“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat,” reads Matthew, chapter 23.”So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.”
Buttigieg repeated that idea in an appearance last month on ABC’s “The View,” again right after talking about Pence. “The Bible is full of — it talks about this,” he said. “It talks about hypocrites. It talks about Pharisees.”
Pence, the former governor of Indiana, responded to Buttigieg’s criticism in an interview Wednesday with CNBC. “He said some things that are critical of my Christian faith and about me personally. And he knows better. He knows me,” the vice president said.
Although almost no Jews describe themselves as Pharisees today, the word is still anti-Semitic because it refers to Jews, said Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, an author who has criticized Buttigieg in the past for using the term. She compared it to a kid on a playground using the word “gay” as an insult. Even though the kid may not be referring to sexual orientation, Ruttenberg said, using the word in a negative light still perpetuates homophobia.
“When you use that as an insult, you’re saying that Jews are bad,” she said. “It perpetrates anti-Semitism: Jew as bad guy, as Christ killer, is one of the ways people have justified murder and pogroms and the Inquisition and the Holocaust for centuries.”
Over the past two millennia, people have also described the Pharisees as money and power hungry, said Sara Ronis, an assistant professor of theology at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. Those traits were appended to the Pharisees over time, she said, in part because they are common anti-Semitic tropes.
Ronis added that many modern depictions of Pharisees show them in striped shawls — what many Jews would recognize as the tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl.
“So many textbooks trace Rabbinic Judaism to the Pharisees,” she said. “Using that language as a negative slur today, when I think so many people have this stereotype … the associations people have unconsciously between that and Jews certainly doesn’t help with modern stereotypes around Jews and money and control and secret power.”
Chris Meagher, Buttigieg’s national press secretary, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “Pharisee” is a common expression for hypocritical leaders.
“The Mayor expressed his concern about the hypocrisy on the part of evangelical leaders,” Meagher said in the statement. “He invoked this Biblical reference, since it is commonly used to show skepticism of hypocritical establishment leaders. That was the way he intended it.”
Buttigieg has criticized Pence in the context of his calls to build a religious left-wing movement to counter the religious right. He says that his religious values — of caring for the poor and helping the stranger — track with liberal policy.
“I do think there are the stirrings out there in our count right now of a religious left that understands that living your faith might also have to do with paying more attention to those most in need and not celebrating those who already have the most wealth and the most power,” he said on “The View.”
That’s similar to what a lot of liberal rabbis have been saying for a while. A range of major Jewish organizations tend to take liberal positions on domestic issues, and the Reform movement, American Judaism’s largest denomination, is vocally left wing on a broad spectrum of issues.
Orthodox groups have tended more to the right, and earlier this year two major Orthodox groups spoke out against a New York law that liberalized abortion policy. But the major American Jewish denominations have found consensus on some issues, like Donald Trump’s 2017 travel ban, which all opposed, and last year’s family separation policy.
Other prominent liberal Democrats, such as the presidential candidates Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, have talked about their Christian faith on the campaign trail.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of T’ruah, a liberal rabbinic human rights group with 2,000 member rabbis, said Buttigieg need only look to the Jewish community for an example of a religious left.
“There’s no need to bring back the religious left because the religious left is out there and it’s strong,” she said. “It’s crucial that those of us who are doing their human rights work out of a religious place are speaking about it in religious terms."
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"Pharisees"
I am a Pharisee. The Pharisees drew from the tradition of Torah which sought to hallow all of life but, unlike the Sadducees, did not view the Written Torah as the last word, written in stone and allowing no room for change or interpretation. The Pharisees held that the Written Torah is open to interpretation and their mode of study was one of interpretation. They defined their stance as the counsel of the sage, Hillel, who counseled his followers to "be as the students of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving one's fellow-person and drawing him to the Torah."
So Jesus Christ, Pete and I are: Anti-Semitic? Hmmm.
Matthew 23 ► King James Bible Woes to Scribes and Pharisees 1Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 2Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. 4For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. 5But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, 6And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. 8But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. 9And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 10Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. 11But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. 13But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. 14Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. 15Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. 16Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! 17Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? 18And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. 19Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? 20Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. 21And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. 22And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon. 23Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 24Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. 25Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. 26Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. 27Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. 28Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 29Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, 30And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 31Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. 32Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 33Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? 34Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: 35That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. 36Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.