Extract from an article in Issue 12, September 29, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here. There are many reasons for Jews to be concerned about the nomination of Sarah Palin and none of them have anything to do with her Down's syndrome baby or her daughter's pregnancy. But all of them concern her very right-wing and very rigid views on important religious issues. She supports teaching creationism in schools. She is opposed to sex education that doesn't exclusively preach abstinence which, as she herself must now know, is as effective as fairy dust in keeping teens away from life-damaging pregnancies. This religious mindset sees moral issues as absolutes. Its adherents believe in the devil and censor children's' books about witches. They do not see nuance in moral problems. Most importantly for the tiny Jewish minority in America, these fundamentalists are certain that the only path to salvation is through Christ. Well, all right, most Americans probably believe that, but most Americans also seem to add a few grains of salt to the stew and do not view Jews as eternally damned and therefore morally inferior. The Christians of Palin's tribe are more apt to love us because we are necessary witnesses for the return of the Messiah on the Day of Judgment, than to love us for all our diverse and antic ways. Most fundamentalists expect that, seeing the way the wind blows, the Jews will convert at the last moment. I cannot put my trust in a president who would pick someone who eagerly expects my conversion to her religion, an expectation that reveals deep disrespect for mine. Think how her belief system seeks to alter religious pluralism in America. Think what it would do to science and technology and to schools across the nation. Think what would happen if she were the one to decide the next Supreme Court appointments. These may not seem like specifically Jewish issues, but I would argue that when reason and rationality fade from the public square, they will be replaced by an ugly kind of exclusiveness that will make Christian fundamentalism less of an American free choice and more of a cultural demand. If that happens, Jews will be vulnerable to attack, to repression, to all the old quotas, and anti-Semitism will rise as respect for the multifarious paths of belief diminishes. Many in America's Jewish community must feel disappointed that Joe Lieberman was passed over at the last minute for an inexperienced, radical, young and very Christian person. I think it serves him right for playing the court Jew in a court that wants to love Israel to death and smother it with dangerous armed responses to any provocation. The rejection of this good friend of McCain is understandable in political terms. Any calculation of how many votes a religious fundamentalist woman would bring to the table as opposed to a Jewish man, even one with a big following in Florida, is clear enough. Still, this decision to bypass Lieberman underlines Jewish marginality in this country. The man gave up his party and followed the leader around on the campaign trail and said some very nasty things about the other guy and still he was rejected when it came down to the wire. I'm not suggesting McCain is anti-Semitic. I am suggesting that the numbers came up very short. We have scaled the university walls. We Jews have entered all professional fields and made real contributions to American culture, but we remain a little group, making a big fuss about crèches and tablets on courtroom walls. Perhaps we are an irritant on the body public? Contributing editor Anne Roiphe is a novelist and journalist living in New York. Extract from an article in Issue 12, September 29, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.