One letter to the editor

changed the entire direction

of Rev. Bruce Shipman's vocation

"Our faith should quell our fears, never our courage."

- W.S. Coffin

The facts: I was employed not by Yale University but by the Episcopal Church at Yale, which is a separate entity. On Sept. 2 at a special emergency meeting the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors of the Episcopal Church at Yale asked for my resignation, and on Sept. 3 my resignation was accepted by Bishop Ian Douglas of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut.

It was just three weeks ago that my letter was published in the New York Times. It set off a furor that I could not have imagined, and the furor continues. Is the letter anti-Semitic? A sampling of Yale undergraduates, asked this question by the Yale Daily News, fell everywhere on the graph, from "no, not at all," to "yes, definitely."

Is it?

Those who believe so have not hesitated to brand me with the Scarlet A, and sadly that includes Jerry Fischer, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut, whose words I will not dignify by repeating in this essay. Frankly, I am embarrassed for him.

I am deeply concerned just now that others will be intimidated by my experience and fear raising the issue of the United States/Israel relationship, and the fact that they obtain apartheid conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and far worse in Gaza. That, and the influence of AIPAC, the Israel lobby, described in meticulous detail by Connie Bruck in the Sept. 1 issue of The New Yorker.

These are issues that demand public discourse without the fear of being labeled with the "A" word. Where better to address these issues than the campus of a great university? To my dismay, at Yale I found "that issue" was not to be raised at the monthly meetings of the chaplains. In April, when asked to tell what we had done during spring break, I described my recent visit to the West Bank with a group from Yale Divinity School and the Episcopal Church at Yale. I said that we were deeply troubled by the settlement activity and the policy of separation exemplified by the Wall and the road systems. Chaplain Kugler rebuked me after the meeting and said that this subject must never again be raised at meetings of the whole.

The issue of freedom to speak one's conscience is on my mind. I was criticized for using the Yale name in my letter. It was my title as Chaplain of the Episcopal Church at Yale that was used after my name to identify me. In no way did I suggest that I was writing on behalf of the Episcopal Church at Yale. Had I not identified myself, someone disliking the letter undoubtedly would have "outed" me from Google and made an issue of that.

The question, then, is whether or not I, as a chaplain working under the Yale Religious Ministries umbrella, had the right to send to a newspaper a letter that had not been approved by Yale University Chaplain Sharon M.D. Kugler. If the chaplains are to be muzzled and relegated to pastoral care only, that needs to be spelled out. Any chaplain worth kosher salt will insist that prophetic witness is a part of Biblical ministry that must be respected.

Those are the issues that concern me just now.

Regarding whether or the not the letter is anti-Semitic, I am prepared to learn, and I believe I have learned, why it was so offensive to some. I do object to being labeled and having my character attacked - I mean, those are the methods of Joseph McCarthy - and I insist "that subject" be brought into the light and that people be allowed to question the United States/Israel relationship and let the world know what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza and the influence of AIPAC on U.S. policy in the region and toward Iran.

The New York Times letter that created a firestorm of criticism and forced Rev. Shipman from his position as a Yale chaplain:

Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.

The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.

As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel's patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.