The Jewish Roots of the Christian Phrase “Turn the Other Cheek”

The New York Times continues to provide grist for this column. For my last one, this was an opinion piece by Thomas Friedman. This time it’s a piece by Bret Stephens, a Times contributor who deserves our gratitude for regularly and intelligently defending Israel in a newspaper not noted, to put it delicately, for its pro-Israel sentiment.

Writing there on October 5 about “the year American Jews woke up,” Stephens lists some examples of anti-Semitic attitudes that have come to infect public discourse in America. Among them he mentions the case of “a student who suggested to me, during a give-and-take at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, that Israelis should heed the words of the book of Matthew and turn the other cheek. It reminded me of Eric Hoffer’s quip that ‘everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in the world.’”

The well-known passage from the New Testament referred to by Stephens can be found in Matthew 5: 38-39, which quotes Jesus as saying: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you that you resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”