Our enemy?

I admit this isn't very well thought out, but I am struck by the translation Shifra, Steg and others provided for the last verse of Maoz Tzur:

Dechay Admon, b'tzelk tzalmon / Hakayn lonu Roim Shivah
Vanquish Christianity in the shadow of the cross / and establish for us the
seven shepherds.

As discussed before, Edom, or the Red One, is a longtime stand-in for Christianity. The seven shepherds are: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David. The author of the sixth stanza of Maoz Tzur, reeling from the shock of persecutions and expulsions, is asking God to intervene once more on behalf of his people and to defeat our enemies.

Is Christianity still our enemy? Yes. Though Hellenizers like Daniel Lapin rejoice at finding common ground between Judaism and Christianity, this common ground is almost always achieved by diluting Judaism. Our positions on abortion or homosexuality or any of the moral issues that animate appeasers like Lapin are richer and more complex and more ambiguous than the Christian's absolute "No." As readers of Godol Hador (not to mention the Rishoniml) are aware our thinking on evolution and the age of the universe is more accomodating than Christianity's. Samson Rephael Hirsch, for example, was famously flexible about evolution. And the Tiferes Yisroel thought Adam's children married pre-Adamic "men."

All of that great Jewish diversity is in danger of being forgetten if our goal becomes out-fruming the Christians. As we rush to show the Christians that we Jews are moral, too, the danger is we'll forget the nuances of our own rich tradition. It's already happened on bad blogs like Cross Currents where all doubt about deep questions has been replaced with the smugness of certainty.