Who'd have thought that a liberal organization like the Anti-Defamation League would become reactionary? Secure in old verities, the ADL's national director, Abe Foxman, apparently doesn't understand we are seeing the dawning of a new era, no more than my parents understood that what they called "noise" was rock n' roll, nor many of us understood that p.c.'s and the internet would change everything.

Although there may be setbacks along the way, the era of American multi culturalism is fast coming upon us. This is an era when people of different religions and cultures won't have to be separated by a neutral referee but instead can work together as a team, having learned to appreciate each other's differences.

I suspect that Foxman is one of those people who looks across America and sees many competing religious groups, each likely to take advantage of the other by attempting to enlist the government to its cause. It's only logical that he therefore believes that the government must remain steadfastly neutral, even to the point that its leaders, and potential leaders, must censor their own religious thoughts.

A competing vision of America is one in which religious differences simply don't matter anymore, an America which actually has learned to draw strength from each other's diverse cultures and traditions. That's what the partnership of Gore, a Southern Baptist, and Lieberman, a Jew, symbolize.

Foxman learned first hand what can happen when religious bigotry steps to the fore. To escape the nazi Holocaust as a Jewish child in Europe, he had to be hidden by his parents with a Christian family. Later, when he came to America, he learned that the First Amendment is a shield against religious bigotry: if no religion is permitted to become the "official religion," no religious group will ever be in a position to use the power of the state against another. Discriminatory movements could be stopped before they started. 

Foxman and other people who remember the atrocities of the past become justifiably nervous anytime someone comes along who doesn't treat the concept of separation of church and state as if it were the most authoritative rule since, well, Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Sinai.

Those of us who are familiar with Jewish Orthodoxy know the concept of building a "fence" around the Torah. The Torah tells us not to seethe the meat of the calf in the milk of the mother. But how do we know for certain from which animal came the meat and which animal came the milk? To make sure that we never violate this commandment, we "build a fence around the Torah" by never eating any milk products and meat products together. Furthermore, even though chicken is not meat, we don't eat chicken with milk either, lest someone might think we're mixing meat and dairy and assume therefore such a practice is okay. 

In a curious way, Foxman and others who believe in the separation of church and state want to build a similar fence around this American doctrine. Not only shouldn't there be a state religion, but candidates for public office shouldn't interject too much of their religion into campaigns. Such conduct is "unseemly," in Foxman's view. It's like eating chicken and dairy together. There's no specific law against it, but who knows what people might think?

On the other side of the debate are those who view America from a different paradigm. They believe that more and more fences are counter productive. In a democracy, everyone should be brought to the table. Everyone has something to contribute. People who believe in God should not be required to gag themselves at the door. All should be enlisted on the team, each contributing his or her strengths to the common good. 

It is clear both from Al Gore's willingness to pick a Jew like Joe Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate and from the American people's overwhelmingly positive reaction to Gore's decision that Americans have internalized the need for pluralism and multi-culturalism.

After more than two centuries of living together, Americans "get" it. They truly understand that we are a diverse society, that we are strengthened by our pluralism, and that no group of people-- whatever their religion, race, gender or national origin--ought to push around other people. (I'd like to have included sexual orientation in that litany, but Americans haven't gotten that yet -- though in time they will.)

The lesson that diversity strengthens our country has been so burnished upon our collective civic conscience that the acceptance of our differences has become part of the definition of what "Americanism" is all about. 

When Joe Lieberman said, "As a people we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to God and God's purpose," he said nothing defamatory, nothing to which the ADL should object.

Yet the ADL took him to task for this quote, as well as for one in which he suggested it is incorrect to believe "that morality can be maintained without religion." In a bit of rhetorical overkill, Foxman wrote to Lieberman that "to even suggest that one cannot be a moral person without being a religious person is an affront to many highly ethical citizens."

Perhaps if Lieberman had said that, it would have been such an affront. But that is not what he said. I took his quote to mean that religion has been a major, but not the sole, source of morality. Religions teach "Thou shalt not murder." Children go to public schools and learn the civic lesson that murder is wrong. Although not taught in a religious context, this moral lesson, nevertheless, has a religious underpinning.

So, lighten up, Abe Foxman, and everyone else who worries that maybe Joe Lieberman is being "too religious" or "too Jewish." In this new era, religious discussion should be encouraged, not discouraged. It may help team America arrive at a new national consensus.