Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

(JTA) - Pat Robertson was trying to pay Jews a compliment.

"They'd rather be polishing diamonds than fixing cars," he said in 2014 on his show on the Christian Broadcasting Network, the station the Southern Baptist minister founded in 1960 that had grown into an evangelical Protestant powerhouse.

Robertson made his observation - while chuckling - in a conversation with a rabbi who was sympathetic to his conservative beliefs, Daniel Lapin. He clearly thought that diamond polishing was a good thing, and somehow rooted in biblical precepts.

"What is it about Jewish people that make them prospe...