For two thousand years, the history of the Christian church has sadly been characterized by many developments and events that separated Christianity from its Christian origins. Often, Christianity became the worst enemy of Judaism. History is irreversible. Erroneous past developments can be retraced and theology, religious pedagogy and church practice adapted, however, in order to o ffer present and future generations of priests, pastors and religious educators, and through them believers and church members may be off ered, appreciative perspectives on Judaism and an understanding of the complexity of Christian-Jewish relations. As a matter of fact, dealing with Judeophobia is of capital importance for the future of Christianity and historically Christian nations, in areas both of church responsibility and influence.
The following approaches and suggestions are meant to be general attempts at dealing with Judeophobia and anti-Israel stances in a church environment; they represent neither a clear-cut pedagogical model nor a methodological-didactic or theological discussion. They likewise do not propose to address all relevant issues or to present solutions to widely known and discussed theological lines of inter-religious conflict.
1. Second Temple Period Judaism
A subject that should receive greater emphasis in theological training is the Second Temple Period, characterized by enormous complexity and great pluralism of Jewish theology and practice. The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and of the apostles Paul, James, and Peter developed in this context of competing Jewish theologies. Mostly, these early church leaders saw themselves as Jewish concerning their physical, cultural, spiritual and moral identity. Therefore, a greater understanding of Jewish culture at the time of Jesus and the emergence of the New Testament as well as jointly Jewish-Christian research and study of the biblical languages and texts can help recover the dimension of underlying Jewish culture and Hebrew theology that has been obscured in the Greek scriptures. Moreover, it is important to increase awareness of the diff ering theological and hermeneutic principles and traditions in the Jewish and Christian study of the holy scriptures. When the New Testament is viewed again as a collection of Jewish scriptures, packed with Jewish theology and ever-present intertextuality with the whole of the Tanakh, extra-biblical texts and even the oral tradition; where it is thus understood as a witness of the life of New Testament protagonists in Jewish society and its world of ideas, it may be easier to discard claims of the New Testament being Judeophobic and to prove the long tradition of drawing an anti-Jewish theology from it wrong. What is sometimes examined as anti-Jewish polemics in the New Testament may best be considered as part and parcel of historical, internal Jewish disputes. Preaching and church practice could bene t from using contextually and conceptually designed New Testament translations which open up this Jewish world to the reader and listener, such as Brad H. Young’s excellent version The Newer Testament: Hear What They Heard! (Tulsa, OK: HHB, 2021), for example. Thereby, a greater interest in Judaism as well as a better understanding of Jewish history could be encouraged, given that these may be more naturally considered to be part of the Christian heritage and of one’s own religious identity as a Christian.
2. Theological Replacement and Substitution
Since the time of the Church Fathers, e orts abounded in the Christian church to view itself as the new people of God, having ostensibly replaced and substituted the people of Israel, the Jews, as God’s people. Such a theology was aimed at exclusively claiming God’s covenants with Israel for itself. Already the apostle Paul looked at such a development critically in his epistle to the Romans (chapters 9{11), even before it fully occurred. To begin with, the Christian relationship with God and salvation history could be viewed as an opening of God’s relationship with Israel, a relationship that had already preexisted for two thousand years, as expressed in Paul’s analogy of the wild olive branches being grafted on God’s cultivated olive tree. Thereby, the gentiles are adopted into God’s covenants with Israel, through acceptance of the Jewish Messiah — hence, Christianity — and may profit from God’s promises to Israel, participating in God’s salvation history. The beginning of Christianity may almost be viewed as the fi nal act in a much longer divine history with mankind and Israel. De fining oneself as a Christian without reference to Judaism would be tantamount to ignoring such past history. Risking a modernization of Paul’s olive tree analogy, one may compare Christianity to a substitute player that is given in exchange in the last minutes of a football match — taken here to refer to the building of the Kingdom of God and to encompass the saturation of human society with the values of the Torah. Such a substituting player may still have an important role to play, but must build upon the achievements of the preceding players and must develop team spirit towards his team-mates who will continue to be Jews, and cannot claim the success of the match solely to himself. In the Kingdom of God, as it emerges throughout the Bible, Jews and Christians are called upon to work together in making it manifest, and in doing so, Christians have a historical and theological debt toward the Jews.
3. Moral Identity
Monotheism and its consequences for the moral identity of man and woman, that is the self-understanding of the individual’s role in its community and in society, was Judaism’s gift to humanity. Christianity accepted and further developed this legacy, in parallel and partly also in competition with Jewish philosophy and theology, of course. The values which have enormously characterized Western civilization and its modern liberal democracies, such as rationalism, individualism and humanism, and eventually democracy and the rule of law, were to a significant extent built on the value that the Hebrew Bible ascribed to the human individual as well as to the constitutionalism that the Torah envisaged for Israelite and Jewish society. Ultimately based on the Torah, the Christian view of man and society was for centuries a constitutive vision and intellectual source for the development of our present-day societies. The Torah postulates humans as beings created in the image of God, furnished with divine freedom and creativity, but also with personal responsibility for their actions towards their fellow men or women, resulting in collective responsibility in society. At the same time, the Torah witnesses to a collective responsibility of society for its behavior towards the individual. Both society and the individual are accountable for each other before God. Since both the individual’s freedom and its responsibilities and duties towards the community (as much as towards creation) are defined in relation to God, neither the individual nor the collective may absolutely rule over each other and abuse or exploit one another. In the context of Tanakh, Israelite kings were always bound by the Torah as a constitution and were quite often vigorously reminded of that by prophets and also priests.
Such questions of moral philosophy concerning the individual’s position in the community, and the community’s laws based on it, also de ne many political issues and philosophical enquiries. Up to this day, they are the central moral concerns in the Hebrew Bible and have directly and indirectly influenced the social and political developments in the wider non-Jewish world in the course of centuries. The Renaissance period was characterized by a direct interest in Hebrew political philosophy, and America’s founding and constitutional fathers were profoundly inspired by political concepts which they derived from the Hebrew Bible. Our world, even as we know and experience it today, and do not want to miss it in spite of many weaknesses, structural injustice, and a seemingly endangered natural environment, would not exist without these impulses of Judaism. The impulse of caring for fellow human beings, for justice and protecting creation, is ultimately linked with the moral self-conception of man and woman. Certainly from a theistic perspective, such a self-conception is hard to imagine without a monotheistic notion of God. A broader awareness of the civilizational, moral, cultural, as much as of the scientific and economic value that Judaism gave to humanity, would much bene t the world, especially formerly Christian nations, and could help to dissolve certain theological and social contortions in understanding Judaism.
4. Particularism vs. Universalism
A central stumbling stone in Christian-Jewish relations are differing self-conceptions of both religions. Judaism regards itself as a particular faith, as a people called into a particular, special and exclusive covenant with God. It is a covenant that is based both on the regulations of Torah and divine calling and grace. Furthermore, it inalienably includes the promise and historical conquest of a specific stretch of land, Eretz Israel, where the Torah is meant to be practised in an unhindered way. From a Jewish perspective, the overwhelming rest of humanity is not loved less by God and not less called into a relationship with Him, but it is not called into the same covenant and is not subject to the same density of religious and ritual, moral and ethical laws, therefore. Consequently, Judaism and Israelite or Jewish states have seldom pursued imperial expansions. More than anything else, Jewish states have pursued the right of Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel according to the Torah, without pagan or non-Jewish culture being forced upon them.
Christianity, on the other hand, has been viewing itself as universal, and developed an imperial self-conception as a result. Among other things, this occurred on the grounds of the theological conviction that the salvation of humankind, the covenant with God, the gates of heaven etc., are only accessible through membership in the domain of the church. Where respect towards God’s covenants with Israel increases and where Christianity is understood as an opening up to the gentiles of formerly exclusive, divine covenants, it becomes possible for a greater understanding of God’s history with Israel and of Judaism to develop. It may be helpful to view Christianity as an additional covenant relationship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with humanity, a relationship that is neither of lesser nor of greater worth in the grand scheme of salvation history. It serves a different specific purpose for the nations, however. It is of paramount importance that an awareness of the parallel validity of differing divine covenants is strengthened: of a particular divine covenant with Israel through Abraham, subsequently confirmed through covenants with Moses, David and Jeremiah; and of a universal covenant of the same God of Israel with the nations through the Messiah and Jew Jesus of Nazareth, based on Israel’s covenants.
5. Church Practice
Every-day church life off ers manifold opportunities to make the parishioners more conscious of the Jewish roots of Christianity. Theological terminology, homilies and hymns may be chosen in ways to strengthen and recover Jewish and Hebrew references. The Jewish origins of the Christian church service and its elements, of the Lord’s Prayer, of the ecclesiastical year and the Christian holidays may be highlighted, for example by way of introducing the Jewish calendar and holidays. Religious education, in particular con firmation preparatory classes, but also at higher levels in schools, could be used to emphasize such references and contents.
6. Zionism, the Shoah and the modern State of Israel
It is rarely the case that the issue of the modern State of Israel and Zionism does not impact discussions on antisemitism and antijudaism, even though it would seem easier if they could be avoided, of course. Combating anti-semitism should always be accompanied by a basic solidarity with the State of Israel. Certain academic, social and church discourses tend to misconceive Zionism as a European colonial project. Even though Zionism evolved in the epoch and historical structures of imperialism and colonialism, its origins were not aligned with them. It is historically more suitable to view Zionism and the modern creation of Israel from the perspective of overall Jewish history as much as from the point of view of the history of the persecution of European Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the Shoah.
An additional key question is that of a possibly legitimate criticism of certain Israeli policies, especially towards the Palestinians. In this context it is important to take note of the moral identity of Judaism. The Hebrew Bible as the perhaps most important legacy of Jewish history is full of self-criticism towards the Jewish collective practically of every period it references. Likewise, modern Israeli society is constantly self-critical towards its government. It will be difficult to nd another national literature that can be compared in its critical attitude towards one’s own national history with the Hebrew Bible concerning Israelite and Jewish history. The measurement for biblical self-criticism in evaluating Jewish society was of a moral and theological kind, of course. Compared to the Bible, the national literature of other nations demonstrate a greater tendency towards historical glorifi cation rather than criticism. In fact, Jews worldwide and Israelis at home rigorously subject their politics to public criticism. Israel’s public sphere, even its internally Jewish one, is characterized by intense debate and argument. The political passion of Israelis, constantly exposed to the dangers of war, terror and su ffering, likely remains unmatched among many democracies in the West that had long grown accustomed to extended periods of internal and external peace and stability. It demonstrates the vehemence with which Israeli society seeks the right policies. Possible international criticism of Israel ought not to be treated differently from criticism of one’s own government or of that of other states | that is, to a certain degree as part of a legitimate democratic process, expressing a certain global public interest. It should not abused to delegitimize Israel’s existence or its democratically elected government, however. It should also be noted that what sets Israel apart from virtually all Middle Eastern nations is precisely the fact that its government is elected freely and democratically, and that the right to free speech and criticism is upheld.
An awareness of both Christian and German history towards the Jews helps to understand that moral presumptuousness and theological or humanistic paternalism vis-a-vis Israeli politics and history are rarely helpful. For many Jews, Israelis and survivors of the Shoah, the promise “Never again” often drawn upon in German memory politics and practice, does not only designate “Never again Auschwitz” and the protection of universal human rights. No less importantly, it means to them that Jews must \never again” lose their land and state, their political independence, thereby emphasizing the particular historical right of the Jewish people to a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Such differences in perception are also visible in the terminology concerning the crimes committed in the Shoah. From an Israeli and Jewish perspective, they were first and foremost “crimes against the Jewish people,” whereas internationally, they are referred to as \crimes against humanity.” In the first case, the Shoah is approached as a particular crime, and in the second case, as a universal one. An awareness of such contrasting and competing, but also complementary ways of drawing lessons from the Shoah may help our understanding of why the international community and Western, especially European nation on the one hand, and Israel on the other, often reach differing and even contrary conclusions regarding political and social assessments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace process. It is even more important that Christians visit Israel and acquaint themselves with the land, its people and its history, but also with its political and social complexities. Realities on the ground prohibit easy answers and solutions. Visiting the birth land of the Jewish and Christian faith, the land of the Bible, will also help reconnect to our spiritual roots. Such a pilgrim idea should be pursued again more widely and programmatic, especially among church educators, but generally for all believers. No less important are interreligious relations at the local level, however. Jewish-Christian dialogue and exchange at the levels of lay people, clergy, religious educators and theological training in all relevant academic disciplines may make an enormous diff erence in reshaping relations between the church and Judaism in the present and for the future. In psychology and pedagogy, there is an awareness of the important role which emotional and subconscious experiences play in creating and overcoming prejudices; a trip to Israel and personal encounters with Jews and Israelis will off er many opportunities for positive emotional experiences and identification processes, which pure knowledge transfer in a lecture hall and comparable settings can hardly accomplish, and should complement them, therefore. Pedagogy concerning the Shoah may well be developed in cooperation with the Israeli International Shoah Remembrance Center Yad Vashem and a special program that it created for educators and history teachers. Some countries and school authorities that have made agreements with Yad Vashem regularly send high school teachers to Israel to train them in best practices in teaching about the Shoah. Similarly, the Gordon College in Haifa, an institution for the training of teachers, emphasizes Holocaust pedagogy and runs its own Gordon Center for Holocaust Remembrance, aiming at considering both the particular Jewish dimensions of the Shoah as much as its universal aspects reaching beyond the Jewish context. Both state and church educational institutions among the nations could engage more systematically in training their educators and teachers about the Holocaust as well as in equipping them to teach the younger generation about it.