Temple Shalom Sermons: Nazism, Not a Christian Phenomenon

Hi everyone! The paragraph you have in front of you is part of a statement on Christians and Christianity that was written over a four-year period by four Jewish scholars. The statement is called "Dabru Emet" (Speak Truth) and it is divided into eight segments. It appeared in its entirety in the "New York Times" and the "Baltimore Sun" and was discussed extensively by the Jewish press.

Last week I distributed copies of the full text to everyone at services. Tonight I have distributed one paragraph from the text, the paragraph that drew the most comments and the strongest response from those assembled here last Shabbat. I want to use my opportunity to speak to you tonight in order to make clear my response to the portion titled: "Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon."

[Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon. Without the long history of Christian anti-Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out. Too many Christians participated in, or were sympathetic to, Nazi atrocities against Jews. Other Christians did not protest sufficiently against these atrocities. But Nazism itself was not an inevitable outcome of Christianity. If the Nazi extermination of the Jews had been fully successful, it would have turned its murderous rage more directly to Christians. We recognize with gratitude those Christians who risked or sacrificed their lives to save Jews during the Nazi regime. With that in mind, we encourage the continuation of recent efforts in Christian theology to repudiate unequivocally contempt of Judaism and the Jewish people. We applaud those Christians who reject this teaching of contempt, and we do not blame them for the sins committed by their ancestors.]

Let me share a bit of what was said by those who were troubled by this text. First, one person felt that the presentation was out of balance. Not enough was said in it about what went wrong with Christianity over the millennia, wrongs that contributed to the Holocaust taking place. The person felt that too much was said to get Christianity off the hook. Another comment that received some support was that Martin Luther’s teachings of anti-Semitism mean that the Holocaust did arrive as a consequence of what Christians felt their faith wanted or at least accepted. After all Luther was a powerful leader within the Christian world and someone to whom the huge Lutheran community in Germany looked for instruction and inspiration.

Let me add that more than one person present at services last week reminded us all that during the Crusades, particularly around 1096, these soldiers for Christianity tortured and butchered thousands upon thousands of Jews in European cities where crusaders gathered before shipping out to the Middle East and Jerusalem. "Did they not represent their faith?" it was asked.

I want to ask you to consider some thoughts of mine before we go back through this paragraph about Christianity and Nazism.

Some years ago, when Chaim Herzog served as Israel’s president, he signed a paper commuting the prison sentences of a group of Jewish zealots. At the end of that week I gave a sermon in which I said that Israel was losing its soul. Why?

These zealots, seven years before, had taken automatic weapons and opened fire on Arab students at an Arab University in the West Bank. No demonstrations were under way; the victims were perpetrating no violations of the law. These zealots opened fire and murdered and maimed numerous students because that is what the zealots thought was necessary to do for the glory of God and Judaism and for the security of Israel.

The zealots were from the right wing Orthodox community; well schooled in Jewish sources and highly disciplined about their observance of their faith. The young men who carried out this heinous crime were sentenced to life in prison.

Jews from around the United States began sending huge amounts of money to generate a series of appeals and protests over the sentencing of the zealots. Groups inside Israel staged demonstrations on behalf of the murderers. After a time, the life sentences were reduced to sentences of twenty years each. Then another paper was signed commuting the sentences to twelve years.

The protests grew larger and uglier. Thousands of Israelis and thousands more American Jews would settle for nothing less than the unconditional release of the men who had been convicted of these terrible crimes. Finally, President Herzog gave in and signed the commutation order. For each prisoner the sentence reduced to time served, seven years.

The Jewish zealot murderers were released from prison and for days afterward, tens of thousands of Jews paraded the released inmates around Israel as heroes! That was when I gave my talk about Israel losing its soul. I condemned with every bit of sincerity I could muster the beloved president of Israel whose moral strength failed him. I attacked him for performing the disgusting act of freeing these men, who served less time for murdering Arab students who had done nothing than the time some Arabs received who languished in Israeli prisons with no charges at all filed against them.

What could we say about the meaning of Judaism at such a time? What could we say Judaism represented to the other Arab students? What could we say Judaism was all about to non-Jews in the west in the midst of this collapse of Jewish values by so many people of varying ranks from top to bottom in the Jewish world?

Some years ago, a physician, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, on the Islamic Sabbath, walked into the Mosque of Ibrahim in Hebron and opened fire on Muslims praying there. When he emptied his clip and sought to reload he was jumped and killed by the surviving worshippers. Some of the victims were Dr. Goldstein’s patients, people he had treated just that morning.

Dr. Goldstein was buried in his community of Kiryat Arba outside Hebron. He was given a hero’s funeral. Large numbers of people in his town said that his action at the mosque was a gift, the best Purim gift they had ever received. They believed Baruch Goldstein took a stand for Jewish survival against today’s Hamans, the Amaleks of the present. Baruch Goldstein was to all of these Jewish Israelis nothing less than a modern Mordecai. To this very day, Goldstein’s remains a great hero to his compatriots. Who are these people who love Baruch Goldstein’s murderous behavior? They are people whom the rest of the world sees as both knowledgeable and religiously committed Jews.

About three years ago in a weekly radio address that was dedicated to expounding the portion of the week from Numbers, titled Pinchas, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel had a message for leaders of Reform Judaism. The Chief rabbi recounted how the zealot priest Pinchas saw an Israelite man and a Midianite woman walking in full view of the Israelites in front of the Ohel Moed, the Tent of Meeting, on their way to presumably engage in sexual relations next to this holy place.

Remember that according to the text, Moses was married to a Midianite woman, Tsiporah. In any event, at this point in the sacred mythology of Torah, the Israelites were in the midst of being severely punished for whoring after Moabite women. So Pinchas takes two spears and uses them to run through the Israelite man and his Midianite consort. He kills them. In the text, a plague that had been afflicting the Israelites is immediately checked. Pinchas is declared a hero. Who declares this man a hero? According to the text, it is God.

In Chief Rabbi Doron’s radio address on the story of Pinchas, the Sephardic religious leader stated over the airwaves that, despite our rules for juris prudence, were Jewish zealots to attack and even take the lives of leaders within the movement of Reform Judaism, these zealots might be seen as modern day followers of Pinchas and be accorded a hero’s status. He used the word "might" and he did not call for such action to occur, but he clearly put his seal of approval on it. That was the Shabbat message of a chief rabbi, the chief rabbi of the country’s Sephardic Jewish orthodox community, not some crackpot from a shteibel from nowhere.

It was not too long after this address was delivered, that Yigal Amir shot and killed Yitzhak Rabin (z"l), an act that received the condemnation of most of the world. But still there were thousands of Jews, Jews who portray themselves as passionately serious about their faith, to whom Yigal Amir remains heroic.

When in 1993 I went to Israel as part of an eighty member rabbinic peace mission to Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians, I heard many accounts of why so many Palestinians get knots in their stomachs when they see Jewish soldiers wearing kippot coming their way. When the worst acts of intimidation and brutality take place, soldiers in kippot and especially those wearing beards most often carry them out. This is the face of Judaism Palestinian victims know.

When I consider Christianity and its record in relation to the Jews as it is expressed in the paragraph before us, I am unable to refrain from thinking of what lessons we might draw from the hundreds, indeed the thousands of examples of leaders and followers in the Jewish world whose sickeningly evil behavior was executed in the name of God. Does what they did represent Judaism and Jews?

They don’t represent what Judaism is to me. Their words and acts don’t represent what I associate with the beauty and moral discipline and pursuit of justice in my religion and among my people. But non-Jews, who see the horrors perpetrated by Jews with power, might conclude that something is to be found within the Jewish faith and among the Jewish people that leads to such atrocities. Can we not see why that impression is made?

Look at what has happened with our relatively few numbers of Jews in this world and with our very brief time in history when we had an armed force at our disposal. Now imagine what might have taken place if over the last two thousand years Jews numbered twenty or thirty times as many souls as has been the case. Imagine what might have occurred had we possessed our own weaponry and armies during that entire span. What would our record be? We will never know. But it is safe to say that it would be even more spotted than it is now.

When I think of Judaism I like to think of the extraordinary contributions Jews have made to improve this world. I like to think of the leadership we provided to advance justice; from calling for the pursuit of justice to the just act of establishing a Sabbath for all peoples and even the animals. I think of the extraordinary list of Ten Commandments from Exodus 20, or Leviticus 19’s passion for the vulnerable. I think of the good found among our prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Micah who wrote: "This is what the Lord requires of you: to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God."

And when Christians who are committed to similar values and who love their faith for the good it espouses consider the contents of Christianity and what it means to be a Christian, they don’t want the hateful messages of Martin Luther defining Christianity to us. They don’t want the despicable acts of some Church leaders defining Christianity to us. They don’t want the sickeningly heinous behavior of millions of their co-religionists over the millennia to come to our minds first as representing what this faith is about.

But if you have been raised as a Jew you know about Martin Luther’s evil. You know that he called on the rulers of what became Germany to confiscate possessions of all Jews, force the Jews to live in barns, burn all Jewish books, murder all rabbis, and then, if the Jews still fail to convert to Christianity, the noble Christina princes of the land should take whatever further steps are needed to rid their provinces of these quote "disgusting vermin."

Was Martin Luther an inspiration to Adolph Hitler and his followers? Certainly he was. Does that make Luther’s hate filled ravings a Christian message? Is Rabbi Doron’s statement on Pinchas a Jewish message?

I am not a turn the other cheek kind of guy. I am forgiving and I oppose hatred as a rule. But I hate when people try to justify the torture and murder of innocent people just because these innocent folks see the world somewhat differently than do their persecutors, or just because the color of one’s skin is different or because of some other superficial difference. We are, are we not, all God’s children?

I hate such behavior and I confess to hating the people who carry it out, especially Nazis. I hate Martin Luther for what he advocated and the effects of his orations on those who listened to him. But I know enough to grasp that his vile contempt for human life and dignity no more represented the essence of Christianity than the essence of Judaism is represented by what Rabbi Doron said, or what Baruch Goldstein did.

Let me tell you what I see in this paragraph before you. From the first sentence I see the bold statement strongly and unequivocally asserting that anti-Jewish behavior and Christian sponsored violence against Jews occurred. It contributed to the Holocaust. Indeed the statement affirms that Nazi ideology could not have succeeded, it could not have taken hold, laid down roots and gotten established without all of that anti-Jewish behavior and violent action perpetrated against us in the name of Christianity by Christians over the last two millennia. There is nothing soft or apologetic about this statement, nothing. Then the statement goes on to emphasize that not only was this the case leading up to the reign of Hitler and his murderous hordes, but that too many Christians either joined in the slaughter or stood idly by as it happened. There is nothing soft or equivocal about this charge.

These lines of placing blame where it belongs are followed by a necessary sentence of appreciation for the millions of Christians who did not stand by. Whole countries of Christians refused Nazi access to Jews: Denmark and Bulgaria. Thousands of Christians in every land swallowed by Nazism gave their very lives to save Jews. How dare we ignore such Christian sacrifice! If these heroes saved your relatives, how could you begin to measure your indebtedness to them?

Then the passage continues by stating our approval and support for every effort on the part of Christian theologians and theology today to repudiate without any equivocation, expressions of contempt against Judaism and the Jewish people. Last year the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, formally apologized to the Jewish community for Martin Luther’s anti-Semitism. They promised to prevent such venom from being transmitted and taught within their Church in the future.

The statement before you concludes with the judgment that we Jews don’t hold Christians today responsible for what their predecessors did. We know what it means to be blamed for that of which our ancestors stand either rightly or wrongly accused. Surely we don’t favor doing to others that which we hate being done to us. Let us remember the wisdom of Hillel this night.

Nazism could not have happened without Christian anti-Semitism, but that is a different statement from one that claims Nazism was a Christian phenomenon. It is a very different statement. Christian anti-Semitism past, present and future is a corruption of that religion’s essence. It is a negation of its essential moral teachings not a reflection of them. That is so just as the Torah’s order to stone children if they show disrespect to their parents, or to destroy the holy places of all non-Israelite groups, or to wipe out the memory of the Amalekites does not reflect the essential teachings of Judaism. That is not what Judaism’s essence is about no matter how our morality is distorted, even by a chief rabbi in our midst.

Please consider my position with care as you reflect on the paragraph concerning Nazism from this statement on Christians and Christianity.

So may it be.

Amen.

Rabbi Bruce Kahn is the Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, MD.