Anti-Semitism

This a series of posts explores anti-Semitism, its origins, the motivations behind it, its various manifestations, its consequences, and its possible future. The series also proposes a method for determining when an act or statement is anti-Semitic and concludes with some suggestions for remedying the consequences of anti-Semitism. A series of discussion questions is also included.

Review of the previous post.

The previous post, post number 16 of 33,was the fifth post in the series of eight posts discussing other causes of anti-Semitism and focused on Christian church fathers.

Preview of this post.

This post, post number 17 is the sixth post in the series of eight posts discussing other causes of anti-Semitism and focuses on Jewish teaching.

Other Causes

(2) Teaching in Judaism

In the Talmud

Interestingly, the idea that the Jews killed Jesus is also found in Jewish religious literature. In tractate Sanhedrin of the Babylonian Talmud, on folio 43a, a beraita (a teaching from before the year 200 C.E.) asserts that Jesus was put to death by a Jewish court for the crimes of sorcery and sedition. (In standard texts of the Talmud from Eastern Europe–or in American texts that simply copied from them–there is a blank space towards the bottom of that folio, because the potentially offensive text was removed. The censorship may have been internal–for self-protection–or it may have been imposed on the Jews by the Christian authorities. In many new editions of the Talmud this passage has been restored.) The Talmud’s claim there that the event took place on the eve of Passover is consistent with the chronology in the gospel of John. In the Talmudic account, the Romans played no role in his death.

On the other hand, however, the inclusion of the passage might be the anomaly rather than its exclusion as mentioned above. The inclusion might have been made under duress. That is, Jews were forced to include such a passage and later tried to correct this by deleting it.

In Jewish folk literature, such as the Jewish biography of Jesus, Toledot Yeshu (which may be as old as the fourth century), responsibility for the death of Jesus is also assigned to the Jews. It is likely that until at least the 19th century, Jews in Christian Europe believed that their ancestors had killed Jesus. But again, this belief may have been imposed on them either by duress or by being so prevalent, that it was not a true belief, but an imposed one.

Hopefully, the Nastra Aetate is a first step toward totally expunging this lie from the teachings, preachings and doctrine of Christianity. There will always be tension between Jews and Christians as long as this lie is perpetuated and taught. The lie will not be removed until the leadership of the Christian religion removes it and substitutes truth.

That such a change will occur in people, such as the leaders and those in positions of power, who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and, who^[1] would have to reject and repudiate their own beliefs^[2] and teaching and go against their own interests and which may even go against one or more of the basic indicia of what constitutes a religion does not engender optimism that such a change will occur anytime soon, if at all. It may be too much to expect any successful “Springtime of Nations” in which all transcend the bounds of denominational divisions. It would be extremely naive, and perhaps dangerous, to believe that anti-Semitism will disappear since it has accompanied and burdened all Jewish life for thousands of years.

At the date this essay is being written, the Catholic Church is canonizing two Popes, John XXIII and John-Paul II, both of whom took strides to combat anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church.

• John XXIII ended the use of “perfidious” as an accepted adjective for Jews in Catholic prayers and aided Jews fleeing from the Nazis with forged birth certificates and allowed Jewish children who had been baptized to return to their surviving parents and engendered the Nostra Aetate which has become known as the Magna Carta of Catholic/Jewish relations and took steps to overcome the idea that the Jews killed Christ and that Jews were accepted in the sight of God.
• John Paul II visited Auschwitz, the Great Synagogue in Rome and the Western Wall and characterized Jews as the “elder brothers” of the Catholic faith.

Certainly, these steps are monumental and are to be revered. However, they are merely initial steps and much, much more must be done to even begin to right the wrong associated with anti-Semitism in the Christian faith.

Preview of the next post.

The next post, post number 18 of 33, is the seventh post in a series of eight posts discussing other causes of anti-Semitism and focuses on the Jewish view of Paul.

[1] Ordinary believers, those not in power or leadership positions, might start the change so the change would be from the bottom up. But this is not likely if those “ordinary believers” are taught and conditioned from early childhood, and it is recalled that those in power have the most to lose by eliminating the distinction between Judaism and Christianity, so it is not likely that those in power will willingly give up their teaching.

[2]  Beginning with, perhaps, a total re-evaluation of Paul and his writings, especially the belief that Paul is the father of Christian anti-Judaism and the rejection-replacement theory of God rejecting Jews and Christianity replacing Judaism as the true religion and reevaluating Paul in that light -maybe even reevaluating Paul as not even being a Christian and possibly a Jew, see the Jacob Taubes lectures at Heidelberg, Germany in 1987 – The Political Theology of Paul (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); and even repudiating the rejection-replacement theory altogether.