Anti-Semitism is No Longer a Christian Problem: Thank God

The Wall Street Journal recently published a rather unfortunate guest essay by Andrew Doran entitled “Christians Need to Confront Anti-Semitism” in the paper’s House of Worship column. While well-intentioned, and while I (as I’m sure many other Jews) appreciate any efforts on the part of non-Jews to raise awareness about the need to combat anti-Semitism, this column was highly problematic, awfully misinformed, and—if extremely misguided notions such as those he voiced become more widespread—could threaten to undo decades of good work in Jewish-Christian relations while simultaneously deflecting the problem of anti-Semitism away from where it truly lies.

Mr. Doran is correct to point out that anti-Semitism is on the rise in the U.S., and in observing that anti-Semitism is resurgent on the political right (though I would specify that it is the far, fringe, nativist right) as well as on university campuses, where it is mostly being promulgated by academics on the far-left. But he veers off into bewildering, potentially harmful territory when, rather than saying (as would logically follow) that it is therefore the political far-right and far-left which need to confront anti-Semitism that it is Christianity that needs to confront anti-Semitism. This is the equivalent of someone taking a trip to a meatpacking plant, finding out about a salmonella outbreak there, and then writing an op-ed about how the federal government needs to confront unsanitary conditions in meatpacking plants, unaware that this was already done over one hundred years ago under Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. Yes, there may be occasional bacterial outbreaks at these plants, but the regulatory apparatus to check such outbreaks was already put in place decades ago, and if there are health problems that crop up in meatpacking plants from time to time, the problem lies elsewhere, not due to a lack of governmental oversight.

Likewise, the Church already realized sixty years ago that it needed to confront Christianity’s anti-Semitic history, and it did so in the Second Vatican Council, officially eliminating the doctrines of deicide (the teaching that held Jews responsible for the crucifixion of Christ) and supersessionism (the teaching that Christianity has supplanted [“lit., superseded”] Judaism) while also issuing formal apologies to Jews for Christianity’s role in centuries of persecutions and pogroms. Numerous individual Protestant denominations have also confronted their own histories of anti-Semitism, especially Lutheranism (where great and extensive work has been done, particularly in the German Lutheran church). Today the Evangelical American community is amongst our best friends. Where anti-Semitism persists in Christian churches today, it is (as Rev. Petra Heldt, a scholar who has studied anti-Semitism in Christianity has demonstrated) an “aberration,” not a proclivity, and certainly no longer church doctrine. And in non-evangelical Protestant circles, the Dean of Union Theological Seminary (the flagship theological institution for many of the mainline Protestant church denominations in America), Mary C. Boys, has done outstanding work in building bridges between Christians and Jews (see, for example, her 2013 book Redeeming Our Sacred Story: The Death of Jesus and Relations between Jews and Christians).  Blaming Christianity for present-day anti-Semitism is an uninformed approach to tackling this age-old hatred and an elision of this essential theological history.

Mr. Doran writes that “much history continues to be passed over in carelessness and silence—lay and clerical defenders of Nazism, pogroms…Rome’s Jews forced into a ghetto…blood libels.” He appears, then, to also be unaware of the scores (if not hundreds) of books that have been written on these topics in recent years—far too many to mention here. An entire library can be filled with books written on clerical defenders of Nazism alone; unless these books have all suddenly been cancelled, I do not understand how someone can write that this history has been “passed over in carelessness and silence.”

Mr. Doran further appears to be unaware of the frequent meetings between Popes and Jewish theologians and communal leaders which have taken place on a regular basis since Vatican II; books such as John Connelly’s From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965 (2012), which document the remarkable transformation in the Church’s attitude toward Jews following the Church’s crafting and implementation of Nostra Aetate (the Second Vatican Council’s historic reformed doctrinal statement on non-Christian religions); and of the extraordinary progress which has been (and which continues to be) made in Christian-Jewish relations in the past sixty years.  My teacher and mentor in Jewish theology and Jewish-Christian relations, Rabbi Dr. Irving Greenberg, was instrumental in much of this work, and I have now been engaging in Jewish-Christian dialogue for over a decade myself. We have never had anything but positive experiences in our interactions with Christians. (As just one small sample of evidence of this I would point you to John J. Miller’s column “My Gentile Father’s Jewish Legacy,” which appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s House of Worship column on Oct. 29, 2021, as an example of the numerous instances of positive interactions I have had with Christians. As well as my very warm, gracious welcome—as a Jewish theologian—into a Christian theological faculty this year at the University of Salzburg.) My forthcoming book on Jewish theology in America contains an entire chapter on Jewish-Christian relations, in which I document the extraordinarily positive experiences of three of the greatest Jewish theologians of this past generation (Rabbis Greenberg, David Hartman, and the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks) with Christians and Christianity. I can report from my own experience in this field that these experiences continue to be overwhelmingly positive and that relations between Christians and Jews continue to trend in a direction toward greater mutual affection and even love. (Back in February, I was in dialogue with Bishop Robert Barron, the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who reaffirmed Pope St. John Paul II’s description of Jews as “our elder brothers in faith” and—in response to the terrorist attack at the synagogue in Texas—stated, “my message to my Jewish friends is we love you, we stand with you, and we will fight to defend you.”)

Rabbi Greenberg began his engagement in Jewish-Christian dialogue after having recognized that Christians had done (in Jewish terminology) “teshuvah” [repentance] for their history of fomenting anti-Semitism and for whatever role the Church may have had in sowing the seeds of hatred that enabled the Holocaust to take place in continental Europe, the historic heart of Christendom. Like my teacher Rabbi Greenberg, I have every reason to believe that Christianity’s teshuvah has been completely sincere. Part of recognizing and accepting a ba’al teshuvah’s [repentant’s] teshuvah, in the Jewish tradition, entails not treating them and viewing them in the ways that one did before their repentance. According to Rabbi Greenberg’s teacher Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, sincere teshuvah has the effect of not merely absolving a person for the person’s sins but, in a very real way, birthing that person anew—transforming the person entirely, so that the repentant is not the same person as he or she was prior to the repentance. Although there may be individual Christians who continue to harbor anti-Semitic sentiments, and although certain liberal Christian institutions have supported BDS (the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that targets Israel’s economy), the vast majority of Christian churches and denominations today are great supporters of the State of Israel and great friends of the Jewish people. To continue to hold Christianity accountable for its role in pre-World War II anti-Semitism when Christianity has done so much to divest itself of the troubling aspects of its past is to treat Christianity as if has not engaged in the sincere, heartfelt process of teshuvah that it very much has; it is to not recognize that Christianity (at least insofar as its treatment of and relationship to Jews and Judaism is concerned) has, in the past sixty years, become a new person—a person that all of us Jews are eminently grateful to have on our side after nearly two millennia of bitter enmity. It is one of the great transformations in relationships between two peoples in modern times—or, for that matter, of any time in history. This is a celebration that deserves to be celebrated rather than thoughtlessly overlooked. Returning to a time—and even evoking a time—wherein we were not as close to one another as we are now is something that I and many Jews have absolutely no desire for, and which I hope that Christians have no desire for as well. Continuing to raise the now-anachronistic specter of Christian anti-Semitism is utterly unhelpful, and exceptionally unfair to Christians who have engaged in real, sincere teshuvah and now meet Jews in conferences halls and theological seminaries no longer as religious enemies but as genuine spiritual friends and—in the view of Rabbi Greenberg—as two faith communities who are both part of the people of Israel.

There are, to be sure, certain benefits to be had from Christians’ continued introspection and study of the anti-Semitism in their past. Studying the past is crucial, because we cannot know how to act well in the present and future if we do not recognize the errors of our past. Such continued study and awareness of the difficult (and too often deadly) years of Christian-Jewish relations of the pre-World War II era can help us create stronger bonds between our communities in this era. I (and I’m sure many others in the Jewish community as well) are grateful to have Christian partners who are willing to confront, acknowledge, and express remorse for the anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church and many of the major Protestant denominations during the prewar era. Not to do so would be to remain in an ignorant, unhelpful bliss about the role of Christianity in fomenting Jewish hatred throughout much of medieval and early modern history. But for us as Jews to not accept Christianity’s sincere teshuvah on this account—and for Christians and Jews to continue to place the blame for present-day anti-Semitism on Christianity—is equally unhelpful, as well as misguided. Christians and Jews need to continue to work together to safeguard religious liberty and extinguish anti-religious hatred where it exists, rather than looking for and pointing to places and communities in which such hatred once existed.

As a rabbi, a scholar of Jewish thought and literature, a theologian, and a frequent participant in Jewish-Christian dialogue, I can say confidently that the distresses we Jews currently face from anti-Semitism do not come from Christians and Christianity. And I am sure that Rabbi Greenberg—and Rabbi Sacks, if he were alive today—would say the same. The basic fact that must be recognized is that anti-Semitism today is predominantly a political—not a religious (and certainly not a Christian)—phenomenon, and therefore needs to be confronted as such. Attempts to divert attention away from this realization are detrimental to the fight that we all face against hatred and bigotry. Attempts to portray contemporary Christianity as the cause of this hatred—instead of our beloved partners in combating it—threatens to drive an unnecessary and unhelpful wedge between Christians and Jews after the half-century of good and hard work that has been done to bring us together.

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