Antisemitism

 

We have close friends who are Orthodox Jews. They have been to Church with us and we have gone with them to Synagogue. In recent years our conversations have brought out ongoing sadness in the departure of several of their Jewish friends to Israel as a result of feeling at the sharp end of growing anti-semitism in the UK. In one of his last ‘Thoughts of the Day’ on BBC in November 2019 the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (above with the Queen) said: ‘A few days ago, two Jewish children were sitting with their parents in a train on the London Underground when a man came up to them and for almost twenty minutes harangued them with antisemitic abuse. Someone intervened but was threatened with violence. Then a young woman confronted the man, and calmly told him what he was doing was wrong. This distracted him and saved the day. It was a heroic act. The hero was a young Muslim woman wearing a hijab… That we in Britain should still be talking about antisemitism, Islamophobia, or racism at all, is deeply shocking. But it reminds us of the distance between public utterances of politicians and the reality, and it’s been like that for a very long time... Racism has returned to Europe and to Britain - are we, and the politicians who represent us, doing enough to stop it?’ 

Elucidating anti-Jewish sentiment risks being patronising as a non Jewish writer but I must proceed. Though I believe Christianity to be Pro-Jewish with a Jewish founder, I cannot deny the dark side of church history. Christian fuelling of antisemitism culminated in the the murder of millions of Jews through the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany we call the Holocaust. Christians down the ages preaching the love of neighbour whilst making an exception for Jews seems beyond our understanding but that contempt traces back to the start of the Christian Era. The Founder of Christianity was a devout Jew, following Jewish Law whilst seeing himself as its fulfilment. Christ’s death and resurrection revealed his divinity to initially Jewish followers making Christianity an innovation from monotheistic Judaism. In the early days Christians and Jews coexisted, sharing the Jewish scriptures, worshipping together with Christian input. The destruction of the Jewish Temple in 80 AD led to a re-invention of Judaism. The lost sacrificial culture was seen by Christians as fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ. The same loss led to prioritising synagogue worship among Jews. As Christianity spread among non-Jews Christians and Jews separated into churches and synagogues and hostility grew between them. From a Christian angle, ritual laws such as circumcision came to be seen as unnecessary for salvation. From a Jewish angle, belief in Christ’s divinity was blasphemous. 

In some accounts of Jesus’ death the culpability of ‘the Jews’ was emphasised expressing contempt for blindness towards the coming of the Messiah and rejection of God’s Son. The 2019 Church of England report on Christian-Jewish relations owns this sad legacy. ‘Promotion of what has been called “the teaching of contempt” has fostered attitudes of distrust and hostility among Christians towards their Jewish neighbours, in some cases leading to violent attacks, murder and expulsion’. In an ‘Afterword’ invited to the report UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis writes critical of its affirmation of works of evangelisation among Jews: ‘even now, in the twenty-first Century, Jews are seen by some as quarry to be pursued and converted’. Mirvis makes a contrast with the 2015 Roman Catholic report which he says makes clear ‘that the Catholic Church would ‘neither conduct nor support any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews’’. The quotation from that 2015 report is qualified however by the sentence which follows it:  ‘While there is a principled rejection of an institutional Jewish mission, Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews, although they should do so in a humble and sensitive manner, acknowledging that Jews are bearers of God’s Word, and particularly in view of the great tragedy of the Shoah’.

Bernard Perkins’s ‘Orthodox Boys’ (1948) in the Tate shows two apprehensive Jewish teenagers waiting for a train in New York’s subway against a background of graffiti. In the face of the antisemitism of our age the Christian response is primarily one of penitence for any part in fuelling that base sentiment, expressed in both the Anglican and RC documents, allied to the resolve to act against it. The latter report of 2015 has a scripture text as heading from Romans 11:29 ‘The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable’. The verse is part of St Paul’s rich reflection on the ongoing existence of the Jewish community despite the coming of God in Christ. Though Paul acted forcefully against Christians before his conversion, and robustly towards Jews after encountering Christ, he came to reflect on the dignity of Judaism in these words. ‘I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 9:2-5)