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“Historical Memory: Reckoning and Healing”

Report of the CCCJ, Aberta, Fall Dialogue 1999

by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

On Tuesday, November 30, 1999, the Conservative Congregation Beth Tzedec and St. Andrew's United Church, Calgary, graciously hosted the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, Alberta Region, Fall Dialogue. This year's keynote speaker was Dr. Eugene Fisher, who has the unique distinction of being the only speaker to participate in our Fall Dialogue twice. He was the keynote speaker of the Alberta Region's inaugural Fall Dialogue back in 1984.

Dr. Fisher is an expert in the field of Jewish-Catholic relations, his qualifications and experiences in the field are most impressive. He earned a Ph.D. in 1976 from New York University in Hebrew Culture and Education. His doctoral thesis was: "The Treatment of Jews and Judaism in Current Roman Catholic Teaching." In May of 1977, Dr. Fisher was appointed Executive Secretary of the Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, USA, a post in which he continues to serve. He has been a consultant to the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews since 1981. He is also a member of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee representing the Holy See. He has lectured widely in North America, Australia, and Europe. He is also the author of a number scholarly books and articles on Jewish-Christian relations.

Dr. Fisher's topic for this year's Dialogue was: "Historical Memory: Reckoning and Healing." At both events, the breakfast meeting in the hall of the Beth Tzedec synagogue as well as in the evening at St. Andrew’s United Church he spoke most eloquently, without notes. He began with a personal remark, stating that it was his love of Scripture which led him to seek out the common roots of our respective faith traditions as Christians and Jews.

He also expressed his delight at the recent formation of an international Jewish-Catholic Committee of six scholars – three Jewish and three Catholic, one of whom is Jewish and a Canadian, Dr. Michael Marrus, Professor of History and Dean of the School of

Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto – to study the Vatican's Archives of World War II. He pointed out that Pope John Paul II has urged the church, during this period of the millennium, to focus on repentance of sins perpetrated against the Jewish people throughout the centuries.

Out of this focus, there is a growing appreciation of assessing the history of Christianity in relation to the Jewish people. Dr. Fisher emphasized the common origins of Jews and Christians, rooted in a common place, the land of Israel.

Then, Dr. Fisher presented a brief, yet insightful survey of twenty centuries of Jewish-Christian relations. He stressed repeatedly that this history is not black and white – rather, it is, essentially, ambiguous, written in shades of grey.

In the beginning, there were Jewish Christians who had experienced a new relationship with God because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This group of mostly Jews tried to understand Jesus, his life, teachings, death and resurrection, in light of their familiar Jewish Scriptures and traditions.

According to Dr. Fisher, the Eucharist is an abbreviated version of what happens in synagogue. The Jewish liturgical traditions, worship on the Sabbath, celebration of the Passover, Pentecost and other holy Jewish festivals have immensely influenced Christian worship. Dr. Fisher believes that there are significant similarities in Roman Catholic and Jewish liturgical traditions.

Dr. Fisher described – along with the document of the Second Vatican Council "Nostra Aetate" Nr.4 – the relationship between Christians and Jews as "a sacred bond." In Roman Catholic language, this often describes that which is sacramental, in particular, it refers to the Roman Catholic sacrament of marriage. A sacred bond, from a Roman Catholic point of view, cannot be broken – it is permanent.

Dr. Fisher said that, for centuries, we Christians have tragically denied the eternal nature of God's covenant with the Jewish people. This has negatively affected Christian theology and practice in relation to the Jewish people. Over against this denial and the subsequent anti-Judaic and antisemitic history of Christianity, we need to stress the faithfulness of God to both the Jewish people and the Church.

When we read and interpret the Second Testament, Dr. Fisher stressed that it is vital that we remember there were countless Jews who had nothing to do with the death of Jesus. The ancient charge against the Jews of being "Christ killers" has proven most damaging, since it erroneously held all Jewish people permanently guilty. The charge itself is a Christian evil based mainly on one short text, found only in the Gospel of Matthew, which has been misinterpreted by Christians down through the ages to justify Christian anti-Judaism and antisemitism.

Dr. Fisher observed that the "teaching of contempt" among many Christian theologians over the centuries was a twisted way of thinking that, among other things, the wandering and sufferings of the Jews proved the divinity of Jesus.

According to Dr. Fisher, Augustine said that the Jews must have a continuing role in God's salvation because they wrote the Hebrew Scriptures, which enlighten and instruct us Christians as we interpret the Second Testament.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, one of Dante Alighieri's works gives the Jewish people their eternal reward by placing them in heaven. In the days of Pope Gregory, the Jews were the only minority group to be given official legal status by Roman law, since they bear witness to God. Gregory permitted the Jews to build synagogues. However, he didn't think that they should be too aesthetically pleasing for fear that they might attract Christians to them. On the other hand, Gregory was against forced conversions of the Jews to Christianity, because he didn't believe that such conversions would be genuine. During the first millennium Jews in Christian countries were restricted in many ways, but there were no expulsions and major pogroms. This changed in the second millennium.

While the first and second waves of the Crusades were organized under the leadership of the nobility and the clergy, the third wave were the dregs of Europe who did not go under leadership, and so were essentially a roving mob. Jews were forced to convert under the threat of torture and death and thousands were killed as the wild mobs made their way through Europe. The bishop of Mainz tried, unsuccessfully, to protect the Jews of his diocese. The king of Hungary raised his own army to destroy the mobs when they tried to go through Hungary. Dr. Fisher pointed out that Bernard of Clairvoux was commissioned by the Pope to preach the Second Crusade, and at the same time instructed to make sure that the Crusaders would not harm the Jews in any way. He did both effectively. Jews were not attacked by the Second Crusade.

In the twelfth century the myth of blood libel was invented in Britain and eventually the Jews were expelled from England. In Europe, the Jews increasingly became scapegoats for economic, social, and political ills. They were also falsely accused of poisoning wells and blamed for the bubonic plague. In this period, the passion plays began in Germany and focussed on blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus. There were also many works of art that depicted Jews in inferior, degrading ways in contrast to superior, grandiose depictions of Christians.

By the fourteenth century, there was an institutionalization of ghettos in places like Venice and Rome. The largest expulsion of Jews from a country was that of Spain in 1492. Italy, on the other hand, opened its doors to Sephardic Jewish refugees from Spain. During the Reformation, neither Luther nor Calvin attacked or reformed the "teaching of contempt." Unfortunately, Luther exacerbated Christian anti-Judaism with the publication of his venomous work, On the Jews and Their Lies. In the age of Enlightenment, Voltaire argued that Jews could never be assimilated into an egalitarian society, since there was something internally different in Jews, which other human beings did not possess, hence Jews were incompatible with all non-Jews.

In the nineteenth century, in order to legitimize the slave trade, human beings were divided into different levels of biological quality in a hierarchical order. The Jews were listed close to the bottom, hence categorized as inferior human beings. The Nazis, in the twentieth century, carried this biological racism to its extreme. How could a so-called highly civilized society like Germany come to believe and practice such an evil ideology? It flies in the face of the fact that many Jews throughout Europe had made very significant contributions to the advancement of Western civilization. The Shoah, contends Dr. Fisher, is something for which all of Western civilization needs to take responsibility, not just the church.

John Paul II has referred to our time as "the century of the Shoah." The collective conscience of Christians was paralyzed during the Shoah. Because of centuries of anti-Judaic teaching Christians by-and-large failed the Jewish people. From 1994 to 1996 the German Catholic bishops worked on a clear statement of repentance. The French bishops issued their statement of repentance in Drancy where the French Jews had been gathered for deportation to the camps. Every country had a very different experience in its relationship to Jews. Therefore, the statements of repentance are very different in every country. For two years the Polish and German bishops worked on a joint statement to be issued at the 50^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, without reaching a consensus because their respective histories were very different. In the end each bishops conference issued their own statement.

Dr. Fisher said that eighty percent of the Italian Jewry was saved from the Nazis, because the Italians did not buy into the specific racial theories of the Nazis. In Greece it was very different, the whole Jewish community of Thessaloniki was destroyed. However, according to Dr. Fisher, this tragedy could have been prevented had the Italian army front line been allowed extended another one-hundred miles to the south. The Italian army did not sent Jews to the death camps.

According to Dr. Fisher, a distinction must be made between guilt and responsibility in relation to the Shoah. He said, guilt is personal. We who had nothing to do with the Shoah are not guilty. However, all of Christianity is responsible, because anti-Judaism was part of the Christian message everywhere in the world and all of Christianity needs to be involved in "teshuvah," in turning around by freeing the Christian message from the anti-Judaism which had become its dark background.

Dr. Fisher closed his presentation with an acknowledgement that we Christians know no other God than the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Israel. Therefore, our destinies as Jews and Christians are intricately connected as we live and work for a better relationship with one another.

Following Dr. Fisher's presentation, Rev. Helen Belcher, President of the CCCJ, Alberta Region, moderated a question period. In answer to a question about the Holy Land he said that Christianity in Israel has to rely on the Israeli government to protect their rights in relation to their holy places. When asked about the teaching of religion in public schools, Dr. Fisher replied that schools should teach basic information about all world religions. He also favours Shoah education in the curriculum.

In reply to a question on what we do about Christian fundamentalism, Dr. Fisher critiqued the media's view of it – depicting it as always extreme, intolerant, violent, etc. He said we need to break people out of simple black and white beliefs. Life is extremely complex, filled with shades of grey and ambiguity. It is important to work together in order to develop common values among all religious peoples. He mentioned diverse ways in which the Catholic Conference and the Synagogue Council of the US have, over the years, worked together to promote common concerns.

Dr. Fisher was challenged by an audience member about his distinction between guilt and responsibility. He reiterated what he said earlier and added: the church is responsible collectively for what we hand on to our children. We need a coherent story, with which Christians and Jews are in agreement. We need to correct the serious misunderstandings of the Second Testament, which were perpetuated by Christians for centuries. Insofar as there remains anti-Judaism and antisemitism today, we are responsible in our teachings and practices to turn this around, to change and prevent it going forward in the future. This responsibility is a collective one.

We closed our Dialogue with Rev. Martin Lynas inviting us all to join hands and leading us in the singing of our traditional Shalom.