Against ForgettingMartin StöhrHow Germans talk – some examples- A professor writing in a Christian journal seeks understanding for the active memory
of the Jewish people. They can’t forget. “Since the Jews are not Christians
forgiveness does not come easily to them.”
- A Lord Mayor opens a Jewish Christian celebration. When he reaches his fifth sentence
he fixes the party political representatives with his eye and reproaches them with
Pharisaism ...
- A Green politician regards the scud rockets as the logical consequence of Israel’s
political stance towards the Palestinians. He makes use of the Biblical sentence “His
blood be upon us and upon our children” as the pious basis for his figure of speech:
the victim has only himself to blame.
- An open-minded student reflects that there must be some basis for the isolation of
Israel and for antisemitism. “But make no mistake”, he says, “personally, I am
against it. Still, there must be something in it.”
- A parliamentary representative from Bavaria declares, “Where money is involved,
there you find Jews.”
- A conservative politician justifies his militaristic security doctrine with the
information that one of his friends is an officer in the Israeli army.
- A pastor preaches on a Pauline text and sets the Jew, Paul, in critical and liberal
opposition to the legalistic Jew, Peter. The pastor speaks of typical Jewish legalism
and of the superiority of Christian freedom. I hear this sermon in the company of two
Jews. We speak to the preacher: “Oh”, says he, taken aback, “had I known that Jews
were there I would not have said it.”
- A historian of German Literature in Exile notices from the name of a Jewish scholar,
who takes an opposing view to his own, that she is the daughter of a Rabbi. “True to
the Old Testament principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, Israel hits
back.” The journalist who writes this sentence has no idea what he is talking about.
His inadequate Biblical education becomes the soil in which stereotypes can grow.
Baleful consequencesAs soon as one scratches beneath the surface of the concepts which underlie these
statements, the religious die in which these prejudices are cast, stands revealed. What used
to be thought religious remains effective and usable in secular society, minus its original
religious foundation. A theology divorced from living Judaism is not only dangerous to Jews, but confronts
Christianity at its heart. This twilight period, in which a conventional but no longer
living Christianity reigns, is long drawn out. What was once rooted in Christianity persists
in it, at once worldly and pious. Everyone would like to solve “the Jewish problem” at long last. Did they not openly
describe it as a historical task to “purify” society by means of discrimination,
defamation, deportation and murder? The “Jewish question” is, however, not a Jewish
problem. It is the problem of why the majority community finds itself incapable of living
together with a Jewish minority. It used to be the case that a majority within our society was Christian. Even if they
didn’t live as good Christians they at least had a Christian upbringing. Both theology and
piety are open to secularization in their positive as well as their negative consequences.
That is why we must make it clear that popular, racial, political, national, legal or
scientific legitimation for antisemitism has found fruitful soil in which to grow in our
land. The restraints on opposition were in proportion to the deference towards ruling
authority. Theology and Church, Christian men and women, must critically examine their own theory
and practice to see how they contribute to, or at least tolerate, antisemitism and
indifference. Indifference, like its partner incompetence, kills. And the Church, in common with legal and scientific institutions, industry, government
and education must be aware of the painful question of how all these human institutions were
absent precisely where their presence should have been felt. Why did they allow themselves
to become the accomplices of a murderously efficient power? Only a new beginning will doThe insights of the theological dialogue between Jews and Christians which the working
group of Jews and Christians have conducted for the thirty years of the Kirchentag
are of a critical nature. A major element in what is too often regarded as innocuous Jewish
Christian dialogue is the critical examination of the contents of faith and of its
consequences which, whether passively or actively, helped build the path to Auschwitz.
I mean:- all theories which speak of an inheritance of Israel through the Church, or of
Israel’s disinheritance;
- all positions which define their identity by a negative characterization of the Jewish
people, whether in the State of Israel or in the diaspora;
- all constructs which appropriate the Jewish Bible, God’s covenant with his people,
God’s gracious instruction to the Jewish people.
Christians and Church participate in these things only through and together with Israel,
never in opposition to or without Israel. The Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, never broke with this
people and their service of God. His path leads not away from Israel but towards Israel, for
it is only along this path that the nations can find the God of Israel, that one can journey
meaningfully through the breadth of scripture, drawing living inspiration from its account
of the origin and aim of creation and history. Only on this path can one learn to make firm
decisions for the implementation of justice, freedom, happiness, love and truth in human
life and society. Instead of this Christians and Church too often concern themselves with power and
numbers, with dogma and escapism, blaming Israel for the death of God and regarding the
history of Israel as finished. They pronounce judgment on Israel and boast that they are
their bailiffs in history. Are we to take the Jewish people with their vulnerable state, their human resources, the
diverse expressions of their faith and life, as they truly are and as they understand
themselves, or are we to fabricate our own image of them and thereby not only break the
second commandment, but also cast aside God’s first address, namely Israel? A new beginning between Jews and Christians is only just on the horizon. It is
perpetually in danger of being destroyed: - by our desire as Germans to talk less about our failures and more about our economic
performance and our idealistic world;
- by the opinion of the perpetrators and their descendants that only the victims and
their descendants need remember what happened and indeed that memory may be relegated to
the scientific archives;
- by treating history pedagogically, creating didactic models of what Jews were and of
what they are ostensibly supposed to be today;
- by forgetting Israel, together with our own history, thus allowing a majority of our
people to harbor the wish to keep Israel, more than any other state, at arm’s length.
An enlightened theology reviews the whole of history, whether ecclesiastical, political,
economic or cultural, not through rose-colored glasses but ruthlessly. Only in this way can
we construct a new path for the future which will degrade and deny neither humanity nor the
house of God. Translation of an address delivered before a gathering in the Old Synagogue at Essen,
Germany, on June 4, 1991. Prof. Dr. Martin Stöhr is a former president of the International
Council of Christians and Jews.  |