Your People, My People: The Meeting of Jews and Christians by A. Roy Eckardt (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 435 Your People, My People: The Meeting of Jews and Christians. By A. RoY EcKARDT. New York: New Times Book Company, 1974. Pp. 255. $8.95. Roy Eckardt, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Lehigh University, outlines in this volume the present status of Christian-Jewish relations. Against a background of long years of experience as lecturer, panelist, activist in the dialogue, he presents a progress report on the main subject areas: antisemitism in the New Testament, the Holocaust, the Vatican II declaration on the Jews, the Palestinians and Israel, the Jewishness of Christianity. His purpose is exhortatory. Deploring Christians' inadequate contrition for their sins against the Jews, he declares: "The obligation remains of how to make ourselves aware of the divine judgment and mercy so that ... our lives may be transformed and the future influenced." In a clear, punchy style he strives to raise Christian consciousness out of its apathy over antisemitism. He feels his Christian guilt intensely and affirms it passionately, but this very intensity becomes at times so overpowering as to be self-defeating by antagonizing the very reader he aims to influence. Eckardt contends, for instance, that every display of historic Christian antisemitism can be traced directly or indirectly to events recorded in the New Testament. "The foundations of Christian antisemitism and the Church's contribution to the Nazi holocaust were laid 1900 years ago: the line from the New Testament through the centuries of Christian contempt for Jews to the gas ovens and crematoria is unbroken." (p. 13) This lack of nuance contrasts sharply with the guarded approach of certain Jewish scholars he praises, such as Hesche} and Buber. In one sub-chapter, entitled "Enter the Devil," his compulsive indignation leads him to suggest that our Christian antisemitism is "our own below-conscious wish " to kill Christ, which has involved us Christians in a primordial conspiracy with "the demonic powers." (p. 81) Aware of his own emotional extravagance, Eckardt admits that during lectures his own emphatic manner of presenting Christian guilt seems to have prompted listeners "to accuse me of self-flagellation." (p. 3) The wise reader, however, will not pass up this otherwise valuable book simply because of its flights of moral indignation. The author's approach to the antisemitism question is distinctly theological but is this the right approach to a sociological disease in a secular age? The secularist regards discussion of " deicide " or " the new Israel " as " rumors of forgotten wars and battles long ago," yet antisemitism is endemic here and now in our society and might become epidemic at any moment. I say this not in criticism of Eckardt's book but simply as commentary . The book is a highly colored but stimulating report, full of rich insights into a deplorable religious tragedy. St. Paul's College Washington, D. C. JOHN B. SHEERIN, c.s. P. ...