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Old Wine in New Bottles? 12 RELIGION AND RACE IN NAZI ANTISEMITISM Richard Steigmann-Gall On September 7, 2000, more than 170 rabbis and Jewish scholars signed a statement on Christians and Christianity titled Dabru Emet (Hebrew for ‘‘speak the truth’’). The Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore provided the impetus for crafting the document . Among other things, it represents an important element of the increasingly public dialogue between Christians and Jews about what precisely contributed to the worst instance of antisemitic violence in world history, the Holocaust. In the years immediately preceding its release, the Vatican had increasingly scrutinized itself (and continues to do so) with regard to the Catholic Church’s possible contributions to an exclusionary, violent past: Dabru Emet represented something of a response and encouragement from prominent American Jews to this new wave of Christian self-scrutiny. Seeking to acknowledge and esteem these latest moves, Dabru Emet took stock of progress in mutual understanding and respect and pointed to future paths of development. As a statement of ethics—with among other things a thanks for Christian renunciations of triumphalism and supersessionism—it was received warmly. However, as a statement of history, it garnered some degree of controversy . The pivotal moment came when the document maintained that, in spite of whatever a≈nities may have existed between Nazi antisemitism and preexisting Christian varieties, ‘‘Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon.’’ While more than 170 rabbis and Jewish scholars chose to sign the statement, a substantial number of those invited to add their signature refused to do so, specifically over this particular passage, 286 Richard Steigmann-Gall even though the very next sentence stated: ‘‘Without the long history of Christian anti-Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out.’’ One scholar in particular, A. James Rudin, expressed puzzlement that two such sentences could be found right next to each other. Equally unacceptable to him, as to others, was the assertion in Dabru Emet that ‘‘If the Nazi extermination of the Jews had been fully successful, it would have turned its murderous rage more directly to Christians.’’ This statement reflects a widely shared presumption, among laypeople as well as some historians, that Nazism was antithetical to the multiple messages of humanity and kindness reflected and originating in Christianity. In this understanding, whatever guilt the churches carried in the face of such a hostile regime was that of inaction, of passivity in the face of immoral behavior. The question of how actively the churches or their traditions contributed to Nazism through the longue durée of antisemitism is in this conception not considered. In other words, the sins of the churches in the Third Reich were those of omission, not commission. Such a position does indeed seem to be confusing. On the one hand, the statement plainly declares the prior existence of Christian traditions of Jew-hatred as a necessary precondition for the growth of Nazi antisemitism . This would seem to suggest an ideological continuity, or at least confluence of some kind. On the other hand, that same connection seems to be denied in the rather unambiguous opening line of the paragraph under scrutiny. This tension is what critics like Rudin apparently find hard to relieve. It would seem that Rudin seeks to place Christianity more squarely at the core of Nazism than the statement allows, and rightfully shows that many ecclesiastical bodies have themselves been less reticent to make the kind of statement he felt should have been included. However, after explicating the nature of his concern, Rudin seems to replicate this tension himself when he suggests that ‘‘Christianity was an anathema to many Nazi leaders, and there were attempts to co-opt the authentic Church by creating a Nazi-based Christian puppet church.’’1 At this point, a new tension arises; Rudin demands a more forthright ethical statement about the proximity of Nazism to Christianity, regardless of the discomfort this might induce among some of the signatories, but then proceeds to assure his reader that indeed the Nazis were not truly Christian. As a result, it becomes all the harder to detect for what exactly Rudin is taking Dabru Emet to task. On the one hand, he is dissatisfied that the statement seems to exonerate Christianity of the greater charge of ideological commission in the crimes of Nazism, in favor of the lesser [3.138.114.38] Project MUSE (2024...

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