Friends on the Way: Jesuits Encounter Contemporary Judaism

What Might Israelis and Jews Learn about Christians and Christianity at Yad Vashem?

What Might Israelis and Jews Learn about Christians and Christianity at Yad Vashem? David M. Neuhaus, S.J. Why am I giving a talk on the presentation of Christians and Christianity in the new Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem at a congress that is devoted to the theme of the relevance of modern Jewish thought for Jewish-Christian relations? My presentation here is an attempt to read Yad Vashem as a contemporary Jewish ‘‘text’’ that is saying something about Jewish-Christian relations. This ‘‘text’’ has been ‘‘written ’’ by those working at Yad Vashem, and I propose to take them seriously as contemporary Jewish thinkers. Striking is the fact that the ‘‘text’’ has recently been ‘‘rewritten’’—a new museum has replaced the old one. The following presentation is one Christian’s ‘‘reading’’ of the new museum. Many Israeli and foreign Jews (as well as non-Jews) make their way to Yad Vashem not only to learn about what happened to the Jewish people at one of the darkest moments of its history but also to commemorate the murdered millions. In particular, youth (schoolchildren , soldiers, and university students) are regularly taken through the museum and surrounding shrines and memorials as part of their education. Yad Vashem might be considered one of the most important places for the formation of Jewish identity in Israel today. In this What Might Israelis and Jews Learn about Christians at Yad Vashem? / 167 sense, it is also formative for the Jewish encounter with Christians and Christianity. What might Israelis, Jews, and others learn about Christians and Christianity at Yad Vashem? Have there been any changes in the ‘‘text’’ when one compares the new museum to the previous one? The Yad Vashem museum and surrounding shrines and memorials that commemorate the Shoah were established in 1953 by an act of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Yad Vashem (‘‘a memorial and a name,’’ a reference to Isa. 56:5) is situated alongside Mount Herzl, where the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), was laid to rest in 1949. There, too, one finds the tombs of many of Israel’s prominent political leaders and the most important of Israel’s military cemeteries. The entire area of Mount Herzl and Yad Vashem constitutes a central civic pilgrimage site that commemorates foundational events in the history of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in the twentieth century, particularly the Shoah and the establishment of the state. Yad Vashem is not just a place for documentation of historical facts but also a shrine promoting remembrance of this darkest hour. The command to remember, often evoked at Yad Vashem in biblical terms of ‘‘remember what Amalek did to you’’ (Deut. 25:17), is the fundamental purpose of the shrine and museum.1 In the 1998 Vatican document on the Shoah, ‘‘We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,’’ this aspect of memory was also central: We invite all men and women of good will to reflect deeply on the significance of the Shoah. The victims from their graves, and the survivors through the vivid testimony of what they have suffered , have become a loud voice calling the attention of all of humanity. To remember this terrible experience is to become fully conscious of the salutary warning it entails: the spoiled seeds of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism must never again be allowed to take root in any human heart.2 On March 15, 2005, a new Yad Vashem museum was inaugurated in a lavish ceremony that brought tens of world leaders to Jerusalem, 168 / David M. Neuhaus, S.J. including high-ranking representatives of the countries in which the Shoah took place (Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Rumania , France, etc.). The Catholic Church was represented by cardinals Jean-Louis Tauran and Jean-Marie Lustiger.3 The new museum, built alongside the old one it replaces, is dramatic in its structure and uses the modern pedagogical means of presentation available today. Designed by the renowned Israeli architect, Moshe Safdie, it is a long, triangular-shaped tunnel covering 4,200 square meters, most of it underground. Whereas the old Yad Vashem was a conventional museum, displaying exhibits that evoked the horror of those years, the new museum emphasizes individual experience through the testimonies of survivors alongside the documentation and display of artifacts and personal possessions. Wherever the visitor turns, he or she is confronted with television screens, about...