After the Evil: Christianity and Judaism in the Shadow of the Holocaust (review)

Richard Harries provides those engaged in Jewish-Christian dialogue with a valuable example of the complex ambiguities of that dialogue in After the Evil: Christianity and Judaism in the Shadow of the Holocaust. Harries has been the Bishop of Oxford for more than 25 years and a leader of the Anglican Church's participation in Jewish-Christian dialogue including a small but intense gathering of Jewish and Christian clergy who have studied together for several years. Thus, the most significant value of Harries' text will be for those who are themselves involved in similar dialogues and study groups and are looking for confirmation and illumination of their own projects. Harries offers the rich texture and overview of his own personal learning and spiritual discernment through the dialogues. Yet, the book is difficult to label in a review as it is not theology, history, or even "religious thought." Perhaps a different subtitle would help its readers from expecting more than it offers, After the Evil: 25 Years of Uniquely British Christian and Jewish Dialogues and Healing.

The degree to which these dialogues have led to healing is unfortunately unclear, because Harries does not provide us with significant clarity about the primary focus of his title, evil. Instead he spends considerable time and effort to review many classic religious texts about suffering, a common theological systemic product of evil. We learn only that the evil referenced in the title is the Holocaust/Shoah and that it is "unspeakable" and directly related to the problem of Christian anti-Judaism. I appreciated Harries' careful historical unpacking of Christianity's ongoing struggle with the anti-Jewish polemic and his unequivocal statement: "So the challenge remains: How to preach and teach a Christian faith that is recognizably at one with historic Christianity, but which is not, even implicitly, anti-Judaic?" (p. 22). The next chapter moves quickly beyond "something uniquely evil about the Shoah" (p. 25) into a review of theology about the Shoah. The next chapter reviews the problem of suffering and how both faiths deal with it theologically. This link between evil and suffering, though classic, is much more a Christian than Jewish predisposition. Since this book reviews the praxis of Jewish-Christian dialogue, including issues about Israel and her relationship with the Palestinians, the absence of this broader understanding of "evil" is critical.

Harries and others engaged in these dialogues have obviously gained a great deal from each other. The value of Harries' text today cannot be minimized, especially given the increase of antisemitism among Europeans. So much has been written about these dialogues in America that this book's value as an example of English Christians is particularly informative. Given the differences between the English and American interfaith projects, it would have been helpful had Harries spent some time putting his interfaith work into the context of English Jewish/Christian history and England's own battle with xenophobia during the last 25 years. Also, because there are no distinctions among Harries' Jewish dialogue partners, most readers will be unable to understand that some Jewish statements come from Orthodox rabbis and that others come from Progressive or Liberal rabbis. This is important in the same way we need to contextualize Christian statements as Lutheran, Catholic, or Methodist. Clergy often participate from within their institution's theology rather than with a personal statement. Without these defining labels the reader will find it difficult to put the statements into their broadest context.

Harries offers us a congregational clergyperson's sense of immediacy rather than a repeated theological standard. "This possibility of learning from and being enriched by people of faiths other than one's own does not lead to the relativity of truth. On the contrary, dialogue and the possibility of mutual learning is based on the premises that there is a truth to be sought and entered into more deeply. We cannot approach that truth from some neutral, detached position...