The Christian World After the Holocaust

"I state clearly that I am not Jewish but that my Christian identity is linked to the Holocaust, one, because Jesus was Jewish, and two, because the Holocaust took place in Christian Europe."

"After the Holocaust, nothing in Christianity would ever be the same again. This presentation looks at what that means." Kathleen serves as a member on the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion Christian Jewish Relations and Encounter Advisory Council, and was the Study Program Coordinator and Director of the Study Office at Nes Ammim, a Christian kibbutz in Western Galilee, Israel (Jan. 1, 1998 - Feb. 4, 2000).

At different presentations that I've given on the Christian world and the Holocaust, I've been asked if I am part Jewish, or if I had Jewish relatives who died in the Holocaust. My audiences know that I am a Christian minister, so their question belies the assumption that only someone part Jewish, or Jewish, could be interested in the Holocaust -- that only the victims could be interested. It is widely assumed that there is no connection between Christianity and the Holocaust.

I state clearly that I am not Jewish but that my Christian identity is linked to the Holocaust, one, because Jesus was Jewish, and two, because the Holocaust took place in Christian Europe. I often get looks of confusion on both counts. The picture of Jesus in their minds, and indeed the pictures of Jesus that hang in their churches and homes, do not resemble a Jewish man, nor do Christians place Jesus in their consciousness as being among the Jewish people. But neither do I. After all, Jesus is not in the Hebrew Bible. He is only in the Christian Bible. Jews do not claim Jesus. Only Christians claim him. While I know intellectually that Jesus was Jewish, I was taught that he rejected his own Jewishness and Judaism, and that he replaced Judaism with Christianity.

Emil Fackenheim, a Jewish scholar, stated that if Jesus had lived in Europe in the 1940's he would have most likely ended up in the death camps. Because the racial laws in the Third Reich defined a Jew as a person having any Jewish descent back to three generations, Jesus could not have denounced his Judaism, nor could anyone have claimed he wasn't Jewish. Even Jews who converted to Christianity and were baptized ended up in the camps. What a shocking thought, that Jesus, as a Jew, would have been deported to Auschwitz. Would Christians have tried to save Jesus during the Holocaust? Would they have identified with him then, or with his Jewish family and Jewish community? "If we don't know Jesus as a Jew," says one Christian scholar after the Holocaust, "then he remains a stranger to us." But if Jesus remains a stranger to us, then what it means to be a Christian remains an open question.

The Christian faith hit a Brick Wall with the awful event of the Holocaust and the need we confronted to discover Jesus as a Jew. The church has been literally forced to look back, to assess and to reevaluate its "teaching of contempt" (Jules Isaac) and its anti-Jewish practices towards Jews and Judaism throughout the centuries and to realize that these teachings and practices helped pave the way for, and make the church complicit in, the Holocaust. The church has been forced to recognize Jesus' Jewishness, and to see Jesus as the Jew who connects instead of separates Christians and Jews.

After the Holocaust, nothing in Christianity would ever be the same again. This presentation looks at what that means.

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Click here to read "Turning and Wandering: The Journey from Death to Life at Nes Ammim," an article presented at the July 2001 Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide Conference in Oxford, England, and published in a three-volume book by the same name. The article is presented in a read-only format as agreed upon by the publisher. It is 16 pages. Following the article is information on how to order this three-volume book.