THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 29, 1995 TAG: 9504280068
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Issues of Faith
SOURCE: Betsy Mathews Wright
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
I'VE NEVER understood it, but there is something about the Holocaust that haunts me. And the haunting can happen at any time, any place.
Several weeks ago, my husband and I attended a special Shabbat service at Ohef Sholom Temple in Norfolk. We were guests of Bill and Sharon Nusbaum. Bill is a local lawyer who was co-chair - with Laura Giat Roberto - of the committee that put together the special Shabbat service, just one part of Ohef Sholom's ongoing observance of its 150th anniversary.
The Shabbat service was drawn from 19th century American Reform Jewish prayer books and recreates what such a service at Ohef Sholom might have been like in 1895.
The experience was profound in its richness, but then just being in Ohef Sholom Temple is an extraordinary thing. The temple is one of those wonderful architectural masterpieces built in an era when folks really knew how to build houses of worship. As soon as you walk into the sanctuary, a sense of awe sweeps over your being.
The religious service that night only magnified that awe. From the lighting of the Sabbath candles to the traditional reciting of the Kaddish prayer, it was an inspiration. The cantor and the temple choir were like angels singing. The rabbi's sermon was delectable, with just the right amount of conviction, morality and humor.
As I sat, my soul soaring from the exhilaration of pure, true worship, my eye caught a lovely sight. Several seats in front of us, a young child played in the lap of an adoring grandfather. The child, about 2 or 3 years old, stroked his grandfather's face and hair. The grandfather's dark eyes lovingly caressed the tot's every expression.
How tender. How sweet. How loving.
How many like them did we kill, just because they were Jews?
I say ``we'' because I am a Christian who believes that Christians bear a responsibility for the death of 6 million Jews in Nazi Germany. Sure, I wasn't there and I never personally put anyone in an oven, but I am part of a religious group that never fully dealt with the Holocaust in a meaningful way.
I feel much like Roman Catholic writer Harry James Cargas, who has redefined himself a ``Post-Auschwitz Catholic.'' I am also like Cargas who writes that he is appalled to realize that he has ``never heard a homily on the Holocaust or against anti-Judaism, although (he has) heard some pulpit words which were perilously close to condemning Jews for being solely responsible for Jesus' death.''
And that's the crux of the matter, isn't it? That old Jews-as-Christ-killers mentality. Then, of course, there's that other thing: the salvation dilemma. By clinging to a narrow Christian definition of salvation as something only for those who accept Jesus Christ as their savior (as we Christians understand the notion of acceptance), then someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong. The next step in that twisted logic is easy. If ``they'' are wrong, then they are kin to the devil himself, which means that the death camps were just and that the Holocaust was deserved punishment for the defiant transgressors.
Oh sure, you won't hear that from many Christians, just from a few of the fringe neo-Nazi kooks. What you hear from Christians is: ``Who me? An anti-Semite? No way. I'm very pro-Israel. I love Jews.''
Yeah, right.
Why is it then that we Christians have never owned up to the open hate for Jews displayed by many of our greatest leaders? St. Athanasius, a Greek father of the church, said that ``the Jews were no longer the people of God but rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah.'' Roman Catholicism's great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas argued that their guilt for the Crucifixion demanded Jews' perpetual servitude.
Protestant leader Martin Luther suggested that good Christians ``set fire to the synagogues. . . . Then break down and destroy (Jews') houses . . . then drive them out of the country.'' Luther called Jews ``devils and nothing more.''
Why is it also that the church has never excommunicated Adolf Hitler, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler or Rudolph Hess - all baptized Roman Catholics?
Why is it that we spend more time quibbling over prayer in school than educating our church-goers about the real evils of anti-Semitism and bigotry?
I believe it is important that Christians own up to that bit of anti-Semitism in all of us, inculcated by tradition and theology, and that Christians need to take their lumps and deal with their share of responsibility for the Holocaust.
``Nobody is blaming you or me,'' writes Cargas, ``for the atrocities of history. But they become our atrocities if we do not repudiate them.''
And we haven't. By not repudiating those atrocities, we are doomed to repeat them . . . in Bosnia or Somalia or our own back yard. MEMO: Every other week, Betsy Mathews Wright publishes responses to her
opinion column. Send responses to Issues of Faith, The Virginian-Pilot,
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(804) 436-2798; or send e-mail to bmw(AT)infi.net. Deadline is Tuesday
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