why Germany Needs More Jews

...Indeed, many Jews were killed for this reason...

...The percentage of Jews in what was formerly East Germany is even lower—the community numbers only about 1,000...

...We should not try to enlighten our children in the religious schools with facts that the living Jewish spirit looks upon as dead ballast, to be thrown overboard...

...Was something wrong in our theology that made these developments possible...

...They know that the Jewish religion is pure legalism, that the Jews killed Jesus, that the Jews do not understand their own holy scripture as pointing to Jesus as the messiah...

...Only one or two of the 11 rabbis now working in Germany have German roots...

...Most Christians in Germany do not know anything in particular about Judaism—neither about the Jewish religion nor about Jewish life or history...

...no longer teach them to pray in a language that is dead, while the word and sound of our German mother tongue is understandable and dear to us and therefore is the only one fit to be raised in praise to our Creator...

...Christian theologians constructed their theories, unjustifiably claiming them to be founded in the New Testament...

...It is obvious that this became an important ingredient of modern antisemitism.5 In this traditional framework, it was easy to define the place of the church in relation to the Jewish people: theologically speaking, the Jewish people no longer existed...

...Gershom Scholem, the famous founder of the modern study of Jewish mysticism, whose original first name was Gerhard, was invited in 1964 to write a contribution to a festschrift for the Jewish writer Margaret Susman...

...We have to try to find an approach by which we can see the Christian community as having been added to the Jewish people, forming a new chapter of God's history with humankind...

...Still today many Jews living in various parts of the world feel themselves to have been part of this German Jewry—Jews for whom their time living in Germany before Hitler contains good and valuable memories...

...Most Germans today have little chance to meet a Jew, and many Jews are not eager to make people aware of their Jewishness...

...In West Germany there are about 30,000 Jews, about 0.05 percent of the West German population of about 60 million...

...3 Cf...

...During the First Crusade (1096-1099), when masses of Christians coming from France reached the Rhine, they found it much easier to kill the enemies of Christ right there instead of walking all the way to the Holy Land...

...Orthodox communities in particular continued to live according to traditional Jewish laws and customs...

...The Shoah ended the history of German Jewry—perhaps for any future now imaginable...

...It is astonishing how long and how consistently Christian theologians have overlooked that even Paul, whom many believe to be the main authority for the idea of Christianity replacing Israel, wrote: "I ask then, has God rejected his people...

...see n. 3, 92-94...

...What can we do to correct the negative and distorted image of the Jews that many Christians still have, an image that has been transmitted from generation to generation and from century to century...

...Martin Luther in his later years published writings against the Jews that deserve to rank high in the history of antisemitic literature...

...The crucial point is the basic idea in mainstream Christian theology that, since the emergence of Christianity, Judaism has lost its raison d'etre...

...How could it happen that in the center of Christian Europe the largest and most terrible genocide in human history was committed...

...see n. 4, 105-120...

...In a number of places groups called Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (Gesellschaften fur christlich-judische Zusammenarbeit) have been established...

...theoretically now there were also Jewish Germans...

...Even in the nineteenth century, when the emancipation of Europe's Jews began, things did not change much...

...De facto, a small number had survived in hiding places and elsewhere...

...But in the consciousness of many Christian Germans, probably for the majority of them, this never became a reality...

...Only a few of the rabbis are able and willing to do it...

...Whether I am correct in this, this is the way a number of Christians in Germany today have tried to face the task of redefining relations between Christians and Jews...

...Thus, for example, the names of Jewish soldiers in the First World War, both those who had been killed fighting for their beloved fatherland as well as those who had been decorated were mentioned with pride...

...The word "implicated" is a translation of "mitschuldig," which means "co-guilty...

...The number of such groups has grown in recent years, and today they are found in many cities and towns...

...The disastrous consequences of Christian-Jewish relations in the past, of course, makes it necessary to reexamine Christianity itself...

...We Christians must engage in a new reading of the New Testament...

...True, these numbers reflect only those persons known as Jews by membership in a Jewish congregation or other Jewish organization...

...No church and no leading church person or theologian in Germany ever publicly spoke to the Jews or dealt with any of the problems regarding the relations of Christians and Jews...

...There were, of course, other voices...

...The failure of the Christian churches' teaching and preaching had greatly contributed to the disastrous consequences of antisemitism that finally led to the Holocaust...

...What is even worse, what little they do know comes mainly from the New Testament and traditional Christian teaching based on the New Testament and its traditional interpretation...

...Since medieval times, the Germans were Christians and the church was a major power in political, social and economic as well as in religious life...

...The Hebrew Bible speaks about other peoples of the world...

...This is exacdy what happened when Paul preached to gentiles and brought them into the sphere of God's acting with humankind, which thus far had happened mainly through Israel...

...But then God continues, saying: "And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed," or perhaps, "By you all the families of the earth shall bless each other" (Genesis 12:3...

...The triumphalism of the Christian church, at least since the times of Constantine, has been mirrored in its theology...

...by no means...

...Scholem wrote back that in his view the idea of this dialogue was an illusion...

...In May 1945 no Jews existed officially in Germany...

...Any serious dialogue was impossible...

...Some come from other countries and have not mastered German...

...What impact has this image had on our theology...

...It is time to put a stop to this conflict, this sin of dishonesty in our midst.1 Certainly, this position was not shared by all German Jews...

...The most important exception to this rather grim picture is the biennial meeting of the Protestant Church in Germany, in which hundreds of thousands of people participate...

...The churches likewise did not see any reason to change their teaching and preaching regarding the Jews...

...But we need them...

...They must have three cochairpersons: one Protestant, one Catholic and one Jew...

...Although step by step Jews achieved nearly equal political rights, no law could change the deeply rooted prejudices and hostile feelings toward Jews that persisted...

...Through the centuries Jews have been clearly distinguished—and separated—from other Germans by their religion...

...Only rarely did the church try to protect the Jews, and even then only in limited ways...

...Lectures, panel discussions and study groups where the central problems of the interrelations between Judaism and Christianity are discussed draw audiences of thousands...

...Jews were seen as persons who did not yet understand the real truth of their own scriptures, namely that Jesus was the messiah prophesied in the Old Testament Christians possessed the true understanding of the entire Bible, the Old and New Testaments, thereby excluding any truth in, and even any right to, a different interpretation of Jewish scriptures...

...Of course, the Jews have to decide whether they are willing to do so...

...Many more Jews probably live in Germany, but only those known to be Jews are potential partners for dialogue or encounter...

...Jews and Germany—two words that sound to many people like fire and water, like elements that are absolutely incompatible...

...A few Christians, however, began to establish organized efforts to deal with these issues...

...4 It is a kind of fundamental anti-Judaism...

...The Reformation did not bring much of a change...

...Some of them do not see it as their task to teach Christians...

...A. Brockway, P. Van Buren, R. Rendtorff and S. Schoon, The Theology of the Churches and the Jewish People: Statements by the World Council of Churches and Its Member Churches (Geneva: WCC, 1988...

...Even where Jews live in clearly identifiable groups, as in religious congregations, it is, understandably enough, not the Jews who usually initiate Jewish-Christian encounters...

...But they were few...

...Yet this confession has raised theological questions...

...One might have expected that after the war the churches would have been the first to try to establish a new relationship with the Jews and Judaism...

...For 30 years Jewish-Christian dialogue has been part of this congress...

...According to the invitation, the article should be "a testimony to a German-Jewish dialogue, the core of which is indestructible...

...By Paul's mission to the gentiles, new Christian congregations emerged whose members were not Jews...

...Or Jews holding German citizenship...

...I know of only one exception: In January 1933, a few weeks before Hitler became Reichskanzler, what he himself called the takeover of power (Machtubernahme), Martin Buber had a public dialogue with a professor of New Testament, Karl-Ludwig Schmidt...

...As a German and a (Christian, I fully understand the horrible irony of what I am saying "So that you Germans can exterminate us again...

...German Jewry, at least partially, is represented by non-Germans...

...But the Jewish participants mainly do not live in Germany...

...The problem is even further complicated by the fact that not all of these Jews are of German origin...

...Unfortunately, this is not only a description of former misinterpretations...

...The Jews were more or less tolerated, but their situation was always endangered...

...And what influence has this theology had on the intellectual, social and political developments that finally led to the Holocaust...

...God here mentions the "nations of the world" or "families of the earth...

...A characteristic example is the program formulated in 1848 by Jews of the ancient Jewish community of Worms: We have to aspire to truth and dignity in divine worship, coordination between faith and life, to put away empty concepts and shape new institutions for the spirit of Judaism...

...Who these peoples were was not explained...

...But there was a German Jewish history...

...But in general the tendency to adapt and even assimilate to German language and culture became dominant...

...They want to live among the rest of Germans without being identified as something special...

...Others returned from various places for various reasons...

...The answer is clearly yes...

...That means that Judaism in its biblical designation no longer existed...

...Few younger Jews participate in this group...

...In October 1945 the Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland) published a declaration in which the church expressed deep regret over its failure...

...It is hard to imagine what will happen when this generation is goHe...

...Therefore in many cases the topics are not so much aimed at Jewish-Christian interrelations but at providing information for Christians about Judaism...

...We have to find a new theological definition and formulation for this development and for the consequences regarding the relation of the Christian church to the Jewish people...

...When God first spoke to Abraham, he tells him that he will show him an unknown land...

...For German Christians this is not only an insight, it is a confession...

...After the Reformation there were Catholic Germans and Protestant Germans...

...A German Jewry did exist through the centuries...

...Did they understand themselves primarily as Germans...

...This is the greatest meeting point for people interested in Jewish-Christian relations...

...How did the Jews see themselves...

...Does it really say that Israel is no longer God's people...

...2 Gershom Scholem, "Against the Myth of the Germanjewish Dialogue," On Jews and Judaism in Crisis (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 61-64...

...A Theological Understanding of the Reladonship between Ghristians and Jews," General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), 1987...

...The declaration simply stated: "Through us immense harm has come over many peoples and countries...

...So they began to kill the Jews in Worms, and then went down the Rhine in a direction opposite to their destination, continuing to extinguish flourishing Jewish communities...

...Germany needs more Jews—to help us understand ourselves, to help us rise above our horrifying past...

...In Genesis 12:1 God says to Abraham: "I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing...

...The "families of the earth" are present at the very moment when God speaks first 'to Abraham...

...Today Jews remain an extremely small minority in Germany...

...I hope that these new insights will be taken up more and more by theologians so that they may finally become familiar to the churches as well...

...With good reason...

...All of this has been engraved not only in Jewish memory but also, even if unconsciously, in the Christian definition of and behavior toward Jews...

...What did their Jewishness mean to them...

...But this was not an official meeting, and mentioning it only underlines what was a total lack of communication on the religious level (see box, opposite...

...but the Jews were not mentioned...

...In any event, few members of the respective churches became involved in any reflection on Jewish-Christian relations...

...These positions are held even today in numerous theological publications in Germany (and elsewhere...

...Nor did the declaration explicitly use the word "guilt" in its expression of regret, but only mentioned a weakness and lack of courage...

...Often the Jewish chairperson is almost the only Jewish member of the local society...

...4 "Towards Renovation of the Relationship of Christians and Jews," Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland, January 1980...

...On Good Friday Jews stayed home to avoid being attacked and even killed by Christians as murderers of Christ...

...We need more Jews to help us...

...They called themselves "Germans of Mosaic faith...

...A dialogue between Christians and Jews is almost impossible in Germany today...

...It is encouraging to see that in recent years more and more New Testament scholars are realizing that they have followed an inaccurate exegetical tradition...

...The church never seriously tried to prevent these events...

...According to mainstream theology, Christianity superseded and replaced Judaism, the old had been overcome by the new, the church became the new people of God and the true Israel...

...Such teaching we now repudiate, together with the acts and atdtudes which it generates...

...Were they Germans of Jewish religion...

...But were they Germans or Jews—or both...

...Yet it is true...

...The German language is still a sound they never want to hear...

...The dialogue never took place, he said, because it had been only the Jews who had tried to speak to the Germans while there never had been any response from the German side...

...Although Jews were declared Germans in every formal political and legal sense, even after the emancipation Jews remained "the other...

...German Jewry is represented among the greatest names in science, philosophy and the arts—Albert Einstein, Walter Benjamin, Heinrich Heine—to mention just a few...

...We start our theological reflection with the insight that the Christian church, through its preaching and teaching, is implicated in—co-guilty continued on next page for—the Holocaust...

...The Jews had spoken only to themselves.2 Scholem was right: Never was there a Jewish-Christian dialogue in Germany...

...fi> 1 Encyclopaedia Judaica, s. v. "Assimilation...

...In the background lurks the problem of the exclusiveness of Christian truth and the absoluteness of Christianity...

...Many nineteenth century German Jews, particularly those living in large cities, sought to redefine their Jewishness by purging it of nationalistic elements and stressing the religious component as the only relevant one...

...During times of high religious emotion, the Jews were in special jeopardy...

...all that is beloved and dear to us is contained in this fatherland...

...But the churches did not rise to the occasion...

...When such encounters occur, they are usually initiated by Christians...

...Discrimination continued...

...We must no longer utter prayers for the return to Palestine while we are wholeheartedly attached to the German fatherland whose fate is indissolubly our fate...

...would not be a surprising reply...

...At meetings of the Societies of Chris-tianjewish Cooperation, the audience is mainly Christian...

...We may commemorate yearly the destruction of the Temple, but why be in heavy mourning, which no longer comes from feelings of the heart, and sing songs of mourning about a historical fact for which we praise the loving hand of God...

...There are hardly any Jews...

...Five years later, in 1950, the Synod of the Protestant Church in Germany passed a declaration saying: "We state that by omission and silence we became implicated before the God of mercy in the outrage that has been perpetrated against the Jews by people of our nation...

...none are rabbis or theologians...

...5 "We acknowledge in repentance the church's long and deep complicity in the proliferation of antijewish attitudes and actions through its 'teaching of contempt' for the Jews...

...How can we find an appropriate answer to the question of Christian identity in face of the Jewish claim to continuity with the biblical Israel as God's people...

...But who would be their Jewish counterparts...

...The Christian community or church is not replacing Israel but extending God's relationship with human beings...

...Theological study groups in Germany, on regional and federal levels, are committed to examining these questions...

...Of course, former Germans now represent the lost German Jewry they had been part of...

...A considerable number, probably more than half, came to Germany after the war, primarily from Eastern European countries...

...For the first time the church spoke about guilt, if only by omission and silence...

...The self-definition of the church as the "new Israel" or even the "Israel after the spirit" does not appear in the New Testament...

...Of course, the church's attitude varied through the centuries, but there were times when the church was in full agreement with the persecution of Jews...

...One church statement called it "condemnation to nonexistence...

...Romans 11:1...

...We must not mourn in sackcloth and ashes the destruction of the Temple when we long ago came into the possession of a fatherland that has become so dear to us...

...Obviously not...

...They are not blessed themselves at that moment, but their future blessing is envisaged...

...Although many of the local societies are doing a decent job, they face a fundamental problem: Few Jews in Germany are able to give lectures...

...For many Jews, Germany is still a country they would never enter...