zionism_unsettled_scan

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• FOCU S
Constantinian
Religion
The ultimate
sin is si fence
in the fa ce of
injustice,
ElI E WI ESEL
Some historians identify the conversion of Em·
peror Constantine to Christianity in 312 as the
decisive date after which anti-Jewish contempt
became systemic and pathological. James
Carroll's influential study Constantine's Sword:
The Church and the Jews explores what happened when
European Christian ethnic-religious prejudice became institutionalized
and invested with state power. Carroll's study
of "Constantinian Christianity" is also a scathing critique
of and apology for centuries of Christian mistreatment of
the Jewish people.
Christianity is only one of several world religions to have
harnessed religious ideology to political power. And in the
same way that Carroll, a Roman Catholic, has examined
Christian history, Jews continue to examine the moral and
religious consequences for Judaism inherent in the rise of
political Zionism.
CRITICS OF CONSTANTINIAN JUDAISM
Martin Buber (1878-1965), a Jewish religious philosopher
who profoundly influenced Protestant theologians Rein·
hold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, opposed the imposition by
force of political Zionism on Palestine's diverse, multi·eth·
nic society. In the aftermath of Israel's military victory in
1948, Buber lamented, "The cry of victory does not have
the power of preventing the clear·eyed from seeing that
the soul of the Zionist er'1terprise has evaporated .... " He
continued prophetically, "Yes, a goal has been reached,
but it is not called Zion .... [The] day will yet come when
the victorious march of which our people is so proud
today will seem to us like a cruel detour." 1
Judah Magnes (1877-1948), a prominent US-born Reform
rabbi who ~migrated to Israel, was a committed cultural
Zionist who helped found both the American Jewish
Committee and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His vocal
opposition to the fusing of Judaism and nationalism
inherent in the establishment of a specifically Jewish state
made him the target of heckling and attacks in the press.
Several branches of ultra·orthodox Judaism have rejected
Israel's legitimacy since its founding. "Of all the crimes of
political Zionism," writes one ultra·orthodox critic of Israel,
the worst and most basic...is that from its beginning
Zionism has sought to separate the Jewish people from
their G·d, to render the divine covenant null and void,
and to substitute a 'modern' statehood and fraudulent
sovereignty for the lofty ideals of the Jewish people.2
Rabbi Brant Rosen, a Reconstructionist, is currently
"working ... toward a theology of Jewish liberation 'that
reclaims the universal vision of the Prophets and provides
a progressive spiritual alternative to the fusing of religion
and state power."3
That these voices are not widely embraced as an integral
part of the spectrum of Jewish thought is a reflection of
the neaHotal success of mainstream Zionist institutions in
suppressing dissenting perspectives. Increasingly, however
Jews are challenging the right of the old guard to determine
the limits of acceptable speech and actionA
Theologian Marc Ellis, himself the target of deligitimization
and intimidation campaigns by hawkish monitoring
groups, finds that the lewish ethical tradition is "now
facing its own moral crisis as Jewish identity becomes
increasingly uncritically identified with the governmental
politics of America and Israel." Ellis's term "Holocaust the
ology" describes a worldview that, in our time, "continue
as normative in the Jewish community." Jews who dissen
from the mainstream assumptions, Ellis writes, risk "ex·
communication" because of their failure to adhere to the
"theological prerequisite to community membership. "5
The modern Christian Church has learned many lessons
from its own history of anti·Jewish contempt. And yet,
these lessons are incomplete; the process of reckoning
with the Church's complicity in the destruction of Europe
an Jewry has rendered many Christians mute in the face
of Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians:
THE INTERFAITH ECUMENICAL DEAL
Marc Ellis calls this syndrome "the interfaith ecumenical
deal" or "the interfaith ecumenical dialogue, the post·
Holocaust place where Jews and Christians have mendec
their relationship." Ellis writes
Israel was huge in this dialogue. Christians supported
Israel as repentance for anti·Semitism and the Holocaust.
Then as Israel became more controversial with
[Israeli] abuse of Palestinians, Christians remained silen
Non·support and, worse, criticism of Israeli policies,
was seen by the Jewish dialoguers as backtracking to
anti·Semitism. That's where the dialogue became a
deal: Silence on the Christian side brings no criticism 0
anti·Semitism from the Jewish side.6
Carroll's work in Constantine's Sword rightly identifies th
transgressions of Christians and the Church toward the
Jews over centuries. Carroll's expose is incomplete beca\..
it errs, !.ike many well·intentioned partners in the "ecu·
menical deal," in failing to recognize that Israeli policies
are also an expression of "Constantinian religion." Whel
Carroll complains that Church leaders seem "interested
only in partial memory and a limited reckoning with the
past,"7 one might fault him and other Christian partici·
pants in the "ecumenical deal" for exempting Israel fror
scrutiny.
Carroll's book explores what happened when "the POW!
of the empire became joined to the ideology of the
Church." For Church and empire both, Carroll conclude:
it "led to consequences better and worse-although nc
for Jews, for whom, nothing good would come."8 Few
our time would dispute the obvious corollary: the fusior
of state power with Judaism has led to consequences tx
ter and worse-although decidedly worse for Palestiniar
Marc Ellis lifts up a vision of what might occur when
Church leaders " have finally learned the central lesson (
Christian complicity in the Holocaust." The lesson, Ellis
writes, is not only that Christians have erred toward the
Jewish people, but that more universally, "The ultimate
is silence in the face of injustice. "9
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zroNrsM UNSHT