Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

QUARTERLY REVIEW, WINTER 1984
istic trends found in Second Temple Judaism which seem to modify in
the eyes of some scholars the emphasis on a particular piece of
territory as the locale for God's presence. Lastly, the whole question of
non-Jewish minorities in Israel and how their role is understood in an
essentially Jewish state has yet to be handled adequately by Zionist
ideology. Christians, in light of their own continuing reflections on
church-state relations, can profitably probe their Jewish colleagues on
this score.
No contemporary encounter between Jews and Christians can
avoid the Holocaust. On the one hand, the philosophy of Naziism was
deeply anti-Christian in orientation and many Christians suffered as a
result. On the other hand, traditional Christian anti-Semitism, while it
did not directly generate the Holocaust, played a central role in its
success. It was truly an indispensable seedbed for the Final Solution.
In this regard the words of Fr. Edward Flannery, one of the pioneers
in the dialogue, are very instructive: "In the final analysis, some
degree of the charge (against the church) must be validated. Great or
Jews and Christians must probe the Holocaust together,
for Naziism was not simply another example of human
brutality on a mass scale—it marked the beginning of a new
era in human history.
small, the apathy or silence was excessive. The fact remains that in the
twentieth century of Christian civilization a genocide of six million
innocent people was perpetrated in countries with many centuries of
Christian tradition and by hands that were in many cases Christian."
So the church must engage in serious reflection on this failure to
confront the Nazi attack on the Jews and to ascertain whether this
classic anti-Semitic tradition remains alive in any form today.
And together with the Jewish community there is need for
Christians to probe the implications of the Holocaust for contemporary
culture. For Naziism was not simply another example of human
brutality on a massive scale. It truly marked the beginning of a new era
in human history. It remains an "orienting event" for Christians,
Jews, and the whole of Western society, as Rabbi Irving Greenberg
has rightly argued.
The Holocaust was a highly planned and finely executed attempt at
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