Let Israel be Jewish

Israel has allowed Daystar, a Texas-based Christian evangelical TV channel, to telecast into Israeli homes and attempt to proselytize Israel's five million Jews. Is this religious freedom or adding insult to the Jewish injury.

For two thousand years, the Jews were systematically persecuted everywhere, except in India [1]. The Christian Bible instituted religiously motivated anti-Semitism, and continues to remain the most comprehensive anti-Semitic scripture. Norman Beck, a distinguished academic and Lutheran theologian, has catalogued over 450 anti-Semitic verses found in Christian lectionaries and calls for eliminating the anti-Semitic polemic [2].  

The Church, since the promulgation of the acts of the Council of Elvira (~300 CE), has portrayed the Jews as "the enemies of the Heavenly Majesty. [3]" Christian teachings falsely demonize the Jews as "Christ-killers," "Children of the Devil," "Brood of vipers," etc., and pronounce all future generations of the Jews guilty of  killing Christ [4]. The Christian Bible declares, "The Devil is the father of the Jews. [5]" Church fathers have demonized the Jews as cannibals that ate their own children [6]. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215 CE) decreed that the Jew be ghettoized and forced to wear the Jewish dress, conical hat, and the Jew badge - usually a yellow circle, symbolic of the Jew as betrayer of Christ for 'gold,' an image that fused religious and economic anti-Semitism [7]. Intensely persecuted, especially during the infamous Inquisitions, some Jews converted to Christianity. Even that would not remove the 'stigma' of having been a Jew. Pope Gregory I warned that ?a Jew returns to his faith like a dog to his vomit. [8].

Lest one should think that the Catholic Church alone is culpable of anti-Semitism, the Protestant Church has been as much anti-Semitic. After all, every denomination derives its religiously justified anti-Semitism from the Christian Bible. Erasmus, who influenced Martin Luther, infamously declared: "If it is part of a good Christian to detest the Jews, then we are all good Christians. [9]' 

Martin Luther was initially kind towards the Jews as he attempted to convert them. Once his attempts failed, he wrote the most vicious anti-Semitic tract: On the Jews and their Lies. In that tract, Luther justified the terrible sufferings of the Jews over 1, 400 years in exile and chastised them for not learning their lesson [10]. Luther urged Christians to burn the Jewish synagogues and expel the Jews [11]. He held that the Jewish misfortune is proof of Christian truth and Jewish error from scripture [12]. Luther called the Jews ?bloodhounds [13] and argued that Christians are at fault in ?not slaying the Jews. [14]

Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, writes of the Holocaust:

"?All the killers were Christians. The Nazi system was the consequence of a movement of ideas and followed a strict logic; it did not arise in a void but had its roots deep in a tradition that prophesied it, prepared for it, and brought it to maturity. That tradition was inseparable from the past of Christian, civilized Europe. [15]"

Wiesel's words are not rhetorical. It is evident that the Nazi hatred for the Jews is the culmination of the anti-Semitism intrinsic to the Christian Bible. The Nazis reprinted Luther's hate-filled anti-Semitic text, On the Jews and their lies. The editor of the 1936 Munich edition approvingly claimed that On the Jews and their lies was the ?arsenal from which antisemitism had drawn its weapons. [16]? Hitler aptly told the Christian bishops who met him in the aftermath of the 1933 laws that he was merely putting into effect what Christianity preached and practised for 2,000 years [17]. The Nazis  illustrated educational handbook for children carried the hate-filled poem, "The father of the Jews is the Devil," a theme which, as I showed earlier, first occurs in the New Testament [18]. Both the Protestant and Catholic clergy eagerly handed over genealogical records to the Nazis, knowing fully that it would result in the destruction of Jewry, even though the clergy had the option to refuse [19].

Civilta cattolica, the official organ of the Vatican, writing in 1937 CE, after the Nuremberg race laws had been fully enforced, discussed undertaking the total expulsion of the Jews. It went one step further and discussed the extreme option of ?destruction? of the Jews. Of course, after discussing the option of destruction, the Vatican rejects it as undesirable. But, what kind of religious order would even contemplate the 'Final Solution' of the Jews (an idea that Hitler would later embrace)' Why did the Protestant and Catholic clergymen provide the Nazis with genealogical records' They did so not because those clergymen were intrinsically evil but because they had internalized the Christian libel that the Jews are cursed forever and hence worthy of destruction.

Even the gruesome Holocaust did not lead to introspection among Christians. When Hitler committed suicide, Cardinal Adolf Bertram ordered that in all churches of his archdiocese a special requiem, namely,

'"A solemn requiem mass be held in commemoration of the Fuhrer, where prayers to the Almighty that His son, Hitler, be admitted to paradise, be offered. [20]"

The German Lutheran Church and its leaders such as Bishop Otto Dibelius, who later became the President of the World Council of Churches (1965), called the Nazi policies towards the Jews ?a fulfillment of Luther?s program.? The theologians of the German Lutheran Church that met in Darmstadt in 1948, three years after the Holocaust, proclaimed that the Holocaust was a divine punishment and called upon the Jews to halt their rejection and ongoing crucifixion of Christ [21].

This was not an isolated phenomenon restricted to Germany. Numerous studies have demonstrated that there is a direct correlation between one's observance of Christian faith and one?s anti-Semitism. Studies conducted by the Anti-Defamation League and U C Berkeley reveal that in the USA, a vast majority of Lutherans and Southern Baptists, around 80 percent, believe that the Jews can never be forgiven for their gullibility in deicide [22]. A vast majority of Christians continue to be anti-Semites [23]. A vast majority of those Christians do not care if their anti-Semitism offends a Jew [24].

The Jewish community faced a unique disadvantage when Israel was formed in 1948: even though Christian teachings had led to their persecution for 2, 000 years culminating in the Holocaust, they needed the support of the Christian West to become a viable nation. This is largely true even today. So, Christians should themselves introspect and cleanse their scripture of anti-Semitism. Yet, barring a few honorable exceptions such as Norman Beck and James Carroll, Christians have failed to evaluate the teachings of the Christian Bible that almost caused the extinction of the Jews. Sadly, many still believe that it is their right to proselytize Jews.

The world would be offended if an anti-Semitic political ideology is telecast into Israeli homes. Why then should we condone if an anti-Semitic religious ideology is telecast into Israeli homes" We do not tolerate the Hakenkreuz, a symbol associated with anti-Semitism. Why should we tolerate if the Cross and the Crucifix, constant reminders of the hoax that the Jews are guilty of Christ-killing, are beamed into Israeli homes"

When Daystar is beamed into Israeli homes, it is not religious freedom. It is a travesty that adds insult to two millennia of Jewish injury.

References:

[1] Katz, Nathan: Who are the Jews of India? This book carries an excellent case study of how the Jews of India flourished without submerging their religious identity into the mainstream. 

[2] Beck, Norman A.: Removing anti-Jewish polemic from our Christian lectionaries, a proposal, http://jcrelations.net/en/?id=737

[3] Ruether, Rosemary Radford: Faith and fratricide, the theological roots of anti-Semitism, p. 189.

[4] Matthew 3:7, 12:34 and 23:33, Luke 3:7 and Matthew 27:25.

[5] John 8:37-59.

[6] Chrysostom: Eight orations against the Jews 5:6.

[7] Poliakov, Leon: The history of anti-Semitism, Vol. 1, p. 65.

[8] Synan, Edward A.: The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages, p. 52.

[9] Poliakov, Leon: The history of anti-Semitism, Vol. 1, p. 123.

[10] On the Jews and their lies 47:138.

[11] Rubenstein, Richard L. and Roth, John K.: Approaches to Auschwitz, the Holocaust and its legacy, p. 53.

[12] On the Jews and their lies 47:139.

[13] Ibid 47:156-157, 47:172.

[14] Ibid 47:267-269.

[15] Abrahamson, Irving [ed.]: Against silence, the voice and vision of Elie Wiesel, Vol. 1, p. 33.

[16] Rubenstein, Richard L. and Roth, John K.: Approaches to Auschwitz, the Holocaust and its legacy, pp. 57-59.

[17] Schweitzer, Frederick M.: History of the Jews since the first century A.D., p. 222.

[18] Goldhagen, Daniel J.: A moral reckoning, the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its unfulfilled duty of repair pp. 19-21.

[19] Ibid pp. 59-60.

[20] Ibid p. 200.

[21] Rubenstein, Richard L. and Roth, John K.: Approaches to Auschwitz, the Holocaust and its legacy pp. 57-59.

[22] Glock, Charles Y. and Stark, Rodney: Christian beliefs and anti-Semitism, a scientific study of the ways in which the teachings of Christian Churches shape American attitudes toward the Jews, table 24, p. 62.

[23] Ibid table 48, p. 129.

[24] Ibid table 58, p. 155.

Kalavai Venkat is an India-born, Silicon Valley-based orthodox, practising, agnostic Hindu