Judaism and Christianity, A Troubled History

1. Judaism and Christianity, A Troubled History Jesus and his earliest disciples Christianity born from Judaism Much of our theology, liturgy and prayer derives from the Jewish faith Vatican II Nostra Aetate (1965): spiritual bond' Wild olive shoot engrafted (Rom 11:17-18)

2. Israel's Privileges (Rm 9:4-5) God�s adopted children; glorious presence of God during their journey; holders of the covenants and of the Torah; the Jerusalem Temple; heirs of the promises; the race from which the Messiah would come. Yet, between Paul and Vatican II, history shows a mainly hostile relationship between Jews and Christians, marked by Christian humiliation and persecution of Jews.

3. NT & early Fathers texts that can spark anti-Jewish feeling. For example, the words 'Crucify him' (Mk 15:13-14; Mt 27:25); and ' you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets' (1 Thess 2:14-15) "Deicides": According to Justin (early second century) the Jews could no longer claim to be God's people because they had refused to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah and had crucified him. The church was now the new Israel of God and the heir to God's promises. The Jewish scriptures were of value only as a preparation for Christ and for the gospel.

4. Worse would follow Major church Fathers (Jerome, Ambrose, John Chrysostom) wrote in bitterly negative terms against the Jews.  From the fourth century, with Christianity the state religion, the Jews suffered discrimination on political and religious grounds. But they remained faithful to their ancestral religion, and survived as a despised minority during the centuries that followed. Indeed, many Jews were eminently successful as traders and in the financial world of the day.  Lateran Council IV (1215) made Jews wear distinctive clothing, barred them from public office, imposed taxes on them, and reduced them to a pariah status.

5. In 1242 in Paris 24 wagon loads of Jewish books were burned. Elsewhere there were public burnings of the Talmud. In 1290 all Jews were banished from England and their property confiscated. In 1492 all Jews were expelled from Spain.  During all these centuries, many churchmen preached against the Jews, portraying them as murderers of Christ, condemning their religion as a religion of law and fear, and ridiculing their ritual observances. The church's attitude to the Jews was summed up in the term 'perfidious Jews', in the Good Friday liturgy in the Roman Missal until it was removed by Pope John XXIII.

6. The Ghetto A section of a city designated for the Jews. usually surrounded by a wall in which there were one or more gates, that were closed at night. The word derives from Venice, 1516. This area was near a foundry - 'getto' or 'ghetto' in the Venetian dialect. Jews in Europe had spontaneously chosen to live in 'Jewish quarters' since the tenth century. From the sixteenth century they were obliged to live in a ghetto, forming a self-governing community within the wider society. Life within the ghetto was regulated by Jewish law (e.g. marriage laws, Sabbath laws), and lawsuits were judged by Jewish courts. Within the ghetto the Jews maintained their own dignity, followed their own system of education, and observed their own dietary laws. Provided the Jews

7. The Jewish Response They developed their own communal life, and their rabbis promoted a system of prayer, the celebration of the Sabbath and the Jewish festivals, and study of the Jewish sacred texts.  No explicit anti-Christian polemics in the Talmud, unsurprising, since the Jewish texts were subject to Christian censorship.  Anti-Christian writings began to appear from about the seventh century . Example of Jewish polemic was the 'Life of Jesus', Toledot Yeshu, from about the tenth century but based on older sources. .. presenting Jesus as an illegitimate son of Mary by a Roman soldier, and as a magician who strayed from the teaching of his ancestors.  In the late middle ages, Jews were forced to engage in 'Disputations' intended to prove that the Jewish religion was obsolete and that Christianity was the only valid faith.

8. A New Beginning The unspeakable horror of the Holocaust shocked many thinking Christians, and convinced them that a new era in Jewish-Christian relations was needed. The Catholic guilt about the dark centuries when it persecuted and humiliated the Jews is seen in a prayer for forgiveness said by pope John Paul II at a solemn ceremony of repentance in St Peter's Basilica on 12 March 2000

9. God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your name to the nations. We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the covenant.

10. Racist Rhetoric

11. Mein Kampf Throughout, Hitler refers to Jews as parasites, liars, dirty, crafty, sly, wily, clever, without any true culture, a sponger, a middleman, a maggot, eternal blood suckers, repulsive, unscrupulous, monsters, foreign, menace, bloodthirsty, avaricious, the destroyer of Aryan humanity, and the mortal enemy of Aryan humanity... "...for the higher he climbs, the more alluring his old goal that was once promised him rises from the veil of the past, and with feverish avidity his keenest minds see the dream of world domination tangibly approaching." This conspiracy idea and the notion of 'competition' for world domination between Jews and Aryans became widespread beliefs in Nazi Germany

12. How much did Pius XII know?

13. Dachau, nr Munich

14. From 1933 Newspaper