Christ Killers Research Articles

American Exception?: William Eaton and Early National Antisemitism

American Exception?William Eaton and Early National Antisemitism Lawrence A. Peskin1 (bio) William Eaton, U.S. consul to Tunis from 1799 to 1803 and one of the great heroes of America’s First Barbary War in Tripoli, has received a fair amount of attention from historians over the years, but none has grappled with, and few have even acknowledged the deep and disturbing anti-Jewish tone of his letters. The closest this topic has come to receiving analysis is in a dismissive remark by authors Louis B. Wright and Julia H. MacLeod seventy years ago that reading Eaton’s letters and those of his correspondents “out of context, one might assume that the consuls were three anti-Semitic Americans heaping insults upon the Jewish race.” However, they add, “Actually these diatribes were directed at a particular group of Jewish bankers and not the race as a whole.”2 This view arguably ignores the virulence of the anti-Jewish sentiment of Eaton’s consular correspondence, much of which is readily available in printed form. It is entirely off the mark when one considers the content and frequency of Eaton’s anti-Jewish sentiments in his less easily accessible personal papers, which are stored at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California.3 These [End Page 299] papers reveal a man who, during the period from 1799 to 1802, could hardly refrain from derogatory mention of the “particular group of Jewish bankers” as well as Jews in general, and who did not hesitate to make comments that today would be judged extremely offensive for the way they tapped into nasty stereotypes of Jews. Of course, as Wright and MacLeod rightly imply, one cannot judge early-nineteenth-century discourse by modern standards. Instead of condemning Eaton or dismissing his utterances as lacking wider import, it seems more useful to examine them closely and consider what they may be able to tell us about early American attitudes toward Jews and Jewry. From 1799 to 1803, Eaton’s letter books reveal a man obsessed with Jews, whom he believed were united in a conspiracy against him and the nation he represented. Dozens of his letters specifically discuss “Jews” or “Hebrews” or “covenant people” in derogatory terms, and many others apply those attitudes to individuals Eaton knew to be Jewish, most frequently, members of the Bacri banking family of Algiers and their associates.4 Eaton often insults these Jews with standard antisemitic tropes, including references to “Shylocks” and “Christ killers,” and also by implying that Jews employ their manipulative abilities across borders throughout the Mediterranean world. He insults gentiles by calling them “Jews” or claiming that they are somehow in league with the Jews or their “Sanhedrin” (the ancient Jewish court system). While it is certainly the case that much of his vitriol was reserved for the Jewish bankers, particularly the powerful House of Bacri and Busnach, he also made it clear that the Bacris were just one part of a larger Jewish conspiracy acting against him and his country and that they represented the larger “race” or “nation” of Jews. As such, Eaton’s papers offer a valuable, albeit disturbing, view into what one important figure and his correspondents found acceptable in describing Jews. Historians should be disturbed not only because of the language, but also because, at first blush, Eaton’s positions seem so contrary to the usual understanding of early American tolerance for Jews. In recent years, American historians have chipped away at the old consensus of a uniquely tolerant early republic through their examinations of political antisemitism and recurring [End Page 300] literary tropes, but the language in Eaton’s letters goes far beyond most of their examples.5 Furthermore, Eaton’s papers and his correspondence with others are, so far as I know, the largest collection of letters written by an American gentile discussing Jews during this period. Most of our knowledge of anti-Jewish attitudes during the early republic comes from the public sphere: newspaper accounts, literary sources, and political/legal matter. When historians have used more private sources, such as letters and journals, they have mostly been the expressions of Jews. Occasionally, they have...

Redeeming Our Sacred Story: The Death of Jesus and Relations between Jews and Christians by Mary C. Boys (review)

Reviewed by: Redeeming Our Sacred Story: The Death of Jesus and Relations between Jews and Christians by Mary C. Boys Robert A. Krieg Redeeming Our Sacred Story: The Death of Jesus and Relations between Jews and Christians. By Mary C. Boys. (New York: Paulist Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 387. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8091-4817-2.) The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum (November 18, 1965), teaches that “the Old and New Testaments are like a mirror in which the pilgrim Church on earth looks at God” (n. 7). Since Christians’ inadequate approaches to this sacred mirror have generated erroneous theological ideas, Dei Verbum proceeds (nn. 8–20) to explain and endorse the critical interpretation of the Bible within the Church’s life and worship. Redeeming Our Sacred Story builds on Dei Verbum, as it aims at releasing the New Testament’s references to the Jewish people from longstanding, tragic misinterpretations. This enlightening book is the fruit of participation in Jewish-Christian dialogue by Mary C. Boys, Union Theological Seminary’s Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology and dean of academic affairs. The book’s part I, “A Trembling Telling,” highlights the issue. On the one hand, Christians have at times wrongly appealed to Jesus’s suffering and death in support of their denigration of themselves and/or of others (for example, women, African Americans, and Jews). On the other hand, they have at other times rightly approached the cross as a “mirror” of their misery and their hope. This mirroring is often evident, for example, in the religious hymns of enslaved Black Christians (pp. 26–31). Part II, “A Troubling Telling—and Its Tragic Consequences,” examines how the passion narratives, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Pauline letters have served as the “raw materials for hostility to Jews” (p. 47). For example, they were distorted in Nazi propaganda against Jews and Judaism, and, for centuries, they were misread [End Page 589] in the Oberammergau Passion Play’s misrepresentation of the Jewish people as “Christ killers” (pp. 104–36). A decisive, ecclesiastical effort to overcome anti-Semitic renderings of the New Testament occurred not only with the Second Vatican Council’s Dei Verbum but also with its Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate (October 28, 1965). As Boys explains, this effort is continuing today, although not without occasional ambiguity, in the Vatican’s deliberate engagement in Jewish-Christian relations (pp. 130–36). Part III, “A Transformed Telling,” demonstrates how Christians, building on Dei Verbum, can adopt a judicious hermeneutics to assure an accurate reading of the Bible. In particular, it proposes “eight guidelines for interpreting New Testament texts about the passion and death of Jesus” (pp. 221–26). These helpful, concrete criteria are meant to free the true “power of the story” of Jesus Christ. In pursuit of this goal, Boys illumines how the gospels’ authentic power may be experienced in the Church’s devotional practices such as the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and meditations on Jesus’s “Seven Last Words.” The epilogue observes that this book is a “synthesis,” uniting “biblical, hermeneutical, and historical studies” for the sake of “a ‘practical’ theology” (p. 258). In this vein, it recommends that Christians will discover more of the New Testament’s wisdom as they learn from Jewish interpretations of the Bible as well as from Jewish art and literature on Jesus’s Crucifixion such as that rendered by Marc Chagall and Chaim Potok (pp. 265–68). Appearing fifty years after the Second Vatican Council, Redeeming Our Sacred Story is a significant, timely contribution to the Council’s renewal of the Church’s life, mission, and theology. Written in clear, energetic language, it is readily accessible to general readers, and it is an invaluable resource for pastors, homilists, catechists, and teachers. Robert A. Krieg University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

Attacking Israel with genocidal intentions

De-legitimization of the State of Israel is the current episode in a persistent genocidal project aimed at the Jews and, more profoundly, at the values inherent in Judaism and shared by civilized societies. Skirting the shame attached to anti-Semitism after the horrors of the Holocaust, contemporary advocates of the genocidal plot are given free rein to attack Jews by a combination of severe criticism of the State of Israel and well-meaning plans for its geopolitical future, i.e. the peace process. Ugly lies – the Jews stole the land from the Palestinians, Israel is an apartheid state – function like the age-old charges that justified persecution of the Jews as Christ killers. Beautiful lies – the two state solution that everyone knows – echo the proto-legalistic measures that gradually deprived European Jews of their rights, their strength, their resources and capacity to resist deportation and extermination. Americans, misinterpreting as a repetition of the 1930s the rise of violent anti-Semitism in Europe at the dawn of the twenty-first century, are unprepared to deal with a parallel rise in Muslim Brotherhood forces within the US. As brutal Islamic Jew hatred boils in an Arab-Muslim world revolting, reforming, and submitting to sharia law, the Obama administration conducts a policy of the outstretched hand and blindfolded eyes that leaves Iran free to develop the ultimate genocidal weapon. Israel is the bulwark, not only for Jews but for the free world. Clear thinking, uncompromising discourse, and resolute action – at the risk of being labelled extremist – can stop the genocidal project and, working backward, disarm the lies.

Jeremy Cohen. Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen

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Cohen, Jeremy. Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 313 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Review Cohen, Jeremy. Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 313 pp. $35.00 (cloth).Erika TritleErika TritleChicago, Illinois. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 91, Number 1January 2011The Augustinian Moment Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/659275 Views: 29Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen , and: Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust (review)

Reviewed by: Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen, and: Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust Eugene J. Fisher Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen. By Jeremy Cohen. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2007. Pp. x, 313. $29.95.) Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust. By Robert Michael. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2006. Pp. x, 254. $24.95.) Jeremy Cohen has contributed significantly to our understanding of the relationship between Christians and Jews over the centuries. Cohen traces the origins of the Christ killer charge in the New Testament, through the Fathers of the Church, especially Augustine, whose reasoning provided the basis for the religio licita status of Judaism within Christendom, and medieval thinkers such as Abelard and Aquinas, to the Second Vatican Council, which rejected it. The final section of the book (pp. 185–261) deals with the passion in religious art, Oberammergau and the changes made in the text of the 2000 version to ameliorate its traditionally negative portrayal of Jews and Judaism, and the Crucifixion as depicted in the movies. I highly recommend this book for the insightful survey it provides of Christian history over the centuries, but I do have a problem that goes to the understanding of Nostra Aetate, no. 4 (hereinafter NA). Cohen summarizes modern Catholic New Testament scholarship by contrasting Father Raymond Brown (who was a Sulpician, not a Jesuit as Cohen states on p. 181), opting for John Dominic Crossan's approach over that of Brown. In the process, however, he misreads Brown, claiming that Brown did not take into account the fact that the text of a given New Testament book reflects the time in which it was written as much as the time it is writing about. This is not true, of course, and it skews the discussion into further misunderstandings. For example, on the same page he states that Brown holds to "the official 'party line' of the Catholic Church . . . holding Jews, not Romans primarily responsible for Jesus' death." No, that is not the official line of the Church. NA holds that some, not necessarily all, Jewish leaders were involved. It does not exonerate or hint at exonerating Pilate, whose decision it was. Caiphas is considered in Jewish tradition to be the quisling puppet of Pilate, as indeed he was. Jesus did, the gospels agree, challenge the temple leadership, which thereafter began looking for a way to silence him. Pilate, harsh as he was, probably did not have the scruples about killing Jesus that the later gospels ascribe to him. But in any event, the gospels do not present the Crucifixion as merely a Jewish plot, but as an act agreed upon by the Roman and temple authorities. Michael intends his book, which is admirably concise and readable, to be a history of anti-Semitism over the centuries to its culmination in the Holocaust. To some extent he succeeds. But there are some very serious problems, such as his rejection of the validity of any real distinction between the ancient Christian teaching of contempt against Jews and Judaism, to use the telling phrase of historian Jules Isaac, and modern, racial anti-Semitism. Pushing this theory that nothing really significant happened in Christian Jewish relations, save for evil things done by Christians against Jews, moves [End Page 525] Michael to deny or slide over quite a number of key distinctions and historically complex realities. It is not adequate to Augustine's thought, for example, to state that he believed that "any injustice done to [the Jews], short of murder . . . was justified—and even murder was sometimes justified" (p.2). Augustine in fact laid the theological groundwork for the canon law, initiated by Pope St. Gregory the Great and reaffirmed by his successors throughout the centuries, that recognized Judaism, alone among non-Christian religions, as religio licita. Augustine argued that Jews, who witness to the validity of the Old Testament, should be able to worship freely as did their ancestors. They should not be forced to convert but should be attracted to Christ by the witness of Christian love. One of the promotional blurbs...

Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen. By Jeremy Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. xii + 320 pp. $29.95 cloth.

Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen. By Jeremy Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. xii + 320 pp. $29.95 cloth.

Christ killers: the Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the big screen

The New Testament accounts of Jesus' crucifixion have stood at the bedrock of Christianity since it's birth in the 1st century, and they remain among the essential foundations of Western culture in the 21st. These Gospel narratives of the Passion - the arrest, trial, scourging, and execution of Jesus - cast the Jews as those responsible, directly and indirectly, for the death of their Messiah and the son of God. Cohen tracks the image of the Jew as the murderer of the Messiah and God from its origins to its most recent expressions. A great deal has been written about Christian anti-Semitism, its roots, and its horrific consequences in world history. This is the first book, however to focus on the powerful myth that has driven so much murderous hatred. An important addition to the literature on Jewish-Christian relations, it should appeal to a wide variety of readers in both communities.

Anti-Bolshevism and Antisemitism: The Catholic Church in Germany and National Socialist Ideology 1936–1937

In his essay ‘Judaism and Christianity in the ideology and politics of National Socialism’ Klaus Scholder outlined the basic principles of Hitler's world view and examined his perception of the relationship between Christianity and antisemitism. According to Hitler, there could be no doubt that Christian leaders, given the nature of their beliefs, should be active exponents of antisemitism. He revitalised the old motif of the Jews as ‘Christ killers’ and described Jesus as ‘a leader of the people’ who ‘opposed Jewry’. Because of this he had been murdered on the initiative of the Jews and the Jew Paul ’refined, falsified and exploited the teaching of the Galilean for his own ends’.