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MEDIEVAL-RELIGION  January 2000

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION January 2000

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Subject:

Re: Was St. John Chrysostom Anti-Semitic?

From:

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Reply-To:

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Date:

Wed, 12 Jan 2000 06:43:50 EST

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In a message dated 01/12/2000 12:04:05 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
[log in to unmask] writes:

> Anti-Semitism is a complex issue in the Fathers, since the position of
>  the Jews, over the centuries, has changed from that of a sometimes
>  violently anti-Christian religious and social force to that of a
>  victimized people. The same Jews who mistreated and victimized the early
>  Christians, something often overlooked in contemporary historical
>  sources, have in our times been the victims of mistreatment themselves.
>  This observation must be seen, of course, through the prism of the
>  Zionist policies pursued in the establishment of the Israeli State and
>  the subsequent violence against the Palestinian people, many of them
>  Orthodox; but certainly, as civilized people, we must recognize and
>  loudly decry the atrocities visited on the Jews (and many other peoples,
>  of course) during WW II. 

Fr. Ambrose,

Most histories that I've read trace antisemitism back to the First Crusade, 
and it didn't have much to do with Zionism, which was founded in 1894. 
Netanyahu (father of the prime minister) makes the interesting suggestion 
that it actually has a prechristian origin, as, for example, in 2 Maccabbees 
where Antiochus hopes to force the Jews "to conform themselves to the manners 
of the Gentiles" (6.9). In Netanyahu's reasoning, what was originally 
resented was monotheism, and/or the kind of militant monotheism found in the 
Old Testament. Don't forget that the original insistence that there was one 
true God emerged hand in hand with an insistence that there were also false 
gods. Neither Testament is exactly "multicultural," and perhaps we need to 
read the Bible with an understanding that we ought to be able to learn to be 
more tolerant than our ancestors were--that the unchecked overenthusiasm of 
believers does not always work to the common good or lead us closer to the 
truth.  I find, for example, a great deal of religious feeling in ancient 
Sumerian statuary, and I need to force myself to remember that the Sumerians 
were among the "idolators" decried in the Old Testament.  Despite what Dante 
has Virgil saying in the Commedia, I can't believe that a just and kind God 
would punish any of his children for worshipping him in a "wrong" way, and in 
fact the Noachide laws in Genesis have been interpreted to cover exactly that 
contingency.

The West gives too little thought to slaughter of the Orthodox by, say, the 
Crusaders.  Also--correct me if I'm wrong--I believe the Armenians 
slaughtered by the Turks were Orthodox. It's good you can remember these 
terrible events without the need to justify or rationalize--to argue that the 
Armenians were really less than perfect themselves, or were actually 
agressors who brought their slaughter on themselves. If we believe there is 
no excuse for murder or genocide, then there is no excuse...and a long litany 
of the perceived "sins" or deficits or "contriubtory negligence" of the 
victims does not provide an excuse and is not particularly relevant.  

Non-Jews are not always aware of the history of Zionism. Theodore Herzl, the 
founder, was a Hungarian journalist who covered the Dreyfus trial. He 
subsequently argued, in _The Jewish State_, that the Jews would never be 
accepted anywhere, and should be given some place of their own where they 
could go. At the time, antisemitism was regarded as an anachronism--an evil 
left over from the middle ages that would never come back in the modern, 
civilized world. I guess Herzl was shocked that it indeed could come back, 
not only in the Dreyfus affair but in the Beilis trial in Kiev, in the 
Damascus trial, in the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta, Georgia. I 
personally think Herzl asked for too little, and spoke from a sense of 
despair. It seems to me that human beings, despite Herzl's glum conclusion, 
actually are capable of suppressing ethnic and sectarian animosities so that 
we can all live in peace on this earth. The voices calling for things like a 
world prayer for peace seem, at least at the moment, to be Hindus and 
Buddhists...even Hindus and Buddhists who are regarded as fringe figures or 
out of the mainstream. Possibly we should pray that Jews and Christians (and 
Muslims) wise up.

pat sloane





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