The word anti-Semitism was first coined in 1860. It was used to describe the attitude throughout Europe at that time which argued that Semitic races (especially Jews) were inferior to Aryan races. While it would be comforting to think that this kind of anti-Jewish sentiment was new to that time, it wasn't. The Jewish people had been the victims of oppression, expulsion and death for more than two thousand years before this. From the Babylonians who tried to destroy the Hebrew nation and society in 587 BC, to Antiochus IV Epiphanes who tried to destroy Judaism around 267 BC, to Roman persecution between 70 and 130 CE, to crusader slaughters in the Middle ages, to expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the late 1400s and to ongoing pogroms in Russia, Jews were abused and oppressed long before 1860.
Helen Fein, a Holocaust scholar defines Anti-Semitism as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions – social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence – which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews." This sense of Anti-Semitism is reflected in stereotypes of Jews that have been used across the centuries: greedy, untrustworthy, desirous of world domination, genetically inferior, and ultimately as Christ killers. These stereotypes and latent hostility have been used to marginalize, brutalize and ultimately attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.
Christianity has taken a leading role in this anti-Jewish effort. While it is not as pronounced today as it has been in the past (Henry Ford once published an anti-Jewish paper entitled "The International Jew") there are still those who want to diminish the Jewish people and their relationship with God. A first group teaches what is called "Replacement Theology." Replacement Theology states that because the Jews rejected Jesus, they were replaced as God's people by the church. Thus the Jews are outsiders to God's promises. Others who teach premillennial dispensational theology (these are the people who believe all faithful Christians will be "beamed" into heaven before the end times begin) while rejecting Replacement Theology still proclaim that the church and the people of Israel are two entirely separate entities. And while God may have plans for the Jews in the future the Jewish people are essentially irrelevant until the end times. While neither of these views is overtly antagonistic toward Judaism they each express an attitude that somehow the Jews are no longer God's people and thus once again attempt to marginalize the Jews as people.
The sin which is at the heart of anti-Semitism is the dehumanizing of a particular people. This is an extension of human communities' tendency to divide people into insiders and outsiders (insiders being good and worthy, while outsiders are evil and unworthy). By so doing we marginalize men, women and children who were created in the image of God and in whom the very breath of God lives. Additionally with Judaism it means to ignore Israel's place in our own scriptures. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Rome (11:1-2) put it this way. "Has God rejected God's people? By no means…God has not rejected God's people whom God foreknew." Paul makes it clear that while some Jews have rejected Jesus this does not mean that God has replaced Israel with the church. In fact Paul later speaks of the church (Gentile believers) as being grafted into the root of God's people in Judaism. Thus the church is merely an extension of Israel and not its replacement.
The challenge for us as Jesus followers is twofold. First it is to acknowledge our gratitude toward the Jewish people. It was God's originally called people who kept the story of God alive and became the incubator for our Jesus' faith. Second it is to build relationships with our Jewish brothers and sisters to acknowledge that we worship a common God and share common aspirations (to love God and neighbor). By so doing we honor God who desires reconciliation and peace among all peoples.
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