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Title: Christianity and Anti-Semitism Author: Nikolai Berdyaev Date: 1938 Language: en Topics: christianity, antisemitism Source: Retrieved on 14th May 2021 from https://archive.org/details/christianityanda027552mbp/
That fervent Catholic, Leon Bloy,[1] wrote in one of his works: âSuppose
that there were people round you continually speaking of your father and
mother with the utmost contempt, who had nothing to offer them but
insults and offensive sarcasms, how would you feel? Well, this is just
what happens to our Lord Jesus Christ. We forget, or rather we do not
wish to know, that our God made man is a Jew, natureâs most perfect Jew,
the lion of Judah, that his mother is a Jewess, the flower of the Jewish
race; that the Apostles were Jews, as well as all the Prophets; and
finally that our whole sacred Liturgy is drawn from Jewish books. In
consequence, how may one express the enormity of the outrage and
blasphemy of vilifying the Jewish race?â.
These words are addressed to Christians, who ought to understand them.
In truth, the superficiality of Christians who believe they can possibly
be antisemites is prodigious! As a matter of fact, Christianity, in its
human origins, is a religion of messianic and prophetic type, the spirit
of which, as utterly foreign to Greco-Roman spiritual culture as to
Hindu culture, was introduced into world religious thought by the Jewish
people. The âAryanâ spirit is neither messianic nor prophetic; to await
the coming of the Messiah the irruption Into history of forces beyond
history is foreign to it. Moreover, the fact that German anti-semitism
has evolved into anti-Christianity must be considered a highly
significant syinptom. A wave of anti-semitism has broken upon the world,
casting away the humanitarian theories of the nineteenth century and
daily threatening to submerge new lands. In Germany, in Poland, In
Rumania, In Hungary this movement is triumphant, and It is taking shape
even in France, the country most fully saturated with liberal ideas,
where it had suffered a defeat after the Dreyfus affair. The first
alarming signs of the disease can be detected In the publication of
Celineâs book,[2] a veritable call to a pogrom; and they are also
betrayed by the fact that a growing number of Frenchmen reproach Leon
Blum with his origins, even though he is one of the most honest,
idealistic and cultured of political figures In the country.
Anti-semitism is coming to the surface of political life with glaring
obviousness, and the press gives us a daily account of this process.
The Jewish question, however, is not simply one of politics, economics,
law or culture. It is incomparably more profound than that, a religious
question with a bearing upon the fate of mankind. It is the axis about
which religious history turns. How mystifying is the historic destiny of
the Jews! The very preservation of this people is rationally
inconceivable and inexplicable. From the point of view of ordinary
historical estimates it should have vanished long ago. No other people
in the world would have survived the fate which has befallen it. By a
strange paradox, the Jewish people, an historic people par excellence
who introduced the very concept of the historic into human thought, have
seen history treat them mercilessly, for their annals present an almost
uninterrupted series of persecutions and denials of the most elementary
human rights. Yet, after centuries of tribulation which have strained
its powers to the full, this people has preserved its unique form, known
to all and often cursed. No other nation would have resisted a
dispersion lasting so long without in the end dissolving and
disappearing. But, according to Godâs impenetrable ways, this people
must apparently be preserved until the end of time. As for trying to
explain its historic destiny from the materialist standpoint, this is to
court certain defeat. Here we touch upon one of the mysteries of
history.
The Jewish problem may be viewed from many sides, but it assumes a
particular importance, as a problem essentially bound up with
Christianity. In the past anti-semitism was fomented and propagated
above all by Christians, for whom, precisely, it should have been least
conceivable. Did not the Middle Ages witness the persecution and
annihilation of the Jews by the feudal knights who thus avoided having
to pay their debts! There can be no doubt that Christians bear a heavy
burden of sin in regard to the people of Israel, and it is upon
Christians that the duty of protecting them now rests. We know that this
is already the case in Germany. It is not without value to recall, in
this matter, the fact that Wladimir Solovyev [3] believed the defence of
the Jews to be one of the important missions of his life. For us
Christians the Jewish problem does not consist in knowing whether the
Jews are good or bad, but whether we are good or bad. For it is more
important that I should consider this question with reference to myself
rather than to my neighbour, since I am always inclined to accuse him.
It must be sadly confessed that the Christians have not risen to the
height of the revelation they have received, and have in general been
considerably inferior to the Jews.
The Christians and their Churches have a great many things to repent. We
have just spoken of the Jewish problem, but we could also mention the
social problem, that of war, that of their perpetual compliance with the
most hideous regimes, and so forth. The question of inherent Jewish
imperfections is of no importance in principle at this point. It is
futile to deny them, for they are many. There is in particular a Jewish
self-importance which is irritating, but it can be psychologically
accounted for: this people, always oppressed by others, has sought
compensation in the idea of its Election and its high mission. In the
same way, the German people, oppressed during the years after the war,
found reparation in the idea that it formed a superior race with a
vocation to dominate the world. Likewise the proletariat, the most
oppressed class in capitalist society, finds a remedy for the effects of
this humiliation in the conviction of its own messianic mission, namely
to emancipate humanity. Every individual, every class or people, defends
itself as best it can against the inferiority complex.
The Jewish people is a strange people reconciling the most diametrically
opposite qualities. Within it the best traits blend with the lowest, the
thirst for social justice with the tendency towards gain and capitalist
accumulation. The Russian people, because of its polarized nature and
its messianic consciousness, shows certain similarities to the Jewish.
Anti-semites âfreely invoke the fact that the Bible bears witness to the
cruel spirit of the Hebrews. But what people could flatter itself upon
exemption from cruelty? Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians did
they display greater forbearance? Did not the Greeks, to whom we owe the
greatest culture in the world, show certain imperfections? In truth,
every people must be judged by its greatest heights, not by its lowest
depths. The German people must be judged by its great philosophers, its
mystics, its musicians, its poets, not by its Prussian Junkers and its
shopkeepers. In the same way, the Jewish people, which has a religious
vocation, must be judged by its prophets and its apostles, and not by
its money-lenders. Everyone is free to have his national sympathies and
antipathies. Some people harbour an acute dislike for the Poles or the
Rumanians. It is scarcely possible to remedy this state of affairs, for
love cannot be ordered and it is difficult to overcome an unconsidered
antipathy. At any rate hatred for a whole people is a sin in the same
category as murder, and he who harbours it in his heart must bear the
responsibility.
The question we are dealing with here is still more complex in its
reference to the Jews, for they cannot be classed as a national entity.
They lack many accepted attributes of a nation, and on the other hand
they possess traits which cannot be classified as national. Israel is a
people with an exceptional religious destiny, and it is this which
determines the tragic element in its historic destiny. How could it have
been otherwise? Godâs chosen people, who at one and the same time gave
us the Messiah and rejected him, could not have an historic destiny like
that of other peoples. Their descendants are forever strengthened and
united by the exclusive possession of their religious destiny.
Christians are bound to acknowledge the Election of the Jewish people,
for their religious doctrine demands it, but they do so most often
against their will and try as much as possible to forget it.
We are living in an age of ferocious nationalism, of the worship of
brute strength, of a veritable return to paganism. By a strange turn of
events, we are witnessing a process diametrically opposed to the
christianizing and humanizing of human societies. Nationalism should be
condemned by the Christian Church as a heresy, and the Catholic Church
is not far from pronouncing this verdict. But nationalism is not the
only force which should be held responsible for implanting
anti-semitism. To find the roots of it one must dig more deeply. There
un-deniably exists a mystical fear of the Jews. True, it is experienced
by creatures of a fairly low cultural level who can be easily infected
by myths and legends of the most debased variety, but it plays havoc
none-the-less for that.
How paradoxical the Jewish destiny is! In fact we see them passionately
seeking an earthly kingdom, without, however, possessing their own
State, a privilege enjoyed by the most insignificant of peoples; they
are fired with the messianic idea of their Election to which are
related, however, contempt and persecution at the hands of other people;
they reject the Cross as a temptation, while their whole history
presents nothing but a perpetual crucifixion. Perhaps the saddest thing
to admit is that those who rejected the Cross have to carry it, while
those who welcomed it are so often engaged in crucifying others.
Anti-semitism takes many forms which can evidently exist together and
support each other. I shall not pause over the anti-semitic feelings of
the average man, displayed in sarcasm, comical imitations and a contempt
for the Jews whom he refuses to treat as his equals; although these do
not play a minor part, they are in principle irrelevant, since they are
generally unconnected with any ideology. It is in racial anti-semitism,
the variety which is anyhow most widespread, that a real ideology
appears. Germany is its classical cradle, and we find that even her most
outstanding and famous men such as Luther, Fichte or Wagner felt hostile
to Israel. This ideology holds that the Jews are an inferior race
despised by the rest of humanity to whom they are themselves hostile.
But, on the other hand, it considers this inferior race to be the
strongest, eternally triumphant over all the others wherever free
competition exists. Is there not a certain contradiction here?
Racial anti-semitism is plainly ruled out for the Christian, since it is
inevitably barred by the uni-versalism of his faith. This universalism,
precisely, is the cause of the persecution of Christians in Germany,
Christianity proclaimed that there was no longer Greek nor Jew. It
speaks to the whole of humanity and to every individual irrespective of
his race, his nationality, his class and his social position.
Not only racial anti-semitism, but racialism pure and simple does not
bear criticism from three points of view: religious, moral and
scientific. The Christian cannot accept it, for it is Inhuman, it
rejects the dignity and the value of man in admitting that he can be
treated as an enemy who may be destroyed. Racialism presents the crudest
form of materialism, singularly cruder than that of economic
materialism. It corresponds to an extreme determinism and a final
negation of spiritual freedom. Members of the outcast races suffer the
fatal consequences of their blood and cannot hope for salvation.
Economics depends upon ideas, not upon physiology and anatomy, and its
determining factors are after all not conditioned by the shape of the
skull and the colour of the hair. Thus, racial ideology is dehumanized
in a greater degree than proletarian ideology. From the standpoint of
social class, in fact, a man may gain salvation by proceeding to
transform his conscience, for example by adopting the Marxist conception
of the world. Even if he is by birth a bourgeois or an aristocrat he can
hope to become a peopleâs commissar. Neither Marx nor Lenin was a
proletarian. From the racial point of view, however, the Jew can have no
salvation; neither conversion to Christianity, nor even adherence to
national socialist doctrine can help him in the least. Blood overrules
any development of conscience.
From the purely scientific point of view racialism is yet again
inconsistent. As a matter of fact, contemporary anthropology considers
the very concept of race to be extremely dubious. Racialism is really
founded upon mythology rather than upon science. The category of race
depends not at all upon anthropology and history, but upon zoology and
prehistory. History is only conscious of nationalities, the result of a
complex inter-mixture of blood. The notion of the chosen Aryan race is a
myth developed by Gobineau,[4] a remarkable artist and highly sensitive
thinker who intended to justify not anti-semitism but aristocratism; at
any rate, his value as an anthropologist is more than debatable. The
notion of the chosen race is a myth of the same order as that of the
chosen class. But a myth can be very effective in practice; it can carry
an explosive dynamic energy and move the masses to action, for they are
not much concerned with scientific truth, nor with the plain truth
either. We live in an era especially fertile in myths, but their
quality, alas, is of a low order. The only serious racial philosophy to
have existed in history is that of the Jews. The synthesis in which
blood, religion and nationality were fused, the faith in a peopleâs
Election, the concern for racial purity, are so many ideas of Jewish
origin. I sometimes wonder whether the German racialists are aware of
the influence they submit to. Racialism contains precisely no Aryan
element. The Hindu and Greek Aryans were far more in favour of
individualism. At the same time there is a profound difference between
Jewish and German racial philosophies. The former is universal and
messianic, while the latter is an aggressive particularism aiming to
conquer the world. This racialism undeniably marks a lamentable relapse
into barbarism and paganism.
There is also a form of anti-semitism which may be called political and
economic, for here politics serves as the tool of economics. It is a
particularly vile variety, since it springs from the idea of competition
and the struggle for superiority. The Jews are accused of speculation
and of self-enrichment at the expense of other peoples. Most often,
however, it appears that those who accuse them reveal not so much a
contempt for this kind of risky enterprise, as a desire to go in for it
themselves and finally to triumph over the Jews. In these circumstances,
it will be agreed that the argument loses something of its value.
Still more often hatred of the Jews corresponds to the need of having a
scapegoat. When men feel unhappy and connect their personal misfortunes
with historic ones, they try to make someone responsible for it. This
state of mind does not of course do honour to human nature, but man is
so constituted that he feels relief and satisfaction when he has found a
culprit whom he can hate and on whom he can take reprisals. Now nothing
is easier to exploit, in men whose thought is crude and credulous, than
the culpability of the Jews. The emotional soil is always ready to
receive the myth of the Jewish world conspiracy, of the secret forces of
Jewish freemasonry, etcetera. I think it beneath my dignity to refute at
this point the authenticity of the âProtocols of the Elders of Zionâ,[5]
for any man who has preserved a rudimentary psychological sense
realizes, in reading this counterfeit document, that it is nothing but a
shameful falsification by the detractors of Israel. Moreover, it can now
be considered as proved by the police that this document is a
fabrication from beginning to end. I sometimes happen to meet men who
try to blame someone for every iniquity and are ready to attack the
Jews, the Freemasons, etcetera. When they ask: âWell, then, whose fault
is it?â âWhat!â I reply: âWhose fault? You and I are mostly to blame/
This accusation is the only one which seems to me worthy of Christians.
Besides I find something humiliating in this fear and hatred of the
Jews; the result is that people regard them as very powerful, and think
themselves unable to stand up to competition with them. The Russians
were inclined to believe that they were weak and powerless when they
possessed an immense State with an army, a Secret Service and a police
force, and they used to regard the Jews, who were deprived of elementary
human rights and persecuted, as invincible in the struggle. There is
something childish in this. The pogrom is not only a shameful and
inhuman thing: to me it is a sign of terrifying weakness and
incompetence. In fact, if we return to the source of anti-semitism, we
will find a confession of lack of ability, for how are we to interpret
the regrets we hear expressed that Einstein who discovered the law of
relativity, Freud[6] and Bergson are of Jewish origin, if not as the
resentment of men themselves devoid of talent? These reactions contain
an element which is pitiable. As I see it, there is only one way to
fight against the alleged Jewish domination in science and philosophy,
and that is to get on with research ourselves, to make great discoveries
ourselves. Here we can only fight by producing our own creations, for
the realm of culture is that of liberty. Now liberty is a test of
powers. And it would be humiliating to think that this liberty could
always be in favour of the Jews, to the detriment of the others.
Another grievance against the Jews must be faced. They are accused of
having laid the foundations of capitalism and socialism. But it would
seem desirable as much for supporters of capitalism as for those of
socialism to give some credit to the âAryansâ. After all, one canât
surrender everything to the Jewsl Yet, indeed, it is they who have made
all the scientific discoveries, distinguished themselves as eminent
philosophers, founded capitalist industry, recruited the world socialist
movement, concentrated into their hands public opinion, the press,
etcetera. I avow that as an âAryan* my self-respect is wounded, and I
refuse to accept this point of view. I will pause to consider the
creation by the Jews of capitalism and socialism.
To begin with, if a reproof has to be formulated on both counts, no
single person can utter it. Indeed, if the fact that the Jews founded
capitalism is regarded as a virtue by supporters of that regime, their
contribution to socialism is praiseworthy from the point of view of
socialists. A choice must therefore be made between these two
accusations. A well-known work by Sombart [7] argues that the Jews
played a predominant part in the birth of capitalism. Actually European
capitalism saw the light of day among Florentine merchants.[8]
None-the-less, that the Jews took an active part in its development is
beyond question, likewise the fact that they amassed great sums of
capital in their hands. Their particular qualities, developed in the
course of history, counted for much in this process. If the Jews
practised usury in the Middle Ages, it must not be forgotten that this
was the sole profession permitted to them at the time. I think it an
injustice to stigmatise the Jewish race with having created the figure
of the usurer and the banker, while pretending not to know that it has
created equally the model of the idealist, completely devoted to an
idea, of the unworldly living entirely for higher purposes. Further, if
we admit that the Jews were active in founding capitalism, we can hardly
deny that the âAryansâ laboured eagerly in the same cause. Those who
reproach the Jews with having begotten capitalism are not generally
opponents of this regime, and their invective springs mainly from a
feeling of spite or envy, a desire to predominate in competition. It is
curious to observe that Karl Marx, a Jew and a socialist, was in certain
respects anti-semitic. In his article on the Jewish question, which
worries a great many Marxists, he accuses the Jews of introducing
capitalist exploitation. Thus Marxâs revolutionary anti-semitism refutes
the legend of the Jewish world conspiracy. Marx and Rothschild, though
both Jews, are implacable enemies and could not co-operate in one and
the same conspiracy. Marx fought against the power of capital, Jewish
capital included.
The second allegation, to the effect that the Jews instigated socialism
and have been the chief agitators of revolutionary movements, can
apparently come only from those who feel no disdain for capitalism and
would like to protect the regime. To this we shall reply that in all
revolutions those elements which are wronged and oppressed, whether they
be nationalities or classes, will always play the biggest part. That is
why the proletariat has always raised the standard of revolt. For my
part, I hold that their championing of a more equitable social order is
to the honour of the Jews.
To tell the truth, all the attacks can be finally reduced to a single
complaint: the Jews aspire to power and world domination. This reproach
would have a moral meaning on the lips of those who abjured power and
dominion. Alas! the âAryansâ and the âChristian-Aryansâ whose faith
exhorts them to seek the kingdom which is not of this world have always
been infatuated with worldly supremacy. Not only have the Jews never had
world sovereignty, but they have never had even a particle of
sovereignty, while Christians have been in possession of mighty states
and have pursued a policy of expansion and empire.
Let us now turn to the type of anti-semitism with a religious basis, the
most serious type and the only one worthy of study. It is chiefly this
variety that Christians once professed. It holds the Jews to be a race
reproved and accursed, not by reason of the blood in their veins, but
because they rejected Christ. Religious anti-semitism is, in fact,
confused with anti-Judaism and anti-Talmudism. The Christian religion
actually is opposed to the Jewish religion in the form it took after the
refusal to see the awaited Messiah in Christ. The Judaism which preceded
Christâs coming, and that which succeeded it, are two distinct spiritual
manifestations. A profound paradox must be observed in the fact that the
divine incarnation, the assumption by God of human form, arose in the
heart of the Hebrew people, to whom this mystery was even less
acceptable than it was to the pagans. Indeed, the idea that God could
become man seemed a sacrilege to the Jews, an assault upon divine power
and transcendence. For them God is continually active in our human life,
even in its slightest details, but he does not become unified with man,
never fuses with him and could not borrow his likeness. There lies the
gulf separating the Christian conscience from the Jewish. Christianity
is the religion of God-humanity, and trinitarian, while Judaism is a
pure monotheism. Indeed the chief reproach uttered by the Jews against
Christianity is that it constitutes a betrayal of the One God in whose
place it puts the Trinity. Christians base their religion upon the fact
that there appeared in history a man who called himself God, the Son of
God. Now, to the rigid Jewish conscience, man can only be prophet or
Messiah, but never God. The man who could take this title as his own is
not the true Messiah. Here is the crux of the universal religious
tragedy. The pagans had many god-men and men-gods; according to them the
gods were always immanent in human and cosmic life. Moreover, they had
no difficulty in admitting the incarnation; indeed it harmonized with
their aesthetic conception of the world. It was not so with the Jews.
Among them no man could look upon Godâs face and live. However, the
question suddenly arose not merely of looking upon it, but of
recognizing it in human features. Worse still, the Jewish conscience was
faced with a yet more insuperable obstacle. It had never conceived of a
God other than great and powerful; now, as the highest temptation, it
was offered a crucified God to worship. Godâs humiliation, willed by God
himself, seemed a sacrilege, a betrayal of the ancient faith in the
glory and majesty of God. These beliefs, hard-set and deeply rooted,
gave rise to the rejection of Christ.
So throughout Christian history voices were raised to anathematize the
Jews, guilty of having crucified Christ, and to assert that from then
onwards they bore a curse, which they brought upon themselves when they
allowed the blood of Christ to fall upon themselves and upon their
children. Christ was rejected by the Jews because he was not the Messiah
who should found the kingdom of Israel, but revealed himself as a new
God, suffering and humiliated, preaching a kingdom not of this world.
The Jews crucified Christ, Son of God, in whom the whole Christian world
believes. Such are the arguments used by the detractors of Israel who
overlook the fact that their condemnations betray a serious omission. It
is this: if Jews rejected Christ, Jews none-the-less were the first to
follow him. Who were the Apostles, forming the first Christian
community, if not members of the Jewish race? Why, then, see only the
backslidings and ignore the virtues? The Jewish people cried âCrucify
him! Crucify him!â But have not all peoples shown an extraordinary
propensity to crucify Godâs messengers to them, their teachers and their
great men? Everywhere prophets have been stoned. The Greeks condemned
Socrates, the greatest of their sons, to death by hemlock. Should we on
that account curse all their progeny? Besides, when we go a little
further into the question we shall be forced to admit that the Jews have
not been the only ones to crucify Christ. In the course of a long
history, the Christians, or rather those who have usurped the title,
have by their deeds contributed to this torture. They have done so,
among other things, by their anti-seniitism, their hatred and their
violence, their submission to the powerful of this world, their betrayal
of Christâs truth which they have adjusted to their own interests. Well,
it is better to renounce Christ openly than to use his name for
opportunist motives while building oneâs own kingdom.
When Jews are cursed and persecuted because they crucified Christ, the
principle of generic vengeance is accepted. This principle was inherent
in the Jewish people as in all peoples of antiquity. But this sort of
vengeance is unalterably opposed to Christianity, for it contradicts the
Christian idea of individual dignity and responsibility. Besides,
Christian morality permits no vengeance of any sort, neither that aimed
at the individual nor that which spreads and becomes transmitted to all
the descendants. Vindictiveness is sinful, and it is right to repent of
it Descent, race, reprisalsâall these notions are foreign to pure
Christianity; they have been brought into it from outside and derive
from the paganism of antiquity.
The Jewish problem is connected with the histo-riosophic theme of the
Second Coming. Does the kingdom of God belong exclusively to the other
world, or may we await it and prepare for its coming here and now?
Christ said âMy kingdom is not of this worldâ. From these words It has
generally been deducted that efforts aimed at bringing it about were in
vain. It was sadly confirmed that our earthly city could not possibly be
removed from the power of the prince of this world, although indeed the
latter was highly venerated by professed Christians. Upon this notion
was constructed the Christian state, in which no evangelical truth was
realized. However, Christâs words may have another meaning; they may
mean that the kingdom of God does not resemble earthly kingdoms, that
its foundations are different, that its justice is diametrically opposed
to the law obtaining here below* In this case the Christians would be
wrong to submit to the prince of this world, wrong not to labour in
promoting the justice of Godâs kingdomânot to take up the task of
transforming this world.
Jacques Maritain,[9] leader of French Thomism and defender of true
Christian humanism, has written a remarkable article on Judaism which
has been published in a collection of essays called The Jews.[10] In it
he makes an interesting distinction between the Jewish and Christian
vocations. In his view the Christians welcomed the supernatural truth of
Christianity in its relation to heaven, while they neglected the
realization of justice in social life. The Jews, on the other hand,
rejected the supernatural truth of Christianity, while they appointed
themselves the messengers of truth on earth, the promoters of justice in
collective life. It is a fact that the idea of social justice was
introduced to the human conscience chiefly by Judaism. The ancient
Hebrew prophets were the first to demand truth and equity in social
relations, the first to espouse the cause of the humble and the
oppressed. The Bible gives us an account of a periodic redistribution of
wealth, the aim of which was to avoid its being monopolized by one group
and thereby to eliminate the radical distinction between rich and
poor.[11] The Jews, as we have seen above, took an active part in the
world socialist movement, directed against the power of capital. The
âAryansâ, for their part, easily came to terms with inequity. Thus, in
India, a caste regime, sanctioned by the religious conscience, was set
up. In Greece, the greatest philosophers did not reach the level of
condemning slavery.
Christians freely proclaim that the kingdom of God cannot be attained
without the Cross. In this they are completely right. Everything on our
sinful earth must be raised upon the Cross before it can enter the
kingdom of God. But they delude themselves when they hold this axiom up
against every attempt to clear the way for the achievement of Christâs
justice upon this earth. The unfortunate thing is that the Christians,
while accepting the Cross, should have neglected to put its message into
practice; although the final realization of Godâs kingdom is impossible
in this world and implies its transfiguration, a new heaven and a new
earth. Moreover, the representatives of historical Christianity, that is
to say Christianity adapted to the conditions of this world, were not in
the least disdainful of the things which are Caesarâs. Quite the
reverse: they acknowledged them as their own and consecrated them. Now
Caesarâs kingdom was just as far removed from ordinary human justice as
from Christian justice, and neither equity nor humanity was known to it.
Such were, in the past, the âChristian Statesâ, the Christian
theocracies, as they came into being both East and West.
The current objection expressed by the Jews against Christianity is that
the Christian faith cannot be realized, and that those who profess it
have proved this only too well. This faith demands a morality so high
that its laws are often in conflict with human nature. To support their
argument the Jews point to Christian social life, so unlike that
advocated by Christ, and confront Christianity with their own faith
which can be, and has been, put into practice. Salvador, an eminent
French Jewish thinker and scholar of the mid-nineteenth century who
wrote one of the first lives of Jesus, developed this theory.
Rosenzweig,[12] a notable Jewish religious philosopher who, with Martin
Buber,[13] translated the Bible into German, formulated the difference
between Judaism and Christianity in a curious way. According to him the
Jew is destined by his religion to remain in the Hebrew world of his
birth and should confine himself to improving and perfecting his
Judaism. He is not required to abdicate his nature. This is the reason
why the Jewish faith can be easily achieved. Now the Christian is by
nature pagan; in order to carry out the precepts of his faith he has to
withdraw from the world to which he belongs, repeal his nature, and
break with his original paganism. This is what makes the Christian faith
so difficult to apply in practice. We are reduced to inferring from
these assertions that the Jews, in short, are the only ones who are not
born pagans. In making this distinction Rosenzweig reaches a conclusion
in favour of Judaism. For my part I think his assertions do honour to
Christianity. The Divine Revelation is drawn from another world and
naturally seems ill-adapted to this world, naturally requires an advance
along the line of greatest resistance. Having said this, we must agree
that the Christians have done everything to discredit their faith in the
eyes of their adversaries. They have terribly abused the argument of its
inaccessibility. They have drawn the most harmful deductions from the
doctrine concerning human nature, invoking this in order to yield to sin
and to contrive a system enabling them to adapt themselves to it.
Constantin Leontyev, a very sincere and acute thinker, is in this
respect especially instructive. He reduced Christianity to the salvation
of the soul in the next world, to what he called âtranscendent egoismâ
and rejoiced because Christian justice could never be instituted on
earth, for this achievement would have been out of harmony with his
pagan aesthetic. Borrowing Rosenzweigâs terminology, we can say that
Leontyev [14] remained In his pagan world and only wished to withdraw
from it with the help of monastic asceticism in order to save his own
soul. We must admit that these errors have done the greatest harm to
Christâs cause; but do not let us forget that they must be imputed to
Christians and not to Christianity.
Can the Jewish problem be resolved within the bounds of history? That is
a tragic question. Whatever the answer may be, the solution does not
seem to lie in assimilation, the nineteenth centuryâs hypothesis which
did honour to its humanitarian feelings. Today, alas, we are not living
in a century of mercy, and the events we are witnessing give us little
hope of seeing the problem solved by the fusion of Jews with other
peoples. Besides, we must observe that this solution would have meant
their disappearance. There is likewise no room for optimism on the
ground that this riddle will be answered by the establishment of an
autonomous Jewish state, in other words by Zionism. The Jews experience
persecution even in the land of their forefathers. In any case this
solution does not, in our view, appear to conform with the messianic
mission of the Jewish people. Israel is and remains a wandering people.
It might be said that its destiny is eschatological and will find no
solution till the end of time. This hypothesis is not, however, a reason
for Christians
to cast off their human duties to the Jews. In the Apostle Paul we find
mysterious words wherein he affirms that all Israel shall be saved.
These words are variously interpreted, for some understand by Israel not
only the descendants of the Hebrew people, but also Christendom, that is
to say, the new Israel. At all events, it is very possible that the
Apostle Paul had in mind the conversion of the Jews to Christianity and
attached a particular value to this.
If we are witnessing the development of an insane anti-semitism we are
also witnessing at the same time an increase in Jewish conversion to
Christianity. This manifestation is of no interest to racial
anti-semites for whom the material fact of blood overrides the spiritual
fact of faith. But so-called religious anti-semites ought to see in this
conversion the only possible solution to the problem. For my part I am
inclined to think there is indisputable truth in this. At any rate,
there should be no possible ambiguity upon this subject. There can be no
question of the Christiansâ demanding that the Jews be converted by
holding a knife at their throats and, should they refuse, of regarding
the pogrom as a natural sanction; this would be nothing but a monstrous
moral aberration utterly unrelated to faith. In that case, why not
demand the conversion to Christianity of various âAryanâ peoples who
have remained aloof from it or who maintain a purely external
Christianity? Conversion to Christianity is, moreover, an essentially
personal thing, and It is doubtful whether we shall be able to confer
upon the whole peoples the title of âChristian* or âAnti-Christianâ in
the future.
In order that Jews may become converted it is of the highest importance
that Christians should make a start by getting converted themselves,
that is by becoming real believers and not formal ones. Those who hate
and crucify have no claim to be called Christians, whatever external
forms they may adopt. For it must not be forgotten that professed
Christians are the principal obstacle to the conversion oÂŁ the East, to
that of the Chinese and Hindus. The state of the so-called Christian
world, with its wars, its national hatreds, its colonial politics, its
oppression of the working classes, presents a formidable temptation.
Those of the faithful who think they are the most just, orthodox and
piousâit is precisely they who are held in the greatest contempt by the
lowly. Christians thrust themselves in between Christ and the Jews,
concealing the true image of the Saviour from them. It is possible for
the Jews to acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah, for this tendency
already exists in the heart of Judaism; it is possible for them to
declare the historical and religious error which resulted in the
rejection of Jesus to be a fatal one. But in so doing they will
recognize the crucified Messiah and, through him, the humiliated God.
The forms taken by present-day persecution of the Jews amount, from the
Christian point of view, to a final condemnation of anti-semitism. In
this fact must be found the virtue of Nazi racialism. This doctrine has
deep roots in Germany, but they do not draw sustenance from Christian
soil. To me this is some relief. I consider that anti-semitism based
upon orthodoxy, the kind which is widespread for example in Rumania, is
infinitely more harmful, for it compromises Christian faith and is not
even worth seriously refuting. Anti-semitism is fatally sure to develop
into anti-Christianity; it must reveal its anti-Christian nature. That
is what we are seeing today. Corresponding to this phenomenon, a process
of purification is going on within Christianity itself; Christian truth
is freeing itself from the accretions of the centuries. Thanks to these,
Christian truth had been adapted to the regimes in power, to everyday
social conventions, to a lower level of conscience and culture, and had
been made use of for particularly worldly ends. This process of
purification, which we owe partly to the fact that Christians are
themselves being persecuted, has brought two forms of Christianity into
relief: the old, tenacious of the acquired deformities, and the new,
trying to get rid of them and to renew its promises of fidelity to
Christ and to the evangelical revelation of Godâs kingdom. At all
events, true Christians, free from all formalism, nominalism and
conventionalism, will always be a minority.
The concept of the Christian state, which amounted to a serious lie and
a depreciation of Christianity, will henceforth exist no more.
Christians will struggle in the spirit, and, by doing so, will be able
to exert an inner influence which they had lost. To this end they will
have above all to uphold justice and not power which enables them to
prosper. It is they, precisely, who will have to come forward to defend
the dignity of man, the value of every single human being, irrespective
of his race, his nationality, his class and his position in society. It
is Man, the human ideal, freedom of spirit that the world is attacking
from every side. The attack is carried out partly through the
anti-semitic movement which rejects human dignity and human rights. The
Jewish question is a test of the Christian conscience and of its
spiritual strength.
There have always been, and there always will be, two races in the
world, and the boundary between them is more important than any other;
crucifiers and crucified, oppressors and oppressed, persecutors and
persecuted. It is superfluous to specify which one Christians should
belong to. Of course, in history the roles can be reversed but that does
not alter the truth. Today Christians are being persecuted as in the
early centuries. Today Jews are being persecuted as so often before in
history. These facts are worth thinking about.
Russian anti-semites, living in a condition of morbid emotion and
obsession, allege that the Jews rule Russia and oppress the Christians
there. This assertion is deliberately false. It was not the Jews in
particular who were at the head of militant atheism; âAryanâ Russians
also played an active part. I am even inclined to believe that this
movement rep resents a specifically Russian phenomenon. A nobleman, the
anarchist Bakunin, was one of its extreme representatives, as was Lenin
too. It was precisely on the subject of Russian nihilism and the inner
dialectic of its nature, that Dostoievsky made such sensational
revelations. It is just as false to maintain that Jews are ruling
Russia. Lenin was not a Jew, neither were the principal leaders of the
movement, nor the masses of peasants and workers who ensured the triumph
of the revolution. Those who were Jews have been shot or imprisoned.
Trotsky has become the object of an unanimous hatred. It would be
infantile to conceal the facts that the Jews played their part in this
social upheaval, that they formed an essential element of the
revolutionary intelligentsia, but this behaviour can be explained by
their previous position as oppressed people. That the Jews took part in
a fight for liberty I think a virtue. That they too resorted to terror
and persecution I consider not the outcome of any specific Jewish
quality, but of the hideous character of every revolution at a certain
phase in its development. In fact, the Jews were by no means Jacobins in
the terror, and besides, they form today an impressive percentage of
Russian emigres.
I recall that at the time I was still in Soviet Russia the owner of the
house I lived in, who was a Jew, used often to say to me: âYou donât
have to answer for Lenin being a Russian, while I shall have to answer
for Trotsky being a Jew. Isnât that a flagrant injustice?â As things
turned out, he had the good fortune to return to Palestine. As for me, I
am ready to accept my share of responsibility for Leninâs coming to
power. Unfortunately, facts do not exist for those whose thought is
determined by resentment and befogged by emotions and crazy obsessions.
Only a spiritual cure can open their eyes and give them a glimpse of
realities in their true light.
For
Cecilie Sarah Spears 1908â1936
THE PROBLEM of antl-semitism Is a perennial one. It has for over two
thousand years tested the strength of man in his efforts to wrestle with
it and even now, after the slaughter of six million victims and the
continued persecution of those who somehow survived the Hitlerian
cataclysm, the problem remains a formidable challenge to his conscience
and to the Christian world. Let it not be thought that anti-semitism
reveals itself only in mass carnage and in the sacrifice of a whole
people. It exists in an attitude which expresses itself albeit sometimes
innocently in a myriad form of slander, prejudice and intolerance. The
difference is not one of kind, but only one of force and emphasis. The
former is the more demoniac that assaults the mind, the latter corrodes
it slowly, tortuously, but none the less surely. Both can only lead to
the spiritual poverty of man and his degradation. Such would be the
ultimate effect of a phenomenon that has afflicted Western civilization
throughout its whole history, alike in time and in space. Some
indications of its enigmatic features can be gathered from the vast
literature that has sprung up endeavouring to assign to anti-semitism
causes of varying character and order.[15] It is only natural that it
should have attracted historians, sociologists, theologians and
psychologists and summoned their wisdom and research to its analysis.
Nor can it be said that their labours have been in vain. There has been
a great temptation on the part of many to claim for their individual
studies a con-clusiveness as bewitching as it is unmerited; but it
cannot be denied that their work has vastly broadened the general
historical background of anti-semitism and laid bare its multifarious
ramifications.[16] It is not my purpose here to dilate upon the
different definitions and causes of anti-semitism but it is necessary
briefly to indicate their main trends.
Of the many theories which have been propounded one maintains that
anti-semitism is the universal example of xenophobia, in this case a
primitive dislike of the Jews as representing a group which is
different, unfamiliar and strange and it is this quality of âothernessâ
in the Jew which is the primary cause of hostility towards him.[17] The
economic theory has it that the basic cause of anti-semitism must be
sought in the role of Jews in the modern world as the alleged
forerunners of capitalism and that the peculiar position they occupy in
the economic structure of modern society makes them the object of hatred
for those who are dissatisfied with that structure.[18] On the other
hand, the Marxists, who also adopt an economic interpretation, consider
anti-semitism as a weapon of the exploiters to deflect the attentions of
the expropriated proletariat away from its real enemy, capitalism. A
third theory, somewhat related to the first, asserts that the main cause
of the Jewish plight is of a politico-ethnic character, that is to say,
that the Jews everywhere persist as an alien minority amid a homogeneous
majority and as such must obviously invite the enmity of the nationalist
whose aim it is to attain the uniformity of nationality and culture.[19]
Yet another theory employs terms such as race, colour and blood in its
view that the Jew is biologically of a different and lower order than
the rest of mankind.[20] Accordingly, since it is impossible for the Jew
to escape from his fate, anti-semitism was, is and eternally will be.
The newest interpretations are contributed by the social psychologists
who use terms such as frustration, personal insecurity, rebellion
against authority, displaced aggression, and sadistic urgeâall and any
of which attitudes find concrete expression and outlet in the hatred and
persecution of the Jews.[21]
This very fragmentary treatment of the various approaches to
anti-semitism serves to point out how numerous and widely differing in
results are the attempts to arrive at a single, basic, primary cause.
Just as numerous and various are the attempts to find the solution to
this age-old problem. In this respect some of the less drastic theories
favour more scientific and humanistic education and the furtherance of
social relations amongst Jews and non-Jews. Others maintain that the
promotion of economic prosperity will minimise the effects of Jewish
competitionâin other words, only by considerable changes in the social
and economic order can anti-semitism be vanquished. More radical
propositions are, on the one hand, that the Jews should merge
completely, socially and religiously, in the dominant community and, at
the other extreme, that the Jews should end once and for all their
minority status by becoming a monolithic âone State, one People*
community in Palestine. Psychoanalysis calls for greater scientific
controls and techniques in an attempt to find out why certain
personalities are more prone to anti-semitism than others. Further,
there are the numberless less serious approaches advocating the
elimination of certain Jewish traits and unconsciously demanding a
perfection in the Jew such as obtains in no other being. It is somewhat
easier to enumerate the suggested interpretations and solutions of the
problem than to assess their individual merits. I shall confine myself
to the more important of them and briefly comment on what I consider to
be their limitations.
That education, both in the narrow sense of the assimilation of factual
data and in the comprehensive sense of the training and development of
character, can be of immeasurable importance in individual relationships
is beyond doubt. But different considerations arise in a group problem
such as is involved in the case of the Jews. What may be of extreme
educative value on the level of the individual, may be impotent in the
face of tension on the social and international plane. Furthermore,
practical experience dictates a certain caution in attributing to
education virtues which, in certain instances, it does not possess. The
existence of hatred and intolerance among the so-called literate and
civilized and the frequent absence of prejudice in the intercourse of
the simple and uneducated is a reminder of the difficulties to be
encountered in entertaining the solution that more education will
necessarily mean less bigotry.
Similarly, those who advocate a re-stratification of the economic order
are subject to the same limitations of over-simplification. While there
is no doubt that economic changes might eliminate the historically
conditioned âmarginalâ character of Jews in the economic field (a role
over which the Jews had no control), such changes would not necessarily
lessen the vulnerability of the Jews to attacks which are unrelated in
their origin to economic relations. The counsel that Jews should
actively sink their individual differences of social mores and religion
into the wider uniformity of the non-Jewish community is based on two
hypotheses hardly susceptible of proof: the first, that the non-Jews
will willingly accept into their society such assimilated Jews âsuch
evidence as there is shows only too clearly that at least in the past
they have not done soâand the second, that such a remedy is one which
Jews themselves can be persuaded to adopt. All else apart one cannot
discuss a problem in vacuo as if personal, spiritual and historical
factors did not exist. Furthermore, the so-called solution of
assimilation (when applied to an entire people) is, in essence,
diametrically opposed to a democratic society. Democracy advocates equal
rights for all cultural and ethnic groups and dare not, save at the risk
of its own annihilation, seek to impose a dominant way of life and
thought on a minority, a minority which has, as it happens, made
inestimable contributions historically to the living sources of
democracy.
In contradistinction to the idea of uniformity through assimilation,
there is that of segregation through the territorial concentration of
Jews. Such a solution, insofar as it may be one, is being realized in
Israel at this very hour. There can be no doubt that the creation and
development of a Jewish community in a normal and completely Jewish
atmosphere will cut away at the roots of anti-semitism in at least one
corner of the globe. There can likewise be no doubt that this heroic
experiment is having, and will have, a profound effect on Jews and
non-Jews throughout the world. Men of good will everywhere hope that it
will create a new vision of the Jew to replace the distorted image which
has so tragically characterized him throughout the ages. But to suppose
that anti-semitism will disappear or be considerably lessened with the
withdrawal of a fraction of the Jewish people to one soil, betrays a
fundamental error in the interpretation of the problem. A nationalist
remedy, however perfect in other respects can never be applied to a
disease which is, of its nature, an atrophy of the human heart. Here I
touch upon the main criticism which is to be levelled against all such
remedies as I have briefly mentioned.
I must repeat that the work of those who have undertaken the study of
the problem from different sociological angles is of extreme value. They
have shed new light on a dark and horrifying tragedy. Each has ventured
forth alone in his own particular world to return with tidings which
according to his eyes seem good but their virtue is also their
imperfection. Their peculiar partiality is their limitation. They have
preoccupied themselves with the superficial proximate occasions to the
exclusion of the basic causes. In the result we have had recourse to
consider the various types of anti-semitismâpolitical, economic, social
and psychological, but anti-semitism per se as a distinct phenomenon
would not, it seems, exist at all. It is true that these various types
do exist. Late nineteenth-century Bismarckian Germany was in fact that
cradle of modem political anti-semitism which later in this century
culminated in the Nazi frenetics of Nuremberg and Auschwitz. Moreover
there is ample evidence that anti-semitism expresses itself also in the
outbursts of certain economically insecure sections of the community
against the Jew whom they imagine to be a partner in a universally
prosperous hegemony aiming to dominate and enslave them. Yet again
anti-semitism appears in the malicious attacks of the envious and
frustrated who attribute to the Jews all the qualities of ambition,
energy and creativeness which they lackâor think they lack. But what we
have in all these cases is not anti-semitism traced to its source, but
the political, economic and social exploitation of an evil which in its
essence is neither exclusively political, economic or socialist in
origin. Jean Paul Sartre in his Portrait of the Anti-Semite (and this is
Its chief merit), has valiantly attempted to analyze the tortuous and
inconsistent elements of the psychology of the anti-semite and has shown
how extremely difficult it is to subject it to a rational critique.[22]
This estimate is referable to the different forms of anti-semitism we
have been discussing. They are the social rationalizations of a malady
which is hidden in the depths of the human soul. Even if we were to
accept the validity of these forms it is pertinent to enquire why, if
minorities are apt to arouse hostility among majority communities, does
the Jewish minority provoke that hostility to a degree and order unknown
in the case of any other? Why are criticisms directed against Jews which
could not possibly be directed against any other group within the
community even assuming that it embodied the same alleged faults and
imperfections? Why in the case of the Jews do otherwise responsible
people adopt standards of judgment and credulity which dispense with all
semblance of logic and reason?[23]
It is in the attempt to answer these questions that we realize the
limitation of the rationalistic and liberal approach to anti-semitism.
We do not mean rationalism has to be discarded; it has to be
transcended. In probing to the deeper roots of anti-semitism amid
sub-conscious strata of experience it is necessary to establish an
empiricism based on intuitive insights rather than on scientifically
demonstrable phenomena. Confronted with the inter-action of the
creatureliness of the human being and the Divine will of God we come
face to face with reality on a level which makes the greatest demands
upon our faith, love and charity. In this confrontation the emphasis is
not upon the impersonal character of social interpretations, but upon
the intensely personal situation of man and man. Seen in this
perspective, anti-semitism in essence is not the misdeeds of the
uncivilized few, or the mere peripheral by-product of a nationâs
malevolence or the imperfections of society. Rather does it lay bare the
evil inclination of man himself and the degradation of his divine image.
Our direct concern here is not society but man, his nature, his evil and
his destiny.
It is on this plane, and more particularly from the Christian point of
view, that Berdyaev approaches the question of anti-semitism. Proceeding
from the proposition that such interpretations of anti-semitism as have
been touched upon here do not go deeply enough into the problem,
Berdyaev concludes that the hatred of the Jews is an alienation of man
which is rooted in his sin-fulness. And where you have the fact of human
sin there you find also rebellion against the Christian idea and the
Christian ideal awaiting its fulfilment in historic terms. Hatred of the
Jews is not so much a problem for historians and sociologists as it is a
challenge to true Christians, going to the roots of their belief and
practice. For Berdyaev, as for many Christians, the Jewish question
belongs to the mysteries of human existence, that is to say, it is not a
question which cannot at all be solved, but one which is not at its
heart amenable to rational and logical analysis, for it cannot even be
comprehended without drawing on the inexhaustible sources of the human
spirit.
Berdyaev was not an orthodox Christian in the Western sense of the term.
Indeed it Is extremely difficult to classify him in terms of belonging
to âthe Russian Church* or as a proponent of a doctrine or even as an
adherent to a particular theology. His subjects are God, Christ and man
and in these Berdyaev moves, lives and has his being. The pattern of his
thought was not of the logical discursive order of the philosopher but
of the visionaryâs intuitiveness. He is essentially not a philosopher or
theologian but a mystic. Knowledge, for Berdyaev, is not a rationally
conceived body of philosophical or theological doctrine but a supreme
intuitive or creative insight into the meaning of existence. The term
âmysteryâ for him means a reality which can be penetrated only by an
immediate contact with the world of the spirit, a contact which, in
effect, transforms the conventional subject-object relationship into one
where the knower and the known enter into a union which, though concrete
and âexistentialâ within the subject, is not expressible in terms of
rational objectivity.[24] This distinction in Berdyaev between rational
and supra-rational degrees of knowledge is one of the main
characteristics of his approach to the Jewish as indeed to any other
question. In this respect he is at one with other Christian thinkers but
he is also strikingly dissimilar from them in the sense that he is
implacably opposed to what he calls the âobjectivisationâ of the human
spirit which finds its expression everywhere in this so-called Christian
world not least in the Hellenic rationalization of human experience that
is found in much of Christian dogma.[25] This opposition is displayed in
his attack on certain traditional western forms of Christianity which,
he maintains, are to be found at the root of the Jewish problem and the
genesis of the centuries-old persecution. This is the main theme of
Berdyaevâs thought concerning the relationship of Christianity and the
Jews.â
The Christian interpretation of the Jewish situation is, generally,
dominated by three central notionsââthe Chosen people/ âthe crucifixion
of Christ by the Jewsâ and âthe conversion of the Jews.â[26] These three
ideas have played a considerable role in the persecution of the Jews by
Christianity throughout the ages and it is this role which Berdyaev
condemns boldly and unequivocally and with the prophetic indignation and
fearlessness reminiscent of a PĂ©guy or a LĂ©on Bloy. In doing so he does
not play the part of a Christian heretic, as many have considered him,
but as one who more perhaps than others, sees in true Christianity the
key to the understanding of human life and destiny. He revolted
instinctively against any attempt to enslave mankind with stultifying
rationalizations of high ideals and his revolt is no less fierce when
that rationalization is a Church. Freedom from spiritual slavery
consists in the progressive unceasing creative effort to escape from a
Christianity when it becomes a mere authoritarian eccle-siology.
One of the reasons assigned to the survival of the Jewish people has
been their conviction of having been elected by God. To Berdyaev the
nature of the Jewish people in thus becoming inextricably bound up with
God is at the heart of the Jewish tragedy and the conclusive answer to
those who would attempt to classify it in general categories. A people
that encountered God at Sinai as a people cannot have a history like
that of other peoples. It has been preserved up to the present through
all the stupendous changes and all the misfortunes of the centuries
since âit enjoys the privilege of having God Himself as its
law-giver.â[27] This doctrine of the chosen people, which, if it confers
a privilege at all, is a privilege of responsibility. It implies above
all that the Jewish people accepts the call of its election not
automatically but only by assuming the âyoke of the Kingdom of Godâ The
principle of superiority has absolutely no place in this doctrine. The
essence of election is heaven-ward responsibility, not
self-glorification. For how otherwise can the fulminations of the
Prophets against the abuses of election have any meaning? That the Jews
have been chosen by God implies the unique function of Israel to
proclaim the importance of Divine justice among the nations: but the
Christian interpretation of election has served as a weapon to chastise
the Jews. Many Christians contend that the Jews were indeed the elect of
God (for what Christian could refute such abundant evidence as the Old
Testament affords?) but that they forfeited that status when they
rejected Jesus as the Christ. That this was not so was testified
pre-eminently by the Apostle Paul himself in his interpretation of the
meaning of the elect.[28] But, the words of Paul notwithstanding,
historical Christianity has claimed the right to the mantle of the
chosen people which the Jews let fall by their rejection of Jesus.
Berdyaev, departing radically from conventional Christian thought on
this point, speaks of the unwillingness of Christians to acknowledge the
Jews as a people with a unique religious destiny. Berdyaev recognizes
its dynamism in the religious history of Israel and analyses the
historical and spiritual factors in Jewish thought which militated
against Israelâs acceptance of a God made man. The words of Berdyaev
âawaken memories of the hundreds of years in which stress upon the Jewsâ
rejection of Christ has served to fan the flame of persecution and
hatred of the children of Israel.â[29]
The dual claim of Christians throughout the centuries, that the Jews
both rejected and crucified Christ, is one that has wrought untold
misery on the Jewish people. It is a claim which is embedded in a host
of factors, spiritual, historical and psychological. The part that the
Catholic and Protestant churches have played in the persecution of the
Jews in this respect is at once considerable and tragic. At the base of
many types of anti-semitism which are, on the surface, neither religious
nor theologicalâthey may be even agnostic or atheistic âthere can be
found the seeping and corroding influence of an early religious training
which has served to perpetuate the myth that âthe Jews killed Christ;â
The crucifixion story as preached and taught by the majority of
Christians can have no religious import whatsoever. It can only impress
the mind of the young with images which prevent them thereafter from
looking upon Jews in a normal light. The harm once inflicted is
ineradicable. It becomes a rampart which no lectures, sermons,
conferences on brotherhood and inter-faith fellowship can hope to
penetrate. Historical veracity on the one hand and the cruelty of the
theory of vengeance on the other have no place in the doctrines of
Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. The rejection and
crucifixion of Christ by the Jews has become the central pivot of
Christian indoctrination regardless of the fact that such teaching
disseminates the very seeds of the negation of Christ and the object of
his teachings. Berdyaev not only denounces such forms of Christianity
but mercilessly advances the âcrucifixionâ theory to its logical
conclusion. He is not so much concerned with the historical Jesus, but
with the Jesus of universal love and grace. Even assuming that the Jews
did crucify Jesus, argues Berdyaev, they were also the first to follow
him. The particular historical situation, whatever it may have been, can
have no relevance to the central issue which always was and will be
thisâwhere there is hatred, persecution, ignorance and prejudice with
regard to the Jews, there too is the crucifixion of Christ. Crucifixion,
for Berdyaev, is not an historical point in time, it is a passion which
is experienced at every moment. It is a source of great sorrow for
Berdyaev that, not least among the crucifiers are the Christians who
have for centuries accused the Jews of the very crime of which they
themselves are the most culpable. It is furthermore a sin for Christians
to arrogate to themselves the heavy responsibility of passing judgment
on others, for that prerogative belongs to God alone.
The Christian desire to convert the Jews has throughout the Christian
world likewise contributed greatly to the momentum of anti-semitism at
various epochs. This missionary zeal is fraught with many dangers for
both Christians and Jews. When the missionary desires to convert the Jew
in the advancement of his own sectarian interests, the Jew will react
violently. The spiritual arrogance of those who assert that they alone
have the true faith while others are in error cannot but result in the
exacerbation of existing antipathies and cause great psychological harm
to the Jews. On the other hand, the desire to convert the Jews to Christ
without membership of a particular church militates against certain
forms of Christianity, not least Roman Catholicism, which cannot desire
such conversion without negating the cardinal principles of its own
doctrine. This distinction between conversion to Christ and conversion
to Christianity is the touch-stone of the many difficulties which attend
the efforts of Christian missionaries. Berdyaev believes that conversion
to the spirit of Christ in certain circumstances may be possible but
condemns the Christian churches for attempting to convert Jews by
âholding the knife to their throat/ For Berdyaev, conversion to Christ
is an intensely personal matter and cannot possibly be considered as a
practical solution for a people like the Jewish people. Rather, says
Berdyaev, should Christians convert themselves into living Christians
and not nominal external Christians who beneath the surface of rite and
ceremonial commit acts which constitute a perversion of the spirit and
the meaning of Christ. If, indeed, observes Berdyaev, Jews are to be
converted it cannot possibly be done by a Christian civilization which
is shot through with hatred, national rivalries, wars and oppression,
for these are evidence of the absence of Christ in the modern world and
the frustration of his designs for the Kingdom of God.
Berdyaevâs observations on the Jewish question and its relation with
Christianity are to be found in many of his works as well as in the
preceding essay. Written in 1940 before the Nazi holocaust had entered
its most savage phase, certain parts of it would seem to be
outdated.[30] In so far as it alludes to topical events this is indeed
so, but for its insight into a problem which remains after the defeat of
the erstwhile enemy it is of lasting significance. His message is
addressed to Christians and forms an integral part of his message to his
generation on all issues which affect Christian life. Berdyaevâs thought
is an adventure rather than a closed system since he does not claim to
proceed along the theoretic lines of academic philosophy.[31] âI have
deliberately over-stepped the limits of philosophical, theological and
mystical knowledge so dear to the Western mind as well in Catholic and
Protestant circles as in the sphere of academic philosophy.â[32] The
true aim of the thinker
according to Berdyaev Is first to accept the polarity of lifeâs
experience and then to live out the paradox to its ineluctable
conclusion. This is perhaps one of the most singular characteristics of
Berdyaev. He is more concerned to live out his thought existentially
than to present a balanced scheme of thought that pleases the mind but
offends the spirit. In this respect he is an existentialist in the line
of St. Augustine and Kierkegaard rather than a creator of rational
systems in the line of Leibnitz and Hegel. If the relentless struggle
for Christ so demands, doctrines hitherto established and accepted must
be repudiated and discarded. Berdyaev was indeed a religious
revolutionary whose speculation about God was bound up with and
inseparable from the destiny of man. The meaning of human existence is
to be found in the interdependence of God and man and the
interpenetration of the human and divine worlds. There can be no
interpretation of man on earth unless it is also a prophetic vision of
his greatness in heaven. When that vision is bounded by the restrictions
on his own nature to the exclusion of influences higher than himself,
then in that moment there is no God and man has died. This biblical
relationship between man and God is one that cannot subsist merely in
coruscating speculations. It is a challenge by God which can only be met
by a response from man and that response must be, for Berdyaev, a
creative act rather than a credal or intellectual defence. The divinity
of man has ontological foundations in human nature and is not the result
merely of an historical event.[33] The drama of love between God and man
is one that is enacted in every generation, in every age, at every
moment of the Christian life. The modern world gives ample evidence of
the twilight of a civilization which has yielded uncompromisingly to a
distorted humanism by shutting out God and isolating man. The turning
point of humanism against man constitutes the very tragedy of modern
times. Humanism destroyed itself by its own dialectic... for the putting
up of man without God against God leads to manâs own negation and
destruction.â [34] Modern society and all its concomitant evils stand
condemned by Berdyaev as products of a secularized humanism which robs
the Christian spirit of its dynamism and produces in its turn a
civilization which, for all its pretension, is anti-Christian and
inhuman. The only escape for man from his self-willed isolation from the
God of the Bible is to restore the original relationship between man and
God. [35] The only alternative to a civilization which has throughout
the ages crucified Christ is the Christianization of manânot of his
Churches, his doctrines or his creeds but of his own personal life. The
only answer to the challenge of an evil world is the fulfilment of the
Christian ideal. As Berdyaev himself writes in the autobiographical
introduction to his Freedom and the Spirit, âall the forces of my
spiritual and of my mental and moral consciousness are bent towards the
inward understanding of the problems which press so hard upon me. But my
object is not so much to give them a systematic answer as to put them
forcibly before the Christian conscience/
It is against this background that Berdyaevâs approach to the Jewish
problem as outlined in the preceding essay must be considered. Hatred,
all hatred, is a sin. Hatred of an entire people is akin to murder. When
that people is the Jewish people without which Christ and Christianity
are inconceivable, professed Christians enlist in the forces of the
anti-Christ. âSemitism,â writes Berdyaev elsewhere, âhas been grafted on
to the Christian spirit and is indispensable to its destiny.â [36]
Anti-semitism is a revolt against the will of God that can only be
humbled by the confrontation of God by man. In this respect Christian
civilization has much to atone for. While preaching brotherhood of man
it has indulged in intolerance and persecution on a scale which recalls
the primitive darkness of a pagan world. While purporting to promote
ideals of peace, harmony and universal unity through Jesus Christ it has
readily condemned those whom it considers beyond salvation except
through its own faith. In order to safeguard the reality of the
historical Jesus it has, through anti-semi-tism, participated in the
denial of that which it seeks to affirm and become an idolator of
âhistorical sanctitiesâ. In the name of preserving a Church it has
tolerated and worked evil in its own midst. The service of Jesus Christ
has in this way become a Jesuolatry of the most enslaving kind. By
pronouncing judgment on the Jews as a smitten and eternally damned
people it has shown an arrogance which has consumed the vitals of its
own message. It hasâand this is worst of allârelieved the Christian of
his personal responsibility in face of the evil of anti-semitism and
granted him refuge behind an official barrier of ecclesiasticism.
Berdyaev denounces the Christianity of such a civilization in clear and
unmistakable accents. His essay, addressed primarily to the Christian
world, is not and does not claim to be the final answer to the problem
of anti-semitism. It is a methodological error in approaching
anti-semitism to believe that its study will produce solutions as if it
were a scientific or mathematical problem. In anti-semitism we come face
to face with man, his evil, and his potential spiritual greatness in
surmounting that evil. Spiritual reform as advocated by Berdyaev is not
a solution but a task, not an end but a beginning. The tenor of his
essay reflects Berdyaevâs impatience with those who would reject the
âproximate* human solution in favour of the disillusionment of what they
imagine to be the final answer to the problem. No interpretations and no
solution can be adumbrated without considering the individual
responsibility that each Christian bears for the existence of
anti-semitism. In many ways Berdyaevâs essay is a confession of sin, a
sin that can and must be expiated by Christians in the light of their
supreme faith in the dignity and worth of the individual as precious in
the eyes of God.
The Christian can no longer rest in exclusive doctrines as if they were
divine judgments and not, as indeed they are, human conjectures. The
true Christian can no longer believe that grace is stored up for the
Church whilst for ever denied to those who do not bear allegiance to the
Church. The Christian who affirms he has seen and lives in Jesus the
Christ must bear the responsibility for his presumptiveness in
proclaiming that there can be no peace and no rest for a people that has
chosen to follow its own spiritual destiny. If the Church chooses to
create a boundary between the saved and the damned by substituting what
it conceives to have been an historical moment for the message of
Christ, then the true Christian may be duty-bound to leave its confines.
This is the gravamen of Berdyaevâs thought on the problem of
anti-semitism. He confronts his readers with a challenge which demands a
personal response, transcending the limitations which ecclesiocracy
would seek to impose. Anti-semitism in all its forms must be condemned
by the Christian not only in its formal encyclicals, its edicts and its
institutions, but in the personal Christian act and in the flowering of
the Christian spirit.
Revelation means, if it means anything at all, that the Christian must
struggle not with others but with himselfâand in his triumph he will
have conquered not the wickedness he sees, or thinks he sees, in others,
but the evil which lies buried in his own soul.
[1] French Catholic, a novelist, philosopher and Christian thinker
(1846â1917), whose vigorous style and prophetic condemnation of
contemporary society made him one of the most dominating figures of his
time. A study of his life and work has recently appeared: Leon Bloy â
Pilgrim of the Absolute, edited by Raiâssa Maritain with an introduction
by Jacques Maritain (London, 1948). Many of Berdyaevâs thoughts on the
Jews can be traced to Bloyâs writings. The quotation here is from his Le
Vieux de la Montague which also contains the striking words:
âAnti-semitism ... is the most horrible slap in the face suffered in the
ever continuing Passion of our Lord. It is the most stinging and the
most unpardonable because He suffers it on His Motherâs Face and at the
hands of Christians/
[2] Louis Ferdinand Celine (Destouches) psychopathic French anti-semite.
Berdyaev is most certainly referring to his Bagatelle pour un Massacre
(1938). Celine, after fraternising with the Germans, was after the war
exiled to Copenhagen. In a statement issued by him by way of defence to
charges of collaboration with the Nazis, Celine wrote: âThe Jews should
erect me a statue for the harm I omitted to do them though I could have
done/
[3] One of the most remarkable of nineteenth-century Russian religious
philosophers. A Platonist, he pleaded for the effective realization of
Christian truth both in the personal and in the social worlds. See
Berdyaevâs The Russian Idea (pp. 214â215) and Slavery and Freedom (p.
229). He also concerned himself profoundly with the subject of birth,
sex and death and his ideas thereon are formulated in his The Meaning of
Love (London, 1945).
[4] Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1816â1882). French diplomat and man of
letters who wrote widely on ethnological and philosophical subjects. His
Essai sur UlnegaliU des Races Humaines, to which Berdyaev here refers,
maintained that the nobility of a nation and its capacity to produce
creative talent and genius depended upon its Aryan racial content. He
was the father of racial anti-semitism and profoundly influenced the
English-born Houston Stewart Chamberlain whose The Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century (London, 1899) became the classic of intellectual
racial anti-semitism.
[5] One of the most notorious forgeries of the century. Originally a
satire on Napoleon III written by a French Catholic lawyer (Dialogue aux
Enfers entre Montesquieu et Machiavel), it was refurbished to appear as
the secret plot of the Jews to achieve world domination. The background
of this fantastic document and its eventual exposure is contained in an
admirable chapter in James Parkesâ An Enemy of the People^ Anti-semitism
(London, 1945).
[6] It is worthy of note to recall Freudâs interpretation of the Jewish
question in his Moses and Monotheism: âThe hatred for Judaism is at
bottom hatred for Christianity and it is not surprising that in the
German National Socialist revolution this close connection of the two
monotheistic religions finds such clear expression in the hostile
treatment of both* (p. 145). Akin to this theory but from a different
viewpoint is that of Maurice Samuel in his The Great Hatred (London,
1943).
[7] Berdyaev is referring to The Jews and Economic Life published
originally in Leipzig in 1911 by the French Huguenot Werner Sombart
which, in the economic field, has been equated with Gobineauâs essay in
the racial sphere. See Miriam Beard, op. cit.» pp. 363 ff. Sombartâs
thesis has been much modified by R. H. Tawney in his Religion and the
Rise of Capitalism and others.
[8] This is the view expressed by, among others, A. Fan-fani in his
Catholicism, Protestantism and Capitalism (London, 1939; p. 7).
[9] Maritain wrote a significant essay Anti-semitism (London, 1939)
which, although written from an orthodox Catholic viewpoint, has many
points of contact with Ber-dyaev in its denunciation of anti-semitism as
a spiritual crime and its call to Christians for a new humanism
orientated to the message of Christ. Maritain has some very interesting
comments on the Jewish question in Redeeming the Time (London, 1943; pp.
123â172).
[10] Berdyaev refers to the essay âLâimpossible Anti-s&ni-tismeâ
published in Les Juifs (Paris, 1937) and in particular to p. 54. The
essay ends significantly with the same quotation from Bloy as appears at
the beginning of Berdyaevâs.
[11] The twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus.
[12] Franz Rosenzweig died in 1929 at the early age of forty-three after
suffering from paralysis for over eight years. A German Jew, he was one
of the most prominent religious thinkers of his age. His output was
small in quantity, consisting mainly of The Star of Redemption in which
the existential divine-human encounter idea is fully developed âand a
volume of letters. Writing to his mother on the subject of anti-semitism
Rosenzweig remarks: âThe fact of anti-semitism, age-old and ever
present, though totally groundless, can only be comprehended by the
different functions which God has assigned to the two communitiesâ
Israel to represent the eternal Kingdom of God, Christianity to bring
itself and the world toward that goal/
[13] Martin Buber was profoundly inspired by Rosenzweig and in his turn
has profoundly influenced many Christian thinkers. His classic work I
and Thou (Edinburgh, 1937) is a poetic expression of the reality of
spiritual life where the human âI* yearns for Godânot the objectivised
God, to use Berdyaevâs phraseâbut the profoundly personal immediate
Godâthe relationship between man and God which is first encountered in
the Bible. This theme is further developed in his Between Man and Man
(London, 1947)* The âdivine-human* world of Berdyaev finds more than an
echo in Buberâs Jewish conception of Israel. âThe unity of nationality
and faith which constitutes the uniqueness of Israel is not only our
destiny, in the empirical sense of the word; here humanity is touched by
the Divineâ (Israel and the World, New York 1948 p. 169).
[14] A sociologist and philosopher of history of the nineteenth century
and a Russian precursor of Nietzsche and Spengler. Berdyaev in The
Russian Idea contrasts him with Solovyev referred to above. Indifferent
to the sufferings of humanity and to the dignity and freedom of the
individual, Leontyev ended his life in a monastery.
[15] Of the numerous studies dealing with the sources of anti-semitism,
perhaps the most comprehensive is Jews in a Gentile World edited by
Isacque Graeber and Stewart Henderson Britt (London, 1942). This is a
symposium to which experts in the fields of sociology, history,
psychology and philosophy have contributed and demonstrates how complex
is the problem of anti-semitism. Particularly readable is James Parkesâ
The Jew and his Neighbour: a study of the causes of anti-semitism
(London, 1939).
[16] For a broadly based historical introduction see H. Valentinâs
Anti-semitism Historically and Critically Examined. London 1936.
[17] This view is taken by Arthur Ruppin, the late Professor of Social
Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Fate and Future of
the Jewish People (London, 1940). See also on this point Louis Golding
in The Jewish Problem (London, 1938).
[18] Miriam Beard in her paper âAnti-semitismâProduct of Economic Mythsâ
in Jews in a Gentile World (pp. 362 ff.) deals with economic factors
that have been the alleged source of so much anti-semitism.
[19] Valentin, op. cit., pp. 18â19.
[20] Valentin, op. cit., p. 51.
[21]
J. F. Brown; âThe Origin of the Anti-Semitic Attitudeâ in Jews in a
Gentile World (pp. 124 ff.): âThe Jew is thus a particularly apt
target for displaced aggression for a variety of psychological
as well as cultural reasons* (p. 140).
[22] Sartre sees anti-semitism in A Portrait of the Anti-Semite (London,
1948) not as an isolated approach to Jews as such but a way of looking
at the world prejudicing oneâs whole outlook on life. âAnti-semitism is
something adopted of oneâs own free will and involving the whole of his
outlook, a philosophy of life brought to bear not only on Jews but on
all men in general, on history and society; it is both an emotional
state and a way of looking at the world/ (p-13-)
[23] From the Jewish side, the novelist Sholem Asch remarks
passionately: âAnti-semitism is not a movement. It is a disease. He who
is infected with it is unable to have an orientation, a judgment or an
opinion which is a result of logical thinking or of actual facts. The
anti-semite has no proof, no opinion, no consciousness even, because
proof, opinion and consciousness are attained through independent
thought. He has no independent thought, he is imprisoned within the
magic circle in which his sufferings have immured him/ (One Destiny. New
York, 1945,* pp. 37â38.)
[24] Berdyaev develops this point, in particular, in the first chapter
of his Spirit and Reality (London, 1939).
[25] This use of the term âobjectivisation* in Berdyaev denotes briefly
the substitution of symbols for the realities they are supposed to
represent. Thus, the primal aspect of religion is existential, spiritual
and real, but through this process of symbolization man has created
forms, doctrines and institutions which tend to become accepted as
realities while the true primal reality is lost. Berdyaev sees this
tendency at work in certain ecclesiastical conceptions such as the
Church which is forever threatening to become divorced from its
spiritual sources and thus, from a spiritual point of view, an
abstraction. See Spirit and Reality, ad loc., particularly pp. 53â55.
[26] Students of the relationship between Christianity and the Jews from
the Christian point of view will welcome a recent publication, profusely
and learnedly annotated, which will become a valuable source-book on the
subject. A. Roy Eckhardt in his Christianity and the Children of Israel
(London, 1948) examines the approach of the Christian Churches to the
Jewish people, and his conclusions, though he travels quite a different
road, are in many respects very similar to those of Berdyaev. For both,
the assertion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches that they have the
true faith, thus equating the Church and Truth, is tantamount to
idolatry. Both Churches have in the name of Christ promoted
anti-semitism by establishing principles and dogma by reason of which
they are forced âto discriminate against those who refused to recognise
that the Church possesses the Truthâ (p. 153).
[27] Quoted in Martin Buberâs Israel and the World, p. 171.
[28] See the very important notes to pp. 40â41 of Eckhardt, op. cit.,
where the author comments on the fact that Paulâs account in the
eleventh chapter of Romans of the plight of Israel has received scant
attention from many writers on the subject. It is to be noted that from
the standpoint of neo-Reformation relativism (represented, among others,
by Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Emil Brunner and Karl
Barth) the refusal to give absolute authority to the Pauline
interpretation of the Jewish question in Romans chapters 9â11 and
elsewhere, as reflected in the writings of the orthodox Catholics and
Protestants, accords with an approach to the Bible not dissimilar from
that of Berdyaev.
[29] Eckhardt, p. 44.
[30] The title-page of the French version entitled Le Christianisme et
IâAntisemitisme indicates that it is itself a translation from the
Russian. I have been informed that the text is based on a lecture given
by Berdyaev in Paris in 1938 at one of the public meetings of the
Acaddmie Religieuse et Philosophique Russe of which he was President.
The Russian text was published by the Y.M.C.A. Press in the review Put
(The Way) in No. 56 of 1938. The same Russian text seems to have been
the basis oÂŁ a short abridged article by Berdyaev entitled âThe Crime of
anti-semitism* published in the American Journal, The Commonweal (Volume
XXIX, No. 26; April 1939). The translation published here first appeared
in England in Blackfriars (October, 1948) and later in The Wind and the
Rain (Volume V, No. 3; Winter 1948â49).
[31] The introduction to Berdyaevâs Slavery and Freedom (London, 1949)
gives an instructive autobiographical account of the progress and
sources of the authorâs thought and, in particular, its paradoxical
character. Further autobiographical material, perhaps more in relation
to Berdyaevâs thought than to his curriculum vitae, is to be found in
two books of Berdyaev published posthumously: Dream and Reality (London,
1950) and The Beginning and the End (London, 1952). Berdyaev insisted at
all times that a manâs thought is not to be abstracted from his life.
The one is so woven into the other that at least of Berdyaev it can be
said that his thought was his life and lived through heroically to the
end.
[32] Quoted in E. Lampertâs Nicolas Berdyaev and the New Middle Ages
(London, 1946; p. 25): âI was never a philosopher of the academic type
and it has never been my wish that philosophy should be abstract and
remote from lifeâ (Slavery and Freedom, pp. 7â8).
[33] Carl Pflegerâs Wrestlers with Christ.
[34] Berdyaevâs The End of our Time. See Lampert, op. cit., p. 72.
[35] âThe Bible is a book of revelation because there is no
objectivisation in it, no alienation of man from himself (Slavery and
Freedom, p. 245).
[36] Berdyaevâs The Meaning of History (London, 1936; p. 106).
Berdyaevâs chapter on the Jews elaborates many of the points touched
upon in this essay.