c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Two recent interreligious conferences, one in Baltimore and the other in Florida, focused on a critical issue that won’t go away: the Holocaust’s continuing impact upon the Christian community.

The Christians and Jews who attended the two meetings were keenly aware that although it has been nearly 55 years since the end of World War II, the Holocaust _ Nazi Germany’s nearly successful attempt to kill every Jew in Europe, and indeed throughout the world _ continues to haunt our memories and consciences.

Pope John Paul II’s words were an impetus for both conferences:”The crime which has become known as the Shoah (Holocaust) remains an indelible stain on the history of the (20th) century ….” The Baltimore meeting, co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the American Jewish Committee, brought together professional educators from both religious and public schools. The Florida conference inaugurated the new Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo College, a joint project of the College and the AJC.

Participants at both meetings noted there is extraordinary interest in the Holocaust, especially in high school and on the college and university campus. The many films, TV programs, plays, poems, novels, and the vivid remembrances of Holocaust survivors have provided a growing body of teaching material for classroom instructors. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and the increasing number of regional museums provide additional educational resources.

But the conference participants struggled with some profound questions going beyond the instructional material currently available for use.

At the Florida meeting, the Rev. Michael B. McGarry, the Rector-designate of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, meticulously documented the tragic historic roots of Christian anti-Semitism. McGarry noted that religious anti-Semitism was frequently embedded deep within Christian liturgy, biblical interpretations, and the writings of certain church fathers.

But McGarry especially spotlighted the anti-Semitic messages contained in medieval art.

Some cathedrals built during the Middle Ages feature sculptured artistic representations of Church and Synagogue. The former figure is an inspiring beautiful woman filled with love and grace, while the latter is also a woman, but one who is blindfolded with a broken staff. The message is clear for all to see: the victorious Church and the defeated Synagogue.

Indeed, McGarry noted that anti-Semitic statues, paintings, and Passion Plays were frequently more toxic in their negative depiction of Jews and Judaism than the written word, particularly during those historic periods when many people in Europe were unable to read.

In Baltimore, Boston University’s Professor Steven Katz drew a distinction between traditional Christian hatred of Jews and Judaism that was based on religious beliefs and Nazi anti-Semitism which branded Jews as racial and not theological inferiors.

However, Katz and other speakers at both conferences noted that the Nazis used many of the ugly Christian anti-Semitic images and teachings to justify their policy of mass murder.

Cardinal William Keeler, the Archbishop of Baltimore, described the many educational programs about the Holocaust that are currently underway within the Roman Catholic Church. He emphasized that it is vital for such programs to go beyond the classroom or chapel in order to reach a larger audience, citing the 1994 Papal Concert in Rome commemorating the Holocaust.

Both conferences illustrated an especially exciting aspect of Holocaust education.

Increasingly, this difficult but important subject is being creatively taught in high schools and colleges. Indeed, many Christian educators, like Philip Cunningham of Notre Dame College in New Hampshire, Rabbi Ruth Langer of Boston College and JoAnn Weber of Cardinal Mooney High in Sarasota, Fla., have developed superb curricula on the Holocaust. Hopefully, their creative work will be widely adopted by thousands of other educators.

The conference speakers in both Baltimore and Florida carefully drew the distinction between Holocaust”guilt”and”responsibility.”The former term should only be applied to those men and women who actually participated in or condoned the killing of Jews during the Holocaust. However, the latter term applies to all future Christian generations who need to carefully study the religious, political, social, and cultural conditions that provided the seedbed for the murder of 6 million Jews.

DEA END RUDIN