{"id":1259,"date":"2006-06-09T13:51:56","date_gmt":"2006-06-09T13:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html"},"modified":"2006-06-09T13:51:56","modified_gmt":"2006-06-09T13:51:56","slug":"fighting-antisemitism-with-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html","title":{"rendered":"Fighting AntiSemitism with Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Eugene Korn of the American Jewish Congress on the Pope’s Auschwitz remarks, in the Forward<\/em>:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

At Auschwitz, Benedict chose to speak in theological terms to reinforce this positive attitude by highlighting the church’s new respectful posture toward the Jewish people and Judaism. He asserted in the name of the church that today’s Jewish people remain living witnesses to God who spoke to their ancestors at Sinai. Further, he explained that the Final Solution was a Nazi attempt to banish God from the world that could only be achieved by first exterminating the Jewish people. This is a firm denial of the doctrine of Judaism as obsolescence and the Adversus Judeus<\/em> church tradition. In doing so, Benedict indicated that he and the church understand the continuing religious and moral validity of Judaism and Jews. <\/p>\n

Indeed, traditional Jews hold the very same convictions today about our faith and our people. Both faithful Jews and faithful Christians understand that there was no way for Nazi genocide to coexist with God’s moral authority and "Thou shall not murder." It is therefore no surprise that researchers at Rutgers School of Law have discovered documents indicating that if Hitler had succeeded in destroying the Jewish people \u2014 God forbid \u2014 he would have proceeded to destroy the church. After the Shoah, both religions are allies in upholding morality and guiding humanity. <\/p>\n

Indeed, the pope could have been more explicit about antisemitism at Auschwitz by repeating what John Paul II said numerous times: "Antisemitism is a crime against man and a sin against God." Yet Benedict chose to attack the foundations of Christian antisemitism in a message that resonates with more than a billion Christians around the world.<\/p>\n

As Jews, we should be fully appreciative of Benedict’s words \u2014 words that would have been unthinkable for a Catholic even 60 years ago. We do well to understand the context and power of the pope’s theological statements and the breakthrough in church theology toward us. We must remain politically vigilant, but we harm Jewish interests and foster misunderstanding if we are deaf to the theological language of the church. At Auschwitz, Benedict attacked the roots of Christian hatred and persecution. In the end, these theological claims may do more to undo Christian antisemitism than exclusively political proclamations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Eugene Korn of the American Jewish Congress on the Pope’s Auschwitz remarks, in the Forward: At Auschwitz, Benedict chose to speak in theological terms to reinforce this positive attitude by highlighting the church’s new respectful posture toward the Jewish people and Judaism. He asserted in the name of the church that today’s Jewish people…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFighting AntiSemitism with Theology - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fighting AntiSemitism with Theology - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rabbi Eugene Korn of the American Jewish Congress on the Pope’s Auschwitz remarks, in the Forward: At Auschwitz, Benedict chose to speak in theological terms to reinforce this positive attitude by highlighting the church’s new respectful posture toward the Jewish people and Judaism. He asserted in the name of the church that today’s Jewish people…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-06-09T13:51:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fighting AntiSemitism with Theology - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Fighting AntiSemitism with Theology - Via Media","og_description":"Rabbi Eugene Korn of the American Jewish Congress on the Pope’s Auschwitz remarks, in the Forward: At Auschwitz, Benedict chose to speak in theological terms to reinforce this positive attitude by highlighting the church’s new respectful posture toward the Jewish people and Judaism. He asserted in the name of the church that today’s Jewish people…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-06-09T13:51:56+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html","name":"Fighting AntiSemitism with Theology - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-06-09T13:51:56+00:00","dateModified":"2006-06-09T13:51:56+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/fighting-antisemitism-with-theology.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Fighting AntiSemitism with Theology"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}