Articles & Reviews by Susannah Heschel
At the conclusion of aJewish weddingceremony, just before the groom smashes a glass,h ed eclaims ... more At the conclusion of aJewish weddingceremony, just before the groom smashes a glass,h ed eclaims averse from aPsalm: "If If orgetyou, Jerusalem, let my tongue be cut off" (137:5). Breakingt he glass-which is immediatelyfollowed by exuberant calls of "Mazel Tov" and lively music-is purportedlytoremember the destruction of the Temple and theexile from the landofIsrael. The tragedyofexile is symbolicallypresent even at ajoyous occasion to iterate that in astate of exile, nothing can be perfect and whole. Breakingt he glass affirms that the physical connection to the land of Israel is broken, making areligion of exile the portable homeland of the Jews, as tate of mind as mucha satheological principle. Exile constitutes Jewish political and religiousidentity,yet it is based on aparadox. Afterthe Romans destroyed the Second TempleinJerusalem, the Jews were not forciblyexiled from the land of Israel; no edict of expulsion was issued by the Romansafter their destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, and by that time Jews alreadyh ad been livingi nd iasporaf or centuries.¹ Rabbinic depictions of exile, some paradoxicallyw ritteni nt he land of Israel, were formulateda sm editationso nt he Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE that had been overcome. The destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE by the Assyrians, whodeported the entire population (who then disappeared from history) is simplyforgotten in Jewish history.Onlythe destruction of thesouthern kingdom of Judah, where the Temple was located in the capital, Jerusalem, is remembered. The Babylonian exile of Judah, in turn, was also paradoxical: afew decades later,Cyrus the Great offered the Israelites safe passageback to Jerusalem, but relatively few returned while the majority remained in Babylonia for over 2,500 years, composingthe Babylonian Talmud,medieval Jewish philosophy, and turning Israelitereligion into Judaism. All the while, rabbis in the land of Israel composed the Palestinian Talmud, various Midrashic texts,a nd, in the sixteenth century, aC ode of Jewish Lawa long with Lurianic mysticism.
DAvid Engel Asks if the term "anti semitism," when applied to a variety of incidents, distracts u... more DAvid Engel Asks if the term "anti semitism," when applied to a variety of incidents, distracts us from the uniqueness of each and fosters a generalization that distorts rather than illuminates. Because the term can refer to hostilities ranging from discrimination to violence, hostilities based on political, racial, or religious grounds, and hostilities that were not intended or perceived as such, it gives rise to a "conceptual muddle." The term "anti semitism" becomes essentialized and reified, Engel argues, as if it were a causal agent: Jews are attacked because of anti semitism. Engel is correct: Blaming "anti semitism" for denigrating language, images, or even violence directed against Jews and Judaism shifts agency from human beings to an ideological construct. Used that way, anti semitism functions as one of the long-discredited "covering laws" that fail to explain. Yet Engel goes too far in asserting that "no necessary relations among particular instances of violence. .. can be assumed."1 Scholars of racism would never make a similar claim, nor would a scholar of race view the term "racism" as a socio-semantic error. The enslavement of Black Africans by American whites in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has a clear and essential relationship to the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 and the growing mass incarceration and police murders of Black Americans today. Denying a link between discrete acts ignores the trajectory of racism, fails to recognize the tenacity of white people's loathing of people of color, and blinds us to the depth
On 4 March 1936, The Times of India proclaimed as its headline: "Bible Acceptable to Nazis: New T... more On 4 March 1936, The Times of India proclaimed as its headline: "Bible Acceptable to Nazis: New Translation." 1 While political developments in Germany after 1933 were reported throughout the world, it is less well-known that the international press also reported on developments within the German churches. The efforts of certain prominent theologians to reconcile Christianity with the National Socialist regime became headline news from the United States to India. The article in The Times of India copied a report that had appeared a month earlier in The Times of London about an announcement by the Protestant bishop of Bremen, Heinz Weidemann (1895-1976), to a conference of churchmen that a new translation of the Gospel of John was under way that would make Christ relevant to today. 2 Weidemann was quoted as saying that as Nazis, they were drawn to the Gospel of John because "in it the bearers of the Divine message stood in an embittered fight against the Jewish people"; he also noted that Christianity was anti-Jewish and the "ultimate source of power for the National Socialist worldview." 3 Weidemann explained that his "germanizing" of the New Testament had begun with the Gospel of John because it was "the most sharply anti-Jewish document." 4 Many of Weidemann's comrades agreed. According to the newspaper report, Weidemann's announcement was welcomed at the conference by his fellow pastors. One pastor even stood up and declared, "Galilee had not been a purely Jewish country and … Christ's life had been nothing else than a fight of increasing intensity against the Jews." He went on to say that Paul's epistles were "passionate documents against the Jews." 5 A year later, The Times of India announced that the translation of the Gospel of John had been published by Weidemann with the intention of "modifying Christian teaching to bring it into harmony with the Nazi 'world outlook' based on 'blood and soil.'" Changes in the text were made, according to the newspaper account, to discredit the Old Testament (John 6:31-32) and to distinguish Galilee from "Jewland," the translation's term for Judea. 6 A similar report also appeared in the Jerusalem newspaper, The Palestine Post, on 26 February 1936, making it clear that pro-Nazi developments in the German church were of interest outside Europe. 7 Once published, Weidemann's new rendition of The Gospel of John brought renewed attention: an article in the New York Herald Tribune by Ralph W. Barnes appeared on 13 January 1937 under the headline "Nazis Publish 'Antisemitic' Gospel of John: Luther Version Revamped in a Manner Picturing Author as Foe of Jews." That article was then transmitted via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a wire service. 8 Barnes, a distinguished American journalist stationed in Germany, editorialized that Weidemann's translation "is enough to make Luther turn over in his grave." He compared the translation, an eighty-sixpage pamphlet, to Reichbishop Ludwig Müller's recent rendition of the Sermon on the Mount, published in 1936, in which "Nazi catchwords were interpolated." Barnes wrote that Weidemann's goal, like Müller's, had been to turn the Gospel "into anti-Jewish propaganda" by inserting words and deliberately mistranslating. In Weidemann's version, "Judea" was translated as "Judenland," or the land of the Jews; references to Moses, Elijah, and Isaiah were purged; and terms such as rabbi and Israelite, used in the Gospel to identify Jesus, were eliminated. For example, "Rabbi" was replaced by "Meister" (Master). 9 A few days later came a report in Time magazine, "Gospel According to Saint Hitler": German booksellers did roaring business last week when there appeared on the market an anti-Semitic, Nazified version of The Gospel According to St. John, adapted from Martin Luther's standard German translation of the Bible. This was big news for Nordic churchgoers, be-122 susannah heschel and shannon quiqley 123 The Fate of John's Gospel during the Third Reich
The widespread receptivity of Jewish communities around the world to Meir Kahane demands that we ... more The widespread receptivity of Jewish communities around the world to Meir Kahane demands that we reconsider our narrative of modern Jewish history and religious thought. His racism, calls for violence, and protofascism are startling, given the standard presentation that liberalism and assimilation mark the modern Jewish era. Even more startling is that Kahane's name almost never appears in the major surveys of American Judaism, the history of Zionism, and modern Jewish thought. Yet, Kahane's influence is growing rapidly and already outweighs the influence of most other modern Jewish thinkers and shows no sign of abating, especially with the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world.
Is there a Special Relationship between Christianity and Judaism? Race as Incarnational Theology:... more Is there a Special Relationship between Christianity and Judaism? Race as Incarnational Theology: Affinities between German Protestantism and Racial Theory During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939, these theologians established the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life. The surprisingly large number of distinguished professors, younger scholars, and students who became involved in the effort to synthesize Nazism and Christianity should be seen not simply as a response to political developments, nor simply as an outgrowth of struggles within the field of Christian theology, but as suggesting underlying affinities between racism and Christian theology. In tracing the work of the Institute, its funding publications, and membership activities, the emergence of a Nazi Christianity comes to light. Even within the so-called "church struggle" for control of the Protestant church between members of the pro-Nazi German Christian movement and the Confessing Church, anti-Semitism became the glue that united the otherwise warring factions. Similarly, however much Hitler made use of Christian motifs, the most useful and consistent aspect of Christianity for the Nazi movement was its anti-Judaism, just as the single most consistent and persistent feature of Nazism was its anti-Semitism. Jews were not simply despised but came to be presented as a danger to be eradicated. In this, as in so many other issues, theologians anticipated and suggested anti-Jewish policy before it was formulated by the Nazi regime.
Science, Imperialism, and Heteromasculinity in the Wissenschaft des Judentums by Susannah Heschel... more Science, Imperialism, and Heteromasculinity in the Wissenschaft des Judentums by Susannah Heschel he group of young male Jewish intellectuals who gathered in Berlin in the 1810s and 20s to form the Verein für Kultur Tu nd Wissenschaft der Juden, thought that the study of Jewish history might provide a useful substitute for the role of religion in shaping Jewish identity and in overcoming negative stereotypes about Jews among Christians. But the study of Jewish history expanded quickly into a revised version of the history of Western civilization. Rather than a dessicated branch of that civilization, the scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (WJ), as it took shape in the nineteenth century, presented Judaism as the solid, healthy tree trunk, with Christianity and Islam as its two branches whose vitality depended upon the health of the trunk itself, Judaism. That fundamental rearrangement of the West was the narrative inherent in the many varieties of the scientific study of Judaism that took shape for the following century and a half. The argument put forward by nearly every Jewish historian, theologian, philosopher, and rabbi in Germany from the late eighteenth century until 1933 was that Judaism is the foundation of the West, having provided the Bible, monotheism, ethics, and a religion of reason that was far more compatible than Christianity with modernity's insistence on the free exercise of the mind. The "era of Enlightenment" was exemplified by Judaism, a religion without dogma, as Moses Mendelssohn, among others, proclaimed. The WJ was not all of one piece. There were different topics, different interests, all of which were pursued outside the framework of German universities,
The opening chapters of Mein Kampf present an invitation: come and join me, the author calls to h... more The opening chapters of Mein Kampf present an invitation: come and join me, the author calls to his readers, in a journey of enlightenment that will reveal the clandestine evil destroying Germany: Jews. While Jews may be visible to the eye, the depth and extent of their wickedness require an awareness that comes with self-cultivation, Bildung. Rather than presenting itself in its opening pages as an ideological tract or political platform, Mein Kampf asks its readers to join its author in a journey of Bildung. Hitler's goal was creating a mass movement that would think of itself as a community, with each person identifying with him, since he viewed himself and his life as the political movement; Nazi politics was Hitler, not only in his own mind. He was the figure at the center, with whom each person should be tied in an emotional connection, as emotions, he recognized, are more powerful in uniting people than political platforms. Nowhere were emotions deployed more consistently in Mein Kampf than in its anti-Semitic passages about Jews. A massive body of anti-Semitic literature produced in Germany from the 1870s through 1945 informed readers of alleged Jewish wickedness in nearly every sphere of private and public life. The deleterious effects of Jews were enumerated: crashing the stock market, mocking Christianity, undermining German language and culture, threatening the cleanliness and health of Germans, perverting marriage and sexuality, robbing Germany of
Die Historiographic des Instituts zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des judischen Einflusses auf da... more Die Historiographic des Instituts zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des judischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben1. Einfuhrung: Antisemitismus und Christentum Im Jahr 1939 reisle eine Gruppe von sechzig Theologiestudenten der Universitaten Erlangen, Gottingen, Leipzig, Marburg, Tubingen und der Theologischen Schule Bethel durch Niedertrebra im landlichen Thiiringen. Sie berichteten, dass sie den christlichen Glauben nur bei alteren Leute finden konnten. "Sonst aber war die Stumpfheit gross. Einige Male begegneten wir offener Ablehnung: Die Bibel sei ein Judenbuch, Mein Kampf sei die heutige Bibel. [...] In einem Haus, in dem wir glaubten, auf Verstandnis zu stossen, erzahlte man uns von einer neuen Bibel, die jetzt erschienen sei, in der alles Jiidische ausgemerzt sei, denn anders sei die Bibel nicht mehr zu gebrauchen."D iese "neue Bibel", aus der alles Jiidische entfernt wurde, konnte "Die Botschaft Gottes" gewesen sein, herausgegeben vom "Institut zur Erforschung imd Beseitigung des judischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben" mit Sitz in Eisenach. Es ist viel uber das Eisenach-Institut geschrieben worden, uber seine Mitglieder, seine Ziele, seine Veroffentlichungen, seine Finanzen und uber einzelne Personen aus Kirche und Universitat, welche die Idee zur Grundung des Instituts hatten und sie verwirklichten. Was wir noch nicht wissen, ist das Ausmafi seines Einflusses auf die Akzeptanz der "neuen Bibel". Wie viele Christen in Deutschland waren davon uberzeugt, dass die Bibel ein "Judenbuch" ist und verworfen werden soUte? Diese Frage muss untersucht werden, um die Rolle des Christentiuns in der antisemitischen Propaganda des Dritten Reiches zu verstehen. Zu klaren sind die Auswirkungen der Negation des Judentums in der Geschichte der deutschen protestantischen Theologie und 1 Der Beitrag wurde dankenswerterweise ubersetzt von Siegfried Virgils und Alice Wang.-1 would also like tp express my gratitude to my colleague, Professor Konrad Kenkel, who reviewed and corrected my grammar; Susan Hatterman, who helped me formulate some paragraphs; Professor Christina von Braun, who supplied just the right German words at crucial moments: and my good friend Pastor Siegfried Virgils (Bonn) for patiently translating but more importantly for inspi ring me with his theological wisdom. 2 (LKA Kiel, Repertorium des Archivs der Bekennenden Kirche Schleswig-Holstein Alte Signatur 32; neue Hummer 184). 10 Kotdze-Kottenrodt, Eine Deutsche Gottesund Lebenskunde. Vortrag gehalten auf der Instituts-Tagung vom 19. Juli 1941, 6 (LKA Eisenach, NL Walter Grundmann, Nr. 87, Dichterarbeitsgemeinschaft des Instituts fur Erforschung des judischen Einflusses, 1940-1944, Bl. 57).
who was baptized Roman Catholic in 1936, was deeply pious and found great sustenance in prayer. I... more who was baptized Roman Catholic in 1936, was deeply pious and found great sustenance in prayer. In addition to singing in the church choir, she attended Mass regularly. All that changed after September 1941. "For a while I was a member of the church choir in our little parish. Singing has always given me much joy, but now I had to give it up because a few singers did not like the idea of a Jew participating. I always remained modestly, even shyly, in the background. Still, I am not wanted." 1 In the autumn of 1941 in Nazi Germany, Christians suddenly became Jews. 2 Not through a formal conversion process nor out of their own faith decision but rendered Jewish Christians by the race laws, Jews aged seven and older were required by the Nazi regime to wear a yellow Star of David (Judenstern) on their clothing. Even Jews who had converted to Christianity now had to wear the star, including in church, Catholic and Protestant. 3 Race versus faith: the Nazi regime mandated that race transcends all other signifiers of identity, including baptism, a sacrament of the church that provides "an indelible spiritual mark" of "belonging to Christ," in the words of the Catholic catechism. 4 Prior to September 1941, those attending church services would likely not have known which parishioners were Jews who had been baptized by their parents at birth or Jews who converted as adults from Judaism to Christianity. The yellow Star of David identified these Christians in public as racial Jews. How parishioners, congregants, pastors, priests, and bishops reacted to the yellow star and how Jews who had converted to Christianity negotiated their marked status is my inquiry; what the reactions reveal about
![Research paper thumbnail of Susannah Heschel, “Toward an Erotohistoriography: The Sensory and Emotional Dimensions of Antisemitism,” in Scott Ury and Guy Miron, eds., Antisemitism: Historical Concept, Public Discourse [= Zion, vol. 84, no. 1-4] (Jerusalem: Shazar, 2020), 74-94 (Hebrew)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/106188512/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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Articles & Reviews by Susannah Heschel