Thank you very much for a very kind introduction. I'm very glad to be here with you this evening. I know that many of us thought today that perhaps this event ought to be in fact canceled, given the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. On the other hand, it seems that in another sense very appropriate that we do gather, given the topic that we are discussing tonight, and that we keep this engagement to talk together about issues of Jewish-Christian relations precisely at this time. I would also say that in the midst of the sense of tragedy and horror that a lot of us are feeling over the assassination, there is one other aspect, which is the person himself. There is perhaps an important and relevant lesson from the nature of this man, Yitzhak Rabin, because he was truly a great man. Not only because of what he accomplished in his last years, but also because he was a person who was able to change his mind., and that, to me, is a very special characteristic. He was a person of an open mind, and of great nobility and that is what makes him, for me, a real leader: someone who can think twice, and reconsider and change his mind on very important fundamental issues that he himself stood for. In fact, I would say that that kind of nobility, that willingness to reconsider, and change one's mind, is precisely what we need when we consider this topic this evening, and that is relations between Jews and Christians.

      Let me tell you what I am going to talk about this evening. The research that I've done has focused on two periods: one is the middle to late nineteenth century Protestant thought, specifically in Germany, but also more generally in Europe, in France and in Holland. And the second is what happened with Protestant theologians in Nazi Germany, and how they responded to Hitler. Those are the two areas of my research, and in fact they are linked of course, because those who developed modern liberal Protestant theology in Germany in the nineteenth century were the teachers of those who eventually were the leaders during the 1930s under Hitler. And so the theology that was formulated earlier affected the theology that came later, and I want to talk about the links and the responsibilities and the problems.

     The theologians in Nazi Germany whom I have studied are the ones who were enthusiastic supporters of Hitler. They were the ones who welcomed him, not only because they were deep German nationalists, but because they felt that Christianity itself needed to be changed theologically, and so they sought a synthesis of National Socialism and Christianity. It's a story that is not very well known, and one that I have been investigating through German archives: Federal archives, State archives, Church archives, University archives. And I've been piecing together the history of what these people did during the Nazi era, especially after 1939 and during the war years when things became rather difficult. So it took a certain amount of determination to carry through their plans.

     But before we come to the Nazi period I want to come back a little bit to the nineteenth century and talk briefly about what Christians thought of Judaism and what Jews thought of Christianity, specifically through the focus of the figure of Jesus and how Jesus was understood both by Jews and by Christians primarily by Protestants. What strikes me about the discussion that emerged in the nineteenth century is that, in fact, we see a new kind of conception of religion, and specifically Judaism and Christianity, in western religious thought. Prior to the modern period, it seems to me that Jews and Christians thought of their two religions as very separate, as two distinct religions. We have a kind of two religion notion that says that Judaism and Christianity are opposing, primarily, but certainly different: two different traditions. Relations between the two religions emphasized that point. There were disputations in the Middle Ages during which each group would present its views of God, revelation, and various issues of dogma. And it was assumed, by each, Jews and Christians, that one religion held the truth and that the other one was false. You had to defeat the other side and win for yourself. It was assumed that one's own religion was religion, the will of God, while the other's beliefs were human inventions that were displeasing to God. Christians saw Jews as renegades who were stubbornly refusing to accept God's revelation in Christ and remained stuck in a misunderstanding of the Hebrew Bible. Jewish theologians polemicized against Christianity and presented it as polytheistic because of the Trinity. They said it was idolatry to worship Jesus. They made fun of the belief in the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah.

     But in the modern period we see a shift from the two religion notion to a one religion model. That is, it seems to me that for Jews and Christians in the modern period faith becomes a universal human experience, and religions are essentially on one continuum. They are different expressions of the same universal human experience of faith. One religion may be superior, the other inferior, but the basic experiences of both religions are the same, they are on the same continuum.

     Now a major consequence of this shift to a one-religion continuum is the search for commonalties between Jesus and Judaism. You know that in the modern period Christian theologians began to explore the historical figure of Jesus. They wanted to recover who he was as a person, his experience, his life, his consciousness, his humanity. The Christian theologians expressed this very nicely, they said ‘We no longer want a religion about Jesus, dogma about Jesus. Instead we want the faith of Jesus. What was his faith, his religious consciousness, his religious experience?' And that quest for the historical Jesus led them to explore the historical circumstances of the first century. Jesus was living in Palestine? Well, what was it like in Palestine in the first century? What other texts are there that might help elucidate the texts of the New Testament?.

     This quest for the historical Jesus, of course, led to a study of first century Judaism, since Jesus was, of course, as we know, a Jew. We say that very easily nowadays, "Jesus was a Jew." I think a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago it was a more difficult sentence for some people to utter.

     For Jewish theologians, the modern quest for the historical Jesus seemed very promising. After all, if Christians want to understand the historical Jesus they are going to have to understand something about Judaism. They are going to see that he was a Jew. They are going to see what was his faith. His faith was the faith of Judaism. They saw this as opening a door to understanding, mutual respect, cooperation. Jewish theologians were thrilled because they thought, ‘Finally we have a chance to contribute something to theological discussion. We can contribute our Hebrew texts, our understanding of first century Judaism, we can participate in these historical theological discussions.' And so they saw it very much as a positive move. And in fact, Jewish theologians in the modern period went very far in emphasizing the Jewishness of Jesus. They described him as a rabbi, and even as a Pharisee.

     You have to understand that nowadays it is standard to talk about Jesus in these terms, but a hundred years ago it was a shock. It was a shock, it was disgusting, it was horrible, it was repulsive. To call Jesus a Pharisee was an insult.

     Now Jews felt that calling Jesus a Pharisee showed that Jews and Christians stand together, that Christianity is derived from Judaism and the two faiths have so much in common. As a Pharisee Jesus is a rabbi! They compared him to Rabbi Hillel of the first century. They thought this was wonderful.

     But nineteenth century liberal Protestant theologians in Germany had a very different experience of all of this. ‘Yes,' they had to concede, ‘yes, yes, all right, it's true, Jesus was a Jew. A Jew!' It was hard to say it. It hurt. ‘A Jew! All right. Rabbi?! No, no, no! A rabbi? That's already uncomfortable. A Pharisee! Heaven forbid! No!' Yes, they saw some parallels between Judaism and Christianity. Yes, there were parallels between what Jesus teaches in the gospels and what you can find in some other Jewish texts and rabbinical literature. But they were not at all comfortable with this comparison. Not at all.

     The quest for the historical Jesus raised all kinds of terrible problems and, in fact, to tell you the truth, I don't see it as a quest for the historical Jesus, I see it as a flight from the historical Jesus. They just ran away in shock and horror. In fact, it seems to me that what they did was to say, ‘Yes, all right, we'll look historically, but only up to a certain point.' And what they did was to see Jesus as a historical figure except in his religious consciousness, in his religiosity, his spirituality. That they bracketed. That couldn't be looked at historically because his spirituality was unique, unique in all of world history, absolutely unique. And as a unique category it can't be subjected to historical analysis, because historical analysis means you compare things and you can't compare something that is unique to any other event. His religious consciousness was ahistorical, it was unique, and in a sense they really bracketed it. When they talk about the quest for the historical Jesus it's a quest up to a certain point. It is not really, fully, honestly an historical investigation.

     Christians were uncomfortable in the nineteenth century with all of this, and what did they do about it? Well basically, they acknowledged that Judaism and Christianity have many parallels between the gospels and the Mishna and other aspects of Judaism. And that Judaism and Christianity do stand in a single continuum: basically it's all one religion. But Christianity, they said, represents a direction of moral and religious elevation while Judaism goes in the opposite direction of religious materialism. Each person, Christian and Jew, stands on this continuum.. You can either go to spiritual elevation or you can go to a religious materialism, and, of course, where do we all want to go? Who wants to be spiritually degenerate? No one is going to raise their hand. Of course, I want to be spiritually elevated, naturally, it goes without saying. And each person has that choice. Every Jew and Christian stands in the continuum and depending upon moral choices, theological reflection, and inner spiritual development, can go in one direction of the other. And it's clear where everybody wants to go. In Christian depictions of this continuum Christianity represents spiritual interiority while Judaism represents unspiritual exteriority, legalism. Christianity represents moral conscience while Judaism represents the suppression of moral conscience.

     Now it is striking to the historian that negative depictions of Judaism like these remain active in Christian literature even in the modern period. Now we can ask why. We think we have gotten over those Middle Ages. We're modern, we're historians, we're enlightened. Nineteenth century, what's the matter with us? Why do we have these kinds of negative depictions of Judaism?

     I would argue that it is precisely because these two religions came to be seen as standing on one continuum that the potential threat is even greater than in the pre-modern period which has its two religion understanding . Why? Because if Judaism stands at one end of the continuum any Christian who isn't careful can slide into its morass. Judaism is not a separate religion, especially not after liberal Judaism abolished so many of the observances and rituals of traditional Orthodoxy. But Judaism represents simply a religious tendency. So, in fact, it seems that the lack of sharp boundaries distinguishing the two religions give rise to harsher and more vivid polemics that create, in fact, the horror against which they warn. They create a horror, a horror of Judaism, especially of early Judaism, that is, first century Judaism.

     Though I have never seen a horror film it reminds me of what I imagine a horror film must be like. It's very quiet, and then all of a sudden the innocent heroine is stabbed. If you read depictions of first century Judaism it's frightening.

     Liberal Protestants constructed Judaism as a metaphor, a warning of what Christians might sink into. But the danger is not really Judaism, it's really the Christian in potentia, in potential, what a Christian might become if he or she is not a good Christian. The discourse is wholly Christian, and Judaism figures in it only insofar as it metaphorically represents some aspect of Christian experience. But in the modern period, when we look for Satan where do we find him? We find him in the Pharisees and the Rabbis.

      And just to give you a sense of the language that was used in the nineteenth century I have a couple of quotes from different theologians in different decades of that century. One writes: "What does the disfigured, rigid Phariseeism offer the religious sentiment?" Another writes: "The shadows which actually elevate the glory of our Lord are the Pharisees. But in them there is depicted for us a frightening picture which powerfully warns us against something which in God's eyes is an abomination, namely: hypocrisy." Another writes: "The Pharisees represent a wish to deceive oneself, and on top of it to deceive God, which turned out to be no more than ever growing despair the tighter and more hardened the shackles of the idolatrous power which one hoped to evade through hypocrisy…" The Pharisees are the ultimate in anti-religion and they become, in a sense, modern day Satan.

     Now what makes these negative depictions of Judaism so popular? (In a way, maybe it's like horror films; there are people who are addicted to horror films, I know.) I suppose there's a thrill as there is in a horror film in knowing that the outcome at the end of the movie and at the end of the theology is going to be positive: the Christian will remain a Christian and get through those trials and horrors. And yet, if the outcome is too obvious there is no thrill. So that's where the uncertainty of Jesus' religious identity enters.

     Keep in mind that Jesus is being discovered as an historical figure for the first time. And what do you discover as you begin to look at Jesus historically? A Jew. But that's a problem: here Jesus is a Jew who is the first Christian, and the first Christian who is also a Jew. That's a problem for Christians: Jesus is a Jew so Judaism cannot be fully denigrated, yet Christians have broken with Judaism so it has to be bad or inferior in some sense. There is a connection, and yet there is distance and a break.

     The problem of Jesus' Jewishness continues through the nineteenth century, through the twentieth century to this very day. It's the problem of trying to define what's original in Christianity, what's unique, what's new. If Jesus is a Jew who is preaching Jewish ideas what makes Christianity special? And that remained a problem throughout the nineteenth century, a very serious problem, but it is a problem that was exacerbated by the presence of Jewish theologians who were so enthusiastic about Jesus' Jewishness, who saw the affirmation of Jesus as a rabbi and a Pharisee as a way to achieve commonalities with Christians, close relations, friendship, acceptance!

     Now we might ask: why did Jews pay so much attention to Jesus? (And they did, and they do, in the modern period.) It's something new. To some extent it was a desire to integrate themselves as Jewish theologians and historians into the academic intellectual environment of the day. But in another sense we can be, perhaps, a little bit unfriendly and suggest that to some extent it was a desire to place Judaism at the center of the map of western civilization. Jewish theologians liked to say that Christianity and Islam were the daughter religions; Judaism is the mother religion. Everything was derived from Judaism; no one else had anything new or original to say.

     Now we might think about that and decide that it's a little arrogant, isn't it? It has a little twist, and perhaps it's a little unfriendly. Perhaps in their affirmation of Jesus' Jewishness and the commonalties between Christianity and Judaism some of these Jewish theologians went a little too far and perhaps were being a little irritating. Let me give you an example.

     One of the most prominent and influential Jewish theologians of the nineteenth century in Germany was a man named Abraham Geiger. Geiger was very widely read both by Jew and Christians. He was very prolific, a very fine historian and theologian, and he wrote a life of Jesus and many articles and essays about the origins of Christianity. What does he say? The first thing he does is to compare Jesus to Hillel, the rabbi of the first century. He talks about Hillel as a man of living continuous development, a picture of a genuine reformer, a restorer of Judaism. Jesus, he says," was a Jew, a Pharisaic Jew with Gallilean coloring, a man who shared the hopes of his time, and believed that these hopes were fulfilled in him. He did not utter a new thought, nor did he break down the barriers of nationality. He did not abolish any part of Judaism. He was a Pharisee who walked in the way of Hillel, did not set the decisive worth in every single external form, yet proclaimed that ‘not the least tittle should be taken from the Law,' … 'the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.'"

     And so you can see that when Geiger declared that Jesus had not uttered a new thought the response on the part of Protestant theologians of the day was not very friendly. In fact, everyone attacked him. It's interesting in looking back and reading this literature, the Protestant theological journals of the 1850s , 60s and 70s. Every time I would open an issue, there was an attack on Geiger. The funniest moment was when I read someone who said: "Well, Geiger, no one takes him seriously, no one reads him, he hasn't achieved the slightest bit of attention."

     What is this all about? Why is there is such a Jewish concern with Jesus, and what is the nature of it? Actually, the argument, we can see, goes as follows: the Pharisees, for Geiger, were the liberal Jews, the progressive democratic Jews who reformed Judaism in the first century. Their legacy was lost because with the rise of Christianity Jews, Geiger says, were persecuted by Christians, their religion became rigid and narrow-minded, and they lost the Pharisaic tradition. Modern day Reform Judaism, and Geiger is one of the important founders of Reform Judaism, isn't breaking with Judaism, isn't rejecting orthodoxy: it's, rather, restoring the religion of the Pharisees, the liberalism, the democracy, the progressiveness.

     Thinking about this argument logically, if, as Geiger says, Jesus was a Pharisee and the Pharisees were the liberalizers, we might ask why a Jew of the first century would follow Jesus if he wasn't saying anything new or distinctive. Why, if there are all of these other Pharisees, would they follow Jesus? And here Geiger has a rather ingenious (if false) argument. I think it's very clever so I have to tell you what it is. He says that after the destruction of the temple in the year 70 the Sadducees, the priests of the temple, no longer had a power base or institution. They no longer had a temple to worship in. They are the ones who became attracted to the Jesus movement and they brought with them all of their old hostility towards the Pharisees. That's why, Geiger tells us, we find priestly images in the New Testament, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, for example. That's also why we find polemics such as Matthew 23 with all of the "Woe to you, Pharisees…" It's the influence of the Sadducees in early Christianity. It's a cute argument, isn't it? It's wrong, but it's cute. So there really isn't such a thing, according to Geiger, as anti-Judaism in the gospels. It's simply the Sadducees mad at the Pharisees.

     What do we actually see going on here? Is Geiger modeling Jesus after the rabbis and the Pharisees? Yes and no. It seems to me that what is really going on in Geiger's work and in the work of all the other liberal Jewish theologians who copied him (and they all did, down to this very day: if you read a book Jewish Views of Jesus you're reading Geiger even if he isn't credited with originating the ideas) is that basically Geiger is trying to model the rabbis after the image of Jesus. He's presenting us the rabbis of the Talmud, the rabbis who shaped Judaism, after the model of the liberal Protestant image of Jesus: the gentle reformer, the liberalizer, the sensitive teacher, and so on. What's interesting is to see the extent to which Christianity entered the minds of Jewish theologians and influenced the shaping of modern Judaism in this way.

     We might ask also about Christian hostility towards Geiger and Geiger's arguments. It was strong and it was powerful. They were outraged. I'll just give you a little taste of it. You all know, I'm sure, The Life of Jesus written by Ernest Renan in the 1860s. Renan writes in his preface the Geiger was his teacher and his master, that he learned so much from Geiger, they actually met and corresponded, they knew each other. Yet in his book Renan, although they were friends, did not follow Geiger in his presentation of the Pharisees. Instead, he writes as follows:

     The Pharisees were the true Jews, the nerve and sinew of Judaism, men of a narrow mind, caring much for externals. Their devoutness was haughty, formal and self-satisfied. Their manners were ridiculous and excited the smiles of even those who respected them. Christianity has been intolerant, but intolerance is not an essentially Christian act, it is a Jewish act.

     So what we see is basic acceptance of the notion that there is something here, some kind of connection between Jesus and the Pharisees, and that has to be accepted if we are going to be historically reputable. On the other hand, we can use history, as Renant shows us, and so many others, to say that what it is we dislike in the gospels (and Christian theologians can find a few things they dislike in Christianity) can be blamed on the historical influence of Judaism and the Pharisees. That way we can combine being historians and being theologians.

      Just one other example comes from Franz Delitzch, one of the great figures of the nineteenth century, who wrote a polemic against Geiger in two pamphlets in which he said that calling Jesus a Pharisee is tantamount to Christian anti-Semitism and a justification for it. This, I think, puts nicely the strength of the animosity.

     Finally, I'd like to take this just one more generation to Martin Buber, because Buber, in a sense, takes Geiger to an extreme but presents a position which is also quite prevalent in the Jewish community. Buber writes:

      From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and savior has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which for his sake and my own I must endeavor to understand. I am more than certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.

     Now Buber rejects the understanding of Jesus in both traditional Jewish and Christian theology. We might ask why he calls Jesus his brother. Perhaps by calling Jesus his brother he is placing himself, Buber, as a Jew on equal footing before God. He certainly is rejecting traditional Judaism which claims that a messiah has to fulfill certain requirements such as creation of peace, fulfillment of the commandments, and these are all aspects of Jewish law that Buber has rejected. He also has rejected the Christian belief that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. So Buber is violating both traditional Christology and traditional Judaism. Jesus, in contrast to Jewish law which Buber dislikes intensely, stands as a paradigm for Buber of someone who is able to attain an I-Thou relationship with God. But the question is: is this Judaism? In a sense, what emerges is neither Judaism nor Christianity. This one religion continuum has become no religion, neither religion.

      Now where does the discussion lead us today? Is there any significance to Jesus for Jews today? Theologically, it seems to me, that there is basically no real point for Judaism to try to reclaim Jesus. We don't need him to justify our religious beliefs nor the forms of our religious practices. Jesus has no bearing on us in a theological way, but Jesus sometimes does affect us religiously in the sense that the reforms of Judaism that have been carried out are sometimes hindered by charges that Jews are simply imitating Jesus or Paul in rejecting Jewish law. Jewish views of Jesus often tell us more about Judaism than they do about Jesus himself, and in fact, the Jewish constructions of Jesus are sometimes a kind of envy. What emerges is less a Jewish version of Jesus that models him after the image of the rabbis than a depiction of the rabbis that models them after the image of the liberal Protestant Jesus.

     But in a more contemporary example I would also argue that some examples of Jewish-authored holocaust theology are similarly modeled after Christian gospel imagery. For instance, when Elie Wiesel writes in his book Night in describing the three children hanging on the gallows at Auschwitz the image that he uses, the image of these three innocent boys, hanging on the gallows and the very language are reminiscent of the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion. The more widespread discussion of the Holocaust by Jews as an event that is unique in history, a watershed event after which nothing will ever be the same, demanding a new covenant or revoking the old covenant, much as a Christ event is a unique event in history that shatters all assumptions and brings a new covenant. You wonder, is a holocaust theology also a kind of envy of the gospels? It's as if the holocaust is placed in competition with Jesus to demonstrate its significance by outshining and thus superseding Christianity.

      On the other hand, we as Jews and Judaism, remain of consequence to Christians. The question for Christians is whether Christianity can overcome a theological method which requires for her own glorification a corresponding disparagement of ancient Judaism, of first century Judaism, of early Judaism. We are present in Christian discussions of Jesus since he was and remains a Jew as much as a Christian. And as a metonymy for Judaism Jesus is of concern to us. The problem is whether Christians can have a positive affirmation of both Jesus and Judaism. And this leads me to a few brief remarks about the research that I've done concerning the Nazi period.

     [Here an overhead projector was used to display headlines of various news articles and the covers of various magazines of the Nazi period.]

     While I was working on the nineteenth century material I came across some evidence that certain Protestant theologians during the Nazi period had sought a synthesis of Christianity and National Socialism. It's a story that hasn't been recorded, and in fact, if anything, has probably been suppressed because I know I am not the first person to look at these documents, and yet I'm the first person to publish them, and I find that very strange.

     The movement of these pro-Hitler Protestant theologians who call themselves the German Christians can be seen visually here very easily. [Pointing to projected image on screen] This is a Sunday (weekly) church newspaper that put the swastika on the front page together with the cross. You can see it here.

     It is interesting that after 1936 the swastika was removed and there's a question why. Just by chance I happened to be at the Federal Archives in Koblenz in Germany and I accidentally found some correspondence between the Nazi party and some of these ministers. It seems from the correspondence that some ministers not only put the swastika on the newspaper but also put it on the altar next to the cross. Quite a few had done this and the Nazi party felt that the swastika was their own private symbol, and they didn't want it used. So they wrote letters to the ministers to say: ‘You have to remove the swastika from the altar.' And the ministers wrote back (and the letters were shocking to me) obsequious letters begging: ‘Please, let us keep the swastika on the altar. It means so much to us, etc., etc.' That was the tone of much of the correspondence that I came across.

     I'll just mention one other example. Again by chance in an archive in former East Germany, in Jena, I found correspondence between a professor of theology who was the representative of all theology professors in Germany and Himmler, the head of the S.S. In this correspondence from 1935 the theologians were asking permission to join the S.S., and Himmler said: ‘No, we don't want theologians in the S.S., because,' Himmler said, ‘you have dual loyalty: loyalty to Hitler and loyalty to God.' And the theologians wrote back again these long obsequious letters: ‘Please, let us, it means so much to us, etc., Hitler means so much to us, etc., we want to join, we want to go into the S.S. And just to show you what loyal Germans we are we died in such great numbers in the First World War, etc. etc.' And Himmler would write back: "No. Please come and see me next time you're in Berlin, but, no, you can't join the S.S."

     What was so startling to me was the tone of it. And the reason it was so startling was that if you look at books about the churches in Nazi Germany you can see just from the titles what the thrust of the author and his historiography is. For example, one book by John Conway is called The Nazi Persecution of the Churches. So you think the churches are being persecuted by Hitler because they are trying to affirm Christianity and oppose the Nazi regime. But if there is persecution, what kind of persecution were they experiencing in those days? What?! They were persecuted because they had to take the swastika off the altar? They were persecuted because they couldn't join the S.S.? It's another story.

     Let me just show you a couple of other illustrations. This is simply another issue of the same magazine. And this kind of synthesis of Christianity and National Socialism got to the point where people were actually making fun of it. This cartoon is a mockery that was done of these church people and their efforts to make a synthesis. This is a mockery done in a Communist newspaper where they put a swastika on the armband of the minister to mock the efforts of these church people.

     Now the particular work that I've done concerns an institute that was established in 1939 by the Protestant church. It was established by some theologians and it was called "The Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life". The institute was established in the town of Eisenach, right in the center of Germany, and it had members who were ministers, bishops, religion teachers, and professors of theology from all over the German Reich.

     I'll just give you a little flavor of this institute and what it did. When it was established, the president of the Protestant Church, Friedrich Werner, gave a welcoming address. Tthis is his picture, this is what the president of the Protestant church in the Nazi period looked like, wearing a swastika armband and giving a Hitler salute. Werner attended the opening ceremonies which were held on the Wartburg (and I assume you all know the religious and nationalist significance of the Wartburg), an important site for Germans and for Lutherans. Werner attended the opening ceremonies and he funded the institute throughout its existence, funded it generously. I discovered the financial records of the institute. They were never in the red, always in the black, and they wrote frequently to Werner and said: "We need a little more money," and Werner would send it, no problem.

     What was this institute trying to accomplish? Again, what is striking about this history, for me, is the name and the way that the name has been misrepresented in the historical literature. This is the letterhead on a letter sent by the institute: "Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life". But in the history books occasionally you'll find mention of this institute, only occasionally in a footnote, in an obscure corner, and it's always called "The Institute for the Study of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life". The word "eradication" is taken out of the title. Imagine, you knew nothing about this, and you pick up a book, you read there was an institute for the study of Judaism and think: "Isn't this wonderful! People, theologians would gather in 1939 in the midst of Nazi Germany and study Judaism. How noble! How wonderful!" So the elimination of that one word (eradication) from the name changes the way we understand it. And so I show you the proper name and how it was used by the institute itself.

     This institute was run by a professor of New Testament at the University of Jena, Walter Grundmann. This is the front cover of one of his books, one of his early writings, and again you see the swastika and the cross together. Grundmann had studied with the great Gerhard Kittel at the University of Tubingen and joined the Nazi Party very early and was very active as a supporter of Hitler. In establishing this institute, he wanted, of course, to become important to Nazi Germany, and he also wanted to transform the church. He made it clear in a letter to one of his friends that if Christianity went back to the way it had been he would leave the church. What does that mean? For Grundmann everything Jewish had to be eradicated from Christianity.

     You might ask: "What's Jewish?" Well, it turns out there are a lot of Jewish things in the New Testament that were a big problem, and he announced that as a German professor of theology at a prominent university he had the scholarly skills to determine what was authentic in the New Testament and what was inauthentic. So the first thing the institute did was to establish its own version of the New Testament which was published in 100,000 copies and sold to churches all over Germany. So for example, take a verse like John 4:22, "Salvation comes from the Jews." What do you mean, salvation comes from the Jews? In Nazi Germany! Impossible! Tear it out! And instead they substituted the famous anti-Semitic slogan, "The Jews are our misfortune." The geneology of Jesus from figures in the Old Testament was removed, as was the Last Supper, references to Jerusalem, Zion. All of that was taken out.

     But the New Testament is only the beginning of the problem. Of course, the Old Testament is impossible. That was to be eradicated and it was. The study of Hebrew was also ended. Theology students at the universities were told that they shouldn't cite anybody Jewish or try to compare Jesus with the prophets or anything in the Old Testament, but understand rather that the racial category of Jesus was primary. And what does that mean? That Jesus was racially an Aryan. And this Grundmann and his colleagues set out to prove in a series of books and articles. They also published a hymnal, again purged of all Jewish references, and you might ask: "What's Jewish in the hymnal?" And immediately you begin to think of certain Hebrew words, such as Halleluia or Amen. These were removed from the hymnal, which was also published in 100,000 copies and sold to churches all over Germany.

     It's hard to know what influence all of this had. I can tell you that met a minister who grew up in this period and who told me that when he was studying for his confirmation the minister said to him that Jesus was an Aryan and he accepted it Everybody knew that. That was simply common knowledge.

     Now just to give you a sense of some of the language of this period I'll read you just a few quotes from Grundmann and his work. "Our people," he declared in 1941 at one of the many conferences sponsored by the institute, "our people which stands above all else in the struggle against the Satanic powers of World Jewry for the order and life of this world dismisses Jesus because it cannot struggle against the Jews and open its heart to the King of the Jews." In other words, how can you be a Nazi and worship a Jewish God, Jesus? So the answer is: Jesus isn't Jewish.

     Grundmann wrote in a letter to the Reich Minister for Church Affairs at the time of the founding of the institute a week after Germany launched the war against Poland, that is on September 8, 1939, "In a moment in which World Jewry in its hatred of the German People has struck out in a decisive blow, and the German People is placed in a struggle for its right and its life, I turn to you as leader of the academic work of the de-Judaization institute. We are engaged in the work of this institute in the conviction that the Jewish influence on all areas of German life must be exposed and broken."

     Now you can hear in this also the standard propaganda, which is that Germany was fighting a defensive war against the violent Jews. And as a self-proclaimed expert on the nature of Judaism Grundmann published several books during the war years about the nature of Judaism in which he argued that Judaism was violent and dangerous. He wrote: "We know that the Jews want the destruction of Germany. To this very day the Jews persecute Jesus and all who follow him with unreconcilable hatred."

     And then, finally, the last one I'll read to you comes from 1942 from one of his books, The Religious Face of Judaism, in which he writes: "A healthy people must and will reject Judaism in every form. If someone is upset about Germany's attitude toward the Jews," (and this is the time when the German Jewswere being deported), " Germany has a historical justification and historical authorization for the fight against the Jews on its side." And this was another goal of this institute.

     Now, I'd like to conclude by mentioning first of all something about the meaning of this kind of Nazi work, but then also move forward and look a little more constructively at the future. It's clear to me that the reason these theologians declared Jesus an Aryan was not only because they wanted to be involved in Nazi politics, but also because they had a theological problem. The problem was: how can we be Christian and affirm Christianity if Jesus is simply a Jew and said nothing original, nothing new? Declaring Jesus racially an Aryan was an answer. All right, you might find parallels between the gospels and Jewish literature, but at least racially he was unique, he was new, he was original.

     But we have to ask: "Why was such an attitude even necessary?" And that is actually the meaning of the title of this lecture, because it seems to me that Christian theologians have suffered from a shame over their origins. That is, while Christians are proud of Christianity, certainly, there is a tinge in there, a slight tinge of a feeling that the fact that Jesus was Jewish in not something to be proud of. If anything, its something that Christians often fell ashamed of and try to cover over, or excuse, or try to explain away. And it's that sense of shame that needs to be addressed, that needs to be brought to light, and needs to be overcome. So that we're developed in this kind of an image is the result not only of Nazi politics, but also the result of a very old and deep theological problem.

     Now, on the Jewish side, the efforts of Jewish theologians to try to reclaim Jesus as a Jew may seem, at first glance, something friendly, a way of extending one's hand in mutuality. But they do have a little tinge of arrogance, and a kind of Jewish supercessionism that is also problematic. Ultimately, it seems to me best if we return to the two religion model that we used to have. That is, that it might be best to acknowledge, on the one hand, the commonalities of faith experience, of religious experience, of spirituality that we share as human beings, but also to affirm our differences in our beliefs and in our religious practices. The goal, it seems to me, should be less to focus on being all part of one religion and one continuum, and more, instead, on recognizing and accepting the differences in our religions, the very real differences. That is, to respect each other, not because we are in agreement, but to respect each other in our differences.

     Now, we can ask how this mutual esteem could possibly take place. And it's clear that now it's no longer possible for us to be religious isolationists. From the time of the Enlightenment we see that attacks against Christianity were also attacks against Judaism. It's also clear that anti-Semitism is also a perversion of Christianity, a defamation of Christianity. It is anti-Semitic and anti-Christian both. To be anti-Semitic means to be anti-Christian. We don't exist in isolation from each other, and the problems that affect one community affect the other community.

     Now it's clear, obvious, to all of us that we have to abandon Christian mission to the Jews because that would mean the end of Judaism, but maybe it's not so clear to everyone that an end of Judaism might also be an end to Christianity. Where would Christians be if there is no more God of Israel? But how can there be a God of Israel if there is no more Judaism, if there are no more Jews to affirm the God of Israel?

     And then, I'd like to suggest that we have to work very hard to reject de-Judaization of Christianity as also a form of anti-Christian anti-Semitism. We have to also realize that we can't have any more condescension of one religion toward the other, with Jews saying that Christianity is nothing more than the daughter religion . And instead we have to develop the expectation that each community has significant insights to offer the other, that each one has help to offer the other because often our theological dilemmas are very similar. We also have to realize that God is greater than religion, that religious diversity is the will of God. There is an old Jewish notion that God speaks in human language. It's a notion that was very important to Jewish theologians in the Middle Ages, and also to Christian theologians and also to Muslim theologians. God speaks in human language, in human languages, in many religions, and religious diversity seems to be the will of God.

     And then, finally, it is very gratifying to realize that in the post-War era so much has been accomplished as a joint effort of Jews and Christians, and that, in fact, it is Christian theologians more than any other group who have become the sharpest critic of anti-Semitism, and in a sense, the greatest allies of Jews and Judaism. The Jewish community is realizing that, and I think the Christian community also realizes that. Our greatest friends, as Jews and Jewish theologians, are Christian theologians, our greatest allies and our greatest sources of support. And that is an extraordinary even that would have made Walter Grundmann very upset, and for that we are very grateful.

     And then, finally, I have to say how wonderful it is that this lectureship has been established. It's wonderful in many ways. It's wonderful because I think these issues are very interesting intellectually. It think they're fascinating, and it's nice to have a chance to think about them because they are really striking. They're not easy; they're difficult, they're complicated, and that's what makes it so enjoyable to think about them. It's also important to have this lectureship for moral reasons, because, after the likes of Grundmann's institute, what could be a greater moral affirmation? And then I think it's also important spiritually. Just think about the fact that this lecture is taking place today, today after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. What does one do after such an event? We go to the synagogue for a service, there is mourning, we watch CNN, we think, we feel with Leah Rabin, but, at the end of the day, what could be more constructive and more wonderful than to come together and to learn and think about these issues, and learn also, perhaps, from the example of Prime Minister Rabin, of how it's possible to change one's mind, to change one's thinking even in the midst of a successful career, and to do what's good and what's noble? Thank you.