Camp Chimerical Anti-Christianity: Facing the Consequences

A few years ago, for the fast day of Tisha B'Av, I wrote a hard-hitting post, raising some uncomfortable questions about the Jewish community. As that is one of my personal favorites, I decided to follow it up for this Tisha B'Av. My purpose is not to attack anyone and, for that reason, I have avoided names. I hope that my ambiguous feelings about my camping experience rather than hatred should be clear. As is often the case with me, I am more interested in asking questions that I find myself struggling with than in offering solutions.    

When I attended Haredi summer camps, I once played a villainous Spanish Inquisitor in a play. While waving a torch, I gave a speech about Judas Iscariot as the model traitorous Jew, which included a joke reference to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as well. I remember watching another play in which a priest murders the prince, who started asking difficult theological questions regarding Judaism, in order to set the Jews up for a blood libel. Both performances can be seen as anti-Christian. The difference between them is that while I expressed a "rational" opposition to Christianity, the other person made a chimerical assertion. Spanish inquisitors are historical facts. The figure of Judas did play an important role in medieval Christian anti-Jewish rhetoric. Even Christians would agree with me on this. By contrast, there is no evidence of Christian priests murdering Christian children in order to frame Jews just as there is no evidence of Jews murdering Christians for their blood. Christians can hope to negotiate with someone possessing a legitimate negative impression of historical Christians. Such a person can be convinced that modern-day Christians are different and not a threat. A person with a chimerical opposition to Christianity will never be convinced that Christians are not a threat even by the evidence of his own eyes as he already believes things about them that he never had any evidence to begin with. Such a person will inevitably sink into the black hole of conspiracy theories to the point where the lack of evidence for his beliefs will simply prove to him that there is a vast cover-up.

In regards to this story of a priest murdering a Christian to cover up the fact that Christianity is false, I am reminded of Israel Yuval's argument that Christians came to believe in the blood libel because they saw Jews kill their own children during the Crusades. If Jews would kill their own children so that they do not fall into the hands of Christians, might Jewish mothers poison their children's kugel if they thought they were attracted to Christianity? If Jews hated Christianity this much, surely Jews would gladly murder Christian children. Thus, Christians had "no choice" but to kill Jews in self-defense. Similarly, it would be reasonable for impressionable Jewish children in the audience, like myself, to conclude that if priests would kill Christian children to stop them from converting to Judaism, they would gladly kill Jewish children. The logical conclusion from this would be that, if we ever found ourselves in a position of power, we should kill Christians.

Let me be clear, this play about a murderous priest was in no way exceptional in how Christianity was portrayed at this Haredi camp. One of my favorite rebbes used to tell stories with his stock villain, "Father Schmutz" (dirt). When priests were not trying to start blood libels, they kidnapped Jewish children and held them in secret monasteries to try to convert them. In case you were wondering if this was just a matter of some overzealous teachers, the head counselor of this camp used to have a radio show, "Children's Stories of Inspiration." In addition to blatantly idolatrous stories that endorsed human sacrifices to angels and a Satan capable of acting independently of God, one of his stories involved a Father Francois murdering a Christian child in order to start a blood libel. His plan was thwarted when he was forced to take hold of the hand of the dead victim, who then refused to let go.

Installing the campers with a visceral hatred of Christianity as a religion and a fear of Christians as people were part of a conscious top-down effort. I doubt the camp administration wanted us to actually go out and harm any Christians. That being said, their jobs depended on demonstrating to parents that their children were being protected from outside "negative" influences. In an exercise of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, the fact that these administrators were, ever so slightly, putting every Jew on the planet in danger clearly took a back seat.

What are the consequences of this kind of education? When the Passion movie came out, I told my father that I could not call it anti-Semitic for the simple reason that its portrayal of Jews was not worse than the portrayal of Christians that I was regularly fed in camp. My father, the assistant-head counselor of that camp, agreed with me. On a more serious note, consider the role played by Islamist schools in installing a pathological hatred of Jews, directly leading to Jews dying in terrorist attacks.


      


It is clear to me that not considering the children in this video and certainly their teachers as legitimate military targets (the kids are even in uniform and practicing military maneuvers) will lead to dead Jews. The problem is that any non-Jew can respond that Jews also indoctrinate their kids to hate and I have simply too much personal experience to point-blank deny that fact. So the administrators of my camp have real Jewish blood on their hands. Their actions have made it harder to form the necessary alliances needed to fight Islamic terrorism and save Jewish lives.

Now it needs to be said, that the people I am talking about are warm wonderful people that I gained much from. These are not anyone's stereotypes of hate mongers. I loved camp and many of my fondest memories come from there.  Coincidently, the staff member who played the murderous priest later became my tenth grade English teacher at Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and taught me Julius Caesar (he was even good at his job). At the time, I did not see myself as being indoctrinated to hate and I still have my doubts as to calling this hate. Everything was framed in such a positive and loving way, which may have made it all the more insidious. There was much good to my camp; that being said, beyond the fun times and spiritual growth lay a dark side that needs to be faced.

Daniel Lasker - The Jewish Critique of Christianity

Here is a lecture that Dr. Daniel Lasker gave at Ohio State last Friday on Jewish polemics against Christianity. He argues that Jews in the Middle Ages were more proactive in crafting anti-Christian polemics and that this genre was not simply a response to Christian polemics. I must admit that I am not yet convinced of his argument. I am mainly interested in what happens in the thirteenth century, the "golden age" of these polemics so to speak, and for this period he fails to make an argument. Here are my notes. As always, all mistakes are mine.

When you are talking about narrative, how do you give a framework to facts? In terms of Jewish writings against Christianity we have the basic facts yet we still have to think about the narrative of this material. There are two sides to this. Christian polemics against Judaism go back to the New Testament itself. The Jewish polemics come much later. The old narrative was that Jews were responding to Christians. If Christians had not initiated there would have been no reason for Jews to write. In Jewish apologetics, Jews are the tolerant ones who believe that the righteous of all faiths have a share in the world to come.
According to Jeremy Cohen, prior to 1170 Jews did not write polemics because Christians were not interested in Jews. Instead Jews held to traditional genres like biblical commentary. At the end of the twelfth century we see Jacob b. Reuben and R. Joseph Kimhi. They were interested merely in protecting Jews, not in going on the offensive.

This narrative is very comfortable to Jews. It makes Jews out to be the tolerant ones who are always the victims. Nineteenth century Jewish historians wrote in an atmosphere that denied Jews writes so they needed to avoid anything that had Jews initiating things. Jacob Katz and Israel Yuval have helped change this model. Katz described Jews as being very comfortable with Christian culture. Yuval wrote about Jews wanting revenge against Christians when the Messiah came. Some of this comes from a discomfort with Jewish power coming from Zionism. If the past two thousand years were not simply Jews being oppressed by gentiles then Jews lose their moral blank check when it comes to dealing with the Palestinians. 

In the first nine centuries of Christian history, there are many adversus Judaeos tracts, but nothing in return. At most you get anti-Christian allusions in rabbinic literature. The rise of Islam marked a major shift. Why would Jews in Muslim countries write polemics against Christianity when there was no Christian missionary campaign? There was another upswing in early modern Italy even without an actual missionary campaign. David Berger argues that Christians were actually responding to Jewish challenges. Very few Dominicans, even in the thirteenth century, were actually involved with preaching to Jews. Some of the nastiest Jewish anti-Christian polemics were not in response to Christianity. Jacob b. Reuben told his Christian friend that he would accept Judaism if he had a brain. (Jacob b. Reuben's Wars of the Lord is a response to a Christian friend who tried to convert him.) Later writers like Crescas are actually more sober. We even see earlier works being toned down.

If the old narrative is no longer viable is there an alternative? Now the old narrative was not completely wrong. Jews did react at least somewhat to Christians. In the thirteenth century, even Ashkenazim turned to polemics. Similarly we have the fifteenth century responses to the forced Tortosa debate. Jews attacked Christianity because Christianity took for itself the Jewish birthright. The first authors of polemical treaties were philosopher theologians. These thinkers formulated a theology of the unity of God. Attacking Christianity was simply a logical extension of this. Andalusian Jews carried on this tradition in the eleventh century due to their philosophical interests. They passed this on to Ashkenazic Jews. This is the picture until the end of the twelfth century when the Christian campaigns began. Here the old narrative comes into play. This situation continued through the fifteenth century in Iberia.

The Fifteenth World Jewish Congress: Jewish Centers in Medieval Western Europe

Bernard Rosensweig – Did Rabbis Play a Central Role in the Ashkenazic Communities after the Black Death?

The Black Death more so than the Crusades was the turning point for German Jewry. Rabbi Jacob Weil divides the level of scholarship between before and after the decrees following the Black Death. Acts of violence, committed during this period had succeeded in eliminating many scholars and lowered the level of scholarship. New laws needed to be clarified. We have a rabbinic conference in Nuremberg in 1438 to deal with this breakdown in community. The creation of books of customs now became necessary as questions of daily routine now came to the fore.

In this period of confusion and chaos, the rabbi stepped into the void and provided a singular kind of leadership, going beyond the individual community. The rabbi serves as a center of Jewish unity, providing continuity and structure. We can see this in the attempts by the civil authorities to impose the position of chief rabbi on communities. These attempts failed but they show how important the position was and that the authorities were aware of this. An example of this new kind of rabbi was Rabbi Jacob Weil, who represented the community of Augsburg in negotiating with the emperor and at Nuremberg. We may bemoan the abuse of authority by unsavory characters only goes to show a new found power to the rabbinate as the community is weakened.

Mordechai Breuer wished to show that the rabbinate as was on the decline and that rabbis were caught in the position of trying to stem the tide going against them. Rabbi Moshe Mintz was the only rabbi to put in ordinances based on his own authority. He did this in Bamberg. They are in the most obvious areas on religion. There is nothing on communal life like personal status and monetary issues. Mintz only recording some of his ordinances. In order to establish his authority, he had to do so in the most obvious areas of Jewish life.

Rabbi Jacob Weil, when he came to Erfurt, found a community is disorder and put in ordinances to clarify basic matters of Jewish law. It is true that it was the parnaism who negotiated tax agreements and collected them from the community. Rabbis did, though, have a role in taxes. They helped set the ground rules for assessing taxes. Wealthy Jews tried to get special breaks, increasing the burden on the rest of the community. Rabbi Israel Isserlin declared that a practice had to done by the community three times in order to take effect.

In conclusion, there are clear continuities after the Black Death. We see more of a professional rabbinate. This generation did produce a talented group of scholars and they launched a new school of scholarship that influenced Rabbi Moshe Isserles in the sixteenth century. There was a decline but it was not at the beginning but rather at the end of the fifteenth century as Israel Yuval argued.

(Dr. Haym Soloveitchik goes to the other extreme, arguing that Germanic Jewry was on the decline from the end of the thirteenth century due to the collapse of imperial authority during these decades, which resulted in the large scale massacre of Jews.)