context of the tri city area idea

W4745067 pg.1
TMA05
How have postwar relations between Christians and Jews been affected by the Holocaust.

In answering this question on the topic of the Shoah I shall seek to explain how what is referred to as the definitive crime of human history in which the deaths of over six million Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi state occurred and how this affected Jewish-Christian relations. This will be done briefly with the opinions of historians on that with reference to the foundation of Christian-Jewish interfaith organisations that have since 1942 occurred in other states. I shall then turn to certain themes of interfaith co-operation such as scriptural archaeology (the Dead sea and red sea scrolls) and how that impacted on English medium religious studies and other academic disciplines literature towards and against the spirit of Christian-Jewish dialogue, with an opinion as to its possible motivations and a look at the structure of the UK state at that time. I shall then turn to the Middle East peace process with reference to the course CD to offer hope for the future with reference to personal experience of going on a middle east interfaith trip in 2005. I shall conclude with an outline of how a middle east peace process could look that resolves Israeli West Bank settlements and the status of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah under international law and its resulting impact on Judeau-Christian relations “across the world[1]” As such it will be explanative, thematic, historical and then perscriptive.

1) What and when was the Shoah
The Shoah or Holocaust was the systematic execution of the Jewish and other minority populations within Germany and her annexed, AnschluBed and conquered territories, ordered by the Nazi party hierarchy and carried out by the German armed forces, specifically the SS (though aided by others) after the disbandment of the SA. It was inspired by the Nazi ideology[2] that the Germans were an Aryan race and that others were untermenchen or sub human and needed to be exterminated to create lebensraum for the Aryans to expand. It was thus highly racist and based on the divine right of one race or personal charisma of one man (Hitler) to rule the world. Hitlers misguided ideologies were in part based on erroneously seeing the British Empire as was as a model to emulate as they had defeated the Kaiser (in whose service he had himself been gassed), the old adage if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em.

However this was itself based on an error as the UK and its empire had by then evolved towards a Commonwealth and had begun to accept the principle of self determination for its dominions and territories. Also as discussed in study Guides 1 and 2 of AA307 the UK was not homogeneously one church or even one faith and had as part of the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660[3] accepted freedom of religion and the rights of a Jewish (or for that matter any other faith, though not initially Roman Catholic till the 1829 Emancipation Act owing to the Scottish and Irish situation as was perceived in England and encouraged by the popular press) minority to practice their religion so long as they obeyed the laws of the Westminster Parliament (and any bodies so created by statute or Royal perogative such as County and Parish / District councils and status now settled by constitutional referenda since 1997 after the 1975 precedence). A possible counter argument for the delay in dealing with this was fear over the 1936 constitutional crisis to the Monarchy owing to the British Royal succession and its impact on what was then the key tenets of religious opinion for leaders (at least in public and especially after the reign of Edward VII) namely one wife for life. However as church and state remain more seperate in the west it is possible for this not to be the more exact rule as faith communities have shifted more to raising the next generation and building a better world rather than judging the present one as some of the practices of those that do such as honour killings and stoning for adultery are barbaric and go against international law.

2) The UKs response in 1942, the USA following suit.
Yet the Nazis were different. After events such as Crystallnacht in 1938, wearing the Yellow star of David and registration of property and confiscation and business avoidance prior to the start of conflict in September 1939 in Germany, the UK state started receiving more refugees talking about the state of the persecution. However with death camps and ghettoisation of occupied territories such as Czech and Polish lands occurring after the Second world war begun, the post war excuse for the delay was that information did not reach the UK till at least 1941 (though that does beg the question how effective the interrogation of Rudolf Hess in the Tower of London to name one case study or the SOE in its first years actually were). Study Guide 5’s Chronology in part disputes that.

The 1942 response was then initially interfaith and religious in the following year. The Roman Catholic, Church of England, Church of Scotland, United Synagogue and Reform Synagogue leaders formed a joint ctte or council of Christians and Jews to speak out about the evils of Nazi persecution and seek alternative remedies to the situation and to prevent the continuation of it. Similar initiatives followed in the other countries allied against the Nazis and after the war an international committee to co-ordinate them was founded. Thus out of darkness a force for light and peace was created (albeit one at times apparently biased towards the foundation of a unified Israel including the Palestinian 1948-67 territories until recent peace initiatives discussed below). Hence when the death camps were liberated Allied Commander General Dwight D Eisenhower (and in the 1950s US President) said something like “take pictures take movie reels take statements, take the whole damn lot, because some day some dumb bastard is gonna deny the whole evil thing took place.” Thus Christian Jewish relations were in 1945 based on the mutually humanitarian reaction that nothing such as the Holocaust should ever happen again and that a specifically Jewish homeland would be the guarantor of the future for the Israeli people. Such noble sentiments required a language and form of communication to overcome mutual hostility and negative reactions and that impacts on many spheres of society and that is discussed later on.

3) The Foundation of the modern Israeli state
Yet building on the British Governments Balfour declaration that on the Levant there should be a Jewish state became USA mantra and for Stalin a matter of realpolitik as it was a way of reducing the number of opponents he had to kill or send to Siberia, by appearing more humane and allowing them to emmigrate. The declaration of the Israeli states foundation after the surrender of the British Mandate owed to overstretch and a realisation that to allow safe access for pilgrims under the framework of international law at that time a continued imperial Christian force may have been counterproductive to any achievements under the preceding mandate in terms of shrines constructed by all the churches in the world.

4) The desire for commonality and dialogue, Dead Sea Scrolls
Hence building on the work of the British mandate in archeaologlical co-operation and the building of shrines in the mandated territories, exploration of caves around Qumran in the West Bank took place from 1946 onwards yielding scrolls and fragments of text that have been collected and published[4]. This helped to create a framework for that state to build on that was interdisciplinary and allowed for both scholastic exemption from conflict for the religious classes (many of whom lived in the 1948-67 territories that needed defending)[5] and the emergence of secular Jews who lived in Israel but didn’t practice their faith as such, whose doubts may have been generated while serving in that states military in the occupied territories. This is in turn aided engagement with the Holy Land by historically newer Christian Churches in projects such as the excavation of ‘Peters Boat’ at the Dead Sea or the 1970-80s discovery of the Red Sea Scrolls near the Sinai peninsula as previous writings on common textual backgrounds based on the Dead Sea Scrolls and previous post Renaissance and Crusades Scholarship such as Drane[6] did not fully explain the difference of interpretation of the common ( Torah. and Talmud or Old Testament) text context for the two religions and how differing Christian Denominations or religious sects of Judaism interpreted the common text or had a different translation.[7]

Taking a historigraphical perspective on this in the English speaking world one possible observation that the desire for a modern translation of the bible produced two translations after the 1960s, the Good News and the New International Version as well as an update to the English version of the Vulgate the Jerusalem Bible more recently based on changes to the vernacular across the world. This stemmed from concerns that the Authorised Bible (King James) translation was not so readily comprehended by the population at that time and the desire for Christian unity following Vatican II and similar Christian Jewish initiatives by the Vatican.

5) Impacts on Sociology and other ‘new disciplines’ taken as cures from the ills portrayed in fiction.
Such interfaith cooperation has generated two new academic disciplines in the post war world. The first is sociology or the science of society and the psychological / psychiatric sectors, created to regulate (for good and for ill) the costs, direction and healing of psychiatry by empirical data and will of the state rather than a general view of society or medieval codes and thinkers such as Moses Maimonides or one mans ideology such as Freud or Jung. This reflects the reality of each states professional bodies for each kind of sector and the emergence of social workers as day to day matters were no longer put in the care of psychiatrists and psychologists and this new sector needs a guidance for its staff that fits in with it, hence the erroneous nature of this jurisdiction that it has to be humanistic in order to protect Roman Catholics working in it for going against the teachings of the Vatican on matters such as Birth control or abortion when the medical sector works according to the Church of England. Yet owing to the facts discussed in Study Guide 2 of other denominations within the UK this is further constrained as these Christian groups have impacts on the scope of the state and how it functions practically, with theologies such that they are the true Israelites not reflecting the facts on the ground on the Holy Land prior to the instigation of the UN led Quartet.

Thus to reconcile this and to take in knowledge of the UK philosophy became a key support to theology and in the development of the rebuilding of the monarchy since 1992-7 inline with the heir to the thrones wish that the monarchy become a ‘defender of faith’ rather than just defending the faith (FD, granted to Henry VIII for his scholasticism prior to his seeking a divorce / marriage annulment). Hence the second subject is Philosophy for working out ways of engendering democracy and the counter ideology or non ideology that defeated communism in part in the name of Judeau Christian religious thought. It also acts as a moral code for those to whom religion had excluded them as wel as discussed by Phillips in her books. This may have been a way of including them so that they didn’t feel radicalised from the political process if mainstream churches sought to exclude them (Study Guide 4 pgs.50-52). Thus it can be seen as a family including the whole of society even if its figurehead was head of certain values fixed to the church. This compassion could be seen as the states soft power against the church and also the church adapting to changing societal norms when rhetoric such as ‘kill as many Germans as you can’ provoked the slaughter on the Somme and is now the preserve of Al Queada (though more generally aimed at the West).

6) Impacts on Ethical and political debate

Hence this can be seen as the UK state rallying against the Communism of the USSR from an economiclaly untenable position in the 1970s which produced the effects of the credit boom to fund space and missile research which encouraged the USSR towards Glasnost and Perestroika and aided Christians within the Warswas Pact area be it Solidarity in Poland or the Eastern Orothox churches in Russia and the USSR proper. Hence inmterfaith dialogue can work against abuse of human rights and produce greater peace talks at the end of the Cold War, a legacy of George Bush Snrs US Presidency and the mindset of never again after the Holocaust.

7) Impacts on economic and political structures of Global governance
This common language of interfaith organisations reflected a critique of the UN as better than the preceding League of Nations but still subject to restrictions on what it could do owing to bi, tri and mukltilateral interstate arguments such as mutually assured destruction after the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Vietnam and Korean Wars. This has since been offset by improvements in communication media such that the USA could call for the Berlin wall to come down and the whole of the Warsaw pact heard about it. The internet is the natural democratisation of media with the blogospere relaying information about the world and trying to effect events. Christian and Jewish groups lobbied for the Gleneagles accords to reduce third world debt and lobby for change.

This in turn has been a case of dialogue making a difference to key historical dates in the Middle East peace process as well. Study Guide 5 covers the following dates: 1948/9, End of mandate and partition of levant between Israel, Egypt and Jordan
1956, Suez
1967, Six day war
1979-81, Camp Davis initiatives till death of Sadat
1989, Fall of Berlin wall new initiatives for a middle east peace
1991, peace conference
1993 Election of President Clinton
1995, Second Camp David accords.
2000, Peace plan talks fail in USA, Sharons walk on temple mount.
2005,
2006.

8) Peace plan ideas
NB Gaza withdrawal in 2005,
West Bank settlements
Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah, the indivisible trinity.

9) Conclusion
[1] Holtschneider, K Hannah in Chapter 8 Woolfe
[2] See Hitler, Adolf “Mein Kampf” and speeches specifically Nuremburg.rally in the 1930s.
[3] ratifying the agreement of Oliver Cromwells Parliamentary republic
[4] Vermes, Geza ‘The complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English’ (penguin 1998)
ISBN 0-14-024501-4
[5] See Course CD 5 and study Guide 5
[6] Drane, John Introducing the Old Testament
[7] See Cohn-Sherbrook, Dan ‘Understanding Judaism’ (2000) in which he outlines that the different Jewish sects such as reform don’t agree on what to reform and that Conservative Jews, don’t agree on what to Conserve.