1 Dr. Marie Baird Dr. Daniel Burston Office Hours: Baird – M. 10-3, T/TH 1-3 and by appointment. Email: [email protected] Burston –Monday 10-11, Tuesday 12:30-1:30 and by appointment. Email: [email protected]

Anti-Semitism

Psychology 270-01/Theology 270 Course description:

This course focuses on the development of anti-Semitism in the West, examining its roots in the pagan world and early Christianity, and exploring the racial, political and economic forms of anti-Semitism in the medieval and modern world.

Course goals:

We invite students to consider 1) why hatred and of has been so long-lasting and pervasive, and to ponder 2) the pivotal role which anti-Semitism has played in western history, 3) the relationship between anti-Semitism and other forms of , and 4) to reflect on the new forms anti-Semitism assumes in today’s world.

Course Objectives:

Upon completion of the course, the student should demonstrate a basic familiarity with

- core theological similarities and differences between Judaism and Christianity - the varieties of Judaism that existed in Jesus’ lifetime - contributions which both Catholic and Protestant forms of Christianity made to the development of anti-Semitism in western culture - the differences between Christian anti-Semitism and pagan and Muslim varieties - the differences between racial and religious forms of anti-Semitism in the West - the heterogeneous responses of Jewish communities in the West to these diverse pressures - the specific links between Nazi ideology and contemporary anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Muslim world

Week One : What is Anti-Semitism and Why Study It?

We introduce the course, its readings and requirements and the two of us discuss our personal connection to the subject matter. We also discuss the history of the development of this course and the reasons why it is being taught (why should we study this topic)? We invite students to 2 respond—how significant do they think anti-Semitism has been throughout history? Where does it exist today? Do they know anything about the Catholic Church’s present and past attitudes and policies toward Jews? (The point is not to provide definitive answers but to kindle the discussion that will be followed up throughout the course.).

Readings: Burston, D. 2014. “Anti-Semitism”, Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, e-reserve. Pawlikowski, J, 2010, “ : Its Contemporary Ethical Challenges”, National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education Newsletter, electronic reserve.

Week Two: The Twentieth Century: The Holocaust

This week we will explore the emergence of racial anti-Semitism in the rise of Fascism, the Nazi Party in Germany and the Holocaust. We will examine the historical literature on the role of anti- Semitism in the rise of fascism and contrast particularistic vs. universalistic treatments of the Holocaust. We will also examine the phenomenon of Holocaust denial.

Readings:

Laqueur, W. 2006, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism, pp.107-169. Burston, D, 2009 “Nazism”, Encylopedia of Psychology and Religion, e-reserve.

Week Three: The Twentieth Century: The Holocaust

We discuss the role of religious anti-Semitism in giving rise to the Holocaust, giving particular attention to the role of both the Catholic and Protestant churches in fomenting anti-Semitic beliefs and persecutory practices during both the lead-up to the Holocaust and the Holocaust itself.

Readings:

“Descent into the Ecclesiastical Abyss: The Evangelical Church,” Eric Voegelin, electronic reserve “Descent into the Ecclesiastical Abyss: The Catholic Church, Voegelin, electronic reserve

Week Four: Jews and Christians

Similarities and differences between the two faiths regarding modes of piety and religious education, and the concepts of 1) the unity of the human species, 2) and singularity of every human person, 3) sin, 4) salvation, 5) sacred history (or covenant), and 5) systematic theology.

Readings:

Hertzberg, A. & Hirt-Manheimer, A. 1998. Jews: The Essence and Character of a People, chapter 3, e-reserve 3 Denova, R. 2005. “An Historical and Literary Understanding of the Passion Narratives in the Gospels”, electronic reserve.

Week Five: From Moses to Marcion: Varieties of Judaism in Jesus’ Environment

The prevailing consensus among contemporary Biblical scholars is that Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew; that he never intended to start a new religion. But if so, what kind of Jew was Jesus, and how did his religious outlook resemble (and diverge from) those of his contemporaries? To answer this question we need to examine the early history of the Jews and the different varieties of Judaism that existed in Jesus’ life time – Sadducee, Samaritan, Pharisee, Zealot and Essene. We discuss their sacred texts, their attitudes towards gentiles, converts and to one another, and the growing estrangement (after Jesus’ death) between Christians and , and eventually, between the Jerusalem Church and Pauline Christianity. We also discuss the Hellenistic and Roman hatred of Jews (Manetho, Antiochus, Tacitus) and the charge that precedes and accompanies the birth of Christian anti-Semitism.

Readings: Sandmel. S. 1978. Judaism and Christian Beginnings. Oxford U. Press, part 2, chapters 2 & 5. Hertzberg & Manheimer, 1998, etc., chapter 4, e-reserve. Laqueur, W. The Changing Face of , chapter, pp.38-52. Bronner, S.E. A Rumor about the Jews, pp. 1- 44.

First paper due.

Week Six: The Crucifixion and the charge of deicide

Joseph B. Tyson delineates “three major themes or tendencies” that organize the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’s crucifixion: the tendency to place the onus of responsibility on the Jews instead of the Roman occupiers, Jesus’s innocence, and the belief that Jesus’s crucifixion has fulfilled the prophecies foretold in the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible. We will use these three themes in order to explore the charge of deicide against the Jews, thus setting the stage for a subsequent discussion of this charge’s murderous reverberations through later stages of European history.

Readings: James Carroll, “My Rabbi,” in Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 37-41. Joseph B. Tyson, “The Death of Jesus,” in Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity’s Sacred Obligation, Mary C. Boys, ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 38-45, electronic reserve.

Week Seven: The Romanization of Christianity

We will examine the factors at play in the increasingly bitter and ultimately hostile separation between Judaism and Christianity, paying especial attention to the following issues: intra-Jewish 4 tensions, the fluidity between the two faiths in the first centuries of the Christian movement’s existence, the rejection of moderate voices urging an ongoing recognition of the vital links between Judaism and Christianity, the reflection of the growing hostility in New Testament writings. These lectures will focus on the historical, political, cultural, and spiritual trajectory that Christianity took with the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 CE. We will also examine the decidedly negative consequences these events produced for the Jewish people

Readings: James Carroll, “Parting of the Ways,” in Constantine’s Sword, 144-149. James Carroll, “The Story of Constantine,” “The Cross and the Religious Imagination,” “The Vision of Constantine,” in Constantine’s Sword, 165-194. Padraic O’Hare, “Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism: History, Roots, and Cures,” in The Enduring Covenant: The Education of Christians and the End of Antisemitism (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1997), 5-29, electronic reserve.

Week Eight: Church Fathers, Crusades, the Ghetto, and the beginning of Passion Plays

It is difficult to overestimate the importance that the early Church fathers had for the development of Christian theology, and also Christianity’s attitudes toward (and treatment of) the Jewish people. We briefly examine the writings of John Chrysostom, Tertullian, Origen, and especially Augustine with regard to the Jews. We counterbalance that with an analysis of those writings of Peter Abelard and Nicholas of Cusa that asserted the importance of a positive relationship between Jews and Christians.

Readings: James Carroll, “Augustine Trembling,” 208-219, “Abelard and Heloise,” 290-299, “Expulsion in 1492,” 349-353 in Constantine’s Sword. “The Roman Ghetto,” 365-368, “Jew as Revolutionary, Jew as Financier,” 426-428 in Constantine’s Sword.

Week Nine: The Crusades, Jewish Ghettos, and Passion Plays

We will look at the highly destructive impact of the Crusades on the Jewish populations of medieval Europe and their subsequent segregation into the urban Ghettos of that time. We highlight the most notorious aspects of Ghetto life as passed by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. We also examine the Passion Plays as a religious and theatrical genre whose effects served to reinforce the stigma attached to the Jewish community as the perpetrators of deicide.

Readings: James Carroll, “Passion Play,” 32-34, “The War of the Cross,” “The Incident in Trier,” “Mainz Anonymous,” 237-267 in Constantine’s Sword. A Statement on Passion Plays by the Anti- League: http://www.adl.org/Interfaith/passion_theology.asp Leonard Swidler, with Gerard Sloyan, “Recommended Changes in the Oberammergau Passion Play after 1984,” electronic reserve 5 Second Paper Due

Week Ten The Reformation: Luther, Calvin and Their Followers

Our first topic in Unit Three will be the Protestant Reformation. We discuss the competing strains of philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism in Luther’s life and character, the virulently anti- Judaic writings of the elder Martin Luther, and whether Luther’s anti-Judaic legacy influenced the rise of National Socialism in Germany. We also address the Calvinist attitude toward Jews, and the Reformation’s impact on modernity as a whole, evidenced in 1) the increasing separation of Church and State, 2) the rise of public education, 3) increasing calls for and freedom of conscience, and the way their impact on the USA and Western Europe shaped Jewish life in the aftermath of the Reformation.

Readings: Marius, R., 1999, Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death, ch. 22. Laqueur, W. 2006, The Changing Faces of Antisemitism , pp. 45-70. Burston, D. 2009. “Martin Luther”, Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, electronic reserve.

Week Eleven: The Enlightenment and the Jews

This week we examine the impact of the French, German and Jewish Enlightenment on 18th and 19th century Jewish communities, and the rise of progressive politics (liberal and socialist) as a factor in 19th century anti-Semitism. We discuss the celebrated friendship between Gotthold Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn, and the emergence of Jewish academics (Lazarus and Steinthal), the socialist Zionism of Moses Hess, the appeal of progressive (liberal and socialist) politics to increasing numbers of Jews in Europe and America, and the reactionary-Romantic backlash against Enlightenment progressivism and the Jews who embraced it. These issues are discussed against the background of broader social trends, namely, 1) the gradual dissolution of feudalism, 2) the rise of nationalism and colonialism, 3) the growth of secularism, and the discourse of equality and inalienable in France and America, 4) the opportunities afforded by public education, the promise of emancipation and the threat of assimilation in Europe and the USA.

Readings: Laqueur, W. 2006, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism, chapter 4. Librett, J., 2000, The Rhetoric of Cultural Dialogue: Jews and Germans from Moses Mendelsohn to Richard Wagner and Beyond, chapters 7-8, electronic reserve. TBA

Third Paper Due.

Week Twelve: Dreyfus, The “Protocols” and the Birth of Zionism

6 This week we look at the emergence of racial/political (as opposed to religious) anti-Semitism in the late 1800’s, with special emphasis on the Dreyfus case in France, the ideas of Eugene Duhring and Richard Wagner in Germany, and Russia, which triggered the convening of the first Zionist congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. We also look at “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a clever fabrication of the Czarist police, published in 1906, and since reprinted hundreds of times in dozens of languages.

Readings: Bronner, S. 2004, A Rumor about the Jews, chapters 1 to 5. Laqueur, W., 2006, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism, chapter 5. .

Week Thirteen: Nazism, Zionism and Muslim anti-Semitism

Muslim anti-Semitism is different than Christian anti-Semitism, and had comparatively little impact on Western society until after WWII. This week we look at sources of anti-Semitism in the Koran and the dramatic intensification of Muslim anti-Semitism after 1948.

Readings: Wistrich, R. 2010. A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. Random House, chapters 19-20.

Week Fourteen: Vatican II and Beyond

When John XXIII became pope in 1958, he surprised many by declaring that the Catholic Church needed to enter the modern world and as such, he convened the Second Vatican Council. One of the most important documents to emerge from the Council was “Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” with a special section devoted to the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. We will consider this document’s impact on Jewish-Christian relations, as well as some of the more recent developments that have occurred with the papacies of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.

Readings: “Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” and “Guidelines on Religious Relations with the Jews,” in Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents,” Austin Flannery, O.P., ed. (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co., 1975), 738-749, electronic reserve. Hertzberg, A. 1988. Jewish Polemics. Columbia U. Press, chapter 7. Laqueur, W., 2006, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism. pp. 1-20, pp. 171-208. Burston, S. 2005. “The Passion of the Christ and the Future of Anti-Semitism”, electronic reserve. Readings from Commonweal by Stephen Englund, Jon Levenson and John Connelly, on e- reserve.

Fourth Paper Due 7

Electronic Reserve:

http://guides.library.duq.edu/er.php?ecid=6841 (password: antisemitism)

Possible Changes to Syllabus:

Changes to the syllabus may be implemented at any time to facilitate the clarity, coherence and implementation of the course.

Course Requirements:

A. Regular class attendance and participation (10% of the final grade). Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class. Please notify us in advance if you plan not attend because of a medical (or other) appointment, and/or provide documentation of any last minute emergencies.

B. Class notes and required readings.

C. Four short papers, 5-6 pages each typed, double spaced, on a topic of the student’s choosing, due at the end of Weeks Five, Nine, Twelve, and Fourteen. Late papers will not be accepted without documented excuse. The faculty will suggest appropriate topics. The student may also choose his or her own topic, to be cleared with the faculty. Each paper is worth 15% of the final grade.

Class Presentations, Quizzes, Tests:

There are no class presentations or quizzes.

There will be a final essay exam. The question(s) will be distributed ahead of time, and the use of student notes, but not textbooks, will be permitted. The final exam is worth 30% of the final grade.

Grade Evaluation:

A. The plus/minus option will be used. The final grade will be determined on the basis of the four short papers (60%), the final exam (30%), and attendance and participation (10%).

B. Grading Scale: A 94-100, A- 90-93, B+ 87-89, B 84-86, B- 80-83, C+ 77-79, C 70-76, D 60-69, F 59 and below.

Academic integrity/honesty is expected. The policy of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts applies. It is essential to note that plagiarism includes either copying 8 from printed sources without acknowledging such sources or copying/downloading material from any Internet source without providing adequate documentation, e.g., web site address, etc.

Students with documented are entitled to reasonable accommodations if needed. If you need accommodations, please contact the Office of Freshman Development and Special Student Services in 309 Duquesne Union (412-396-6657) as soon as possible. Accommodations will not be granted retrospectively.

Please turn off all electronic devices before class begins.

Classroom behavior should be in accord with the policies of the university; no eating, sleeping, engaging in conversations that are not related to the course, coming late repeatedly among other things. Other students as well as your instructors should be treated with courtesy.

Late papers will not be accepted without a documented excuse.

Short Essay Topics

Essay Topics for Unit One

1. The singularity of the Holocaust as an historical event is not primarily a matter of scale, but of other factors that make it different from other . Discuss.

2. What are the fundamental similarities and the differences between Judaism and Christianity? Discuss and give examples. Describe the different varieties of Judaism that existed in Jesus’ lifetime. Discuss their possible influence on Jesus’ life and teaching.

3. How did Jesus’ followers differ from Jesus? What were the differences between the Jerusalem Church and Pauline Christianity? Why is it historically inaccurate to claim that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus? Describe how the false charge of deicide came to be established.

Essay Topics for Unit Two

1. Identify three New Testament passages that reflect hostility between Judaism and Christianity. What is the relationship between such passages and the development of Christian triumphalism and supersessionism? How would you respond to someone who used these New Testament texts to defend Christian triumphalism and supersessionism?

2. What political motivations can you identify that would have motivated the Roman Emperor Constantine to declare it illegal for Jews to proselytize? What cultural developments were occurring that contributed to the marginalization of Judaism during this time?

9 3. To what factors do you attribute the anti-Semitism of early Church Fathers such as Chrysostom, Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine? Are the negative influences from their writings still apparent in Christianity, in your estimation? If so, please give an example.

4. Describe the effects of the Crusades on the overall quality of life for the Jews of medieval Europe.

5. What means did the Passion Plays employ to incite hatred of the Jews? How would you respond to someone who tried to defend them? Can you identify any contemporary cultural phenomena, such as books, films, plays, etc., that exhibit such anti-Semitic themes, either overtly or covertly?

Essay Topics for Unit Three

1. Compare and contrast the attitudes towards Jews of young man Luther and the elderly Luther. How did they differ from the attitude of John Calvin, and why? What were the social consequences of these differences? Contrast the immediate or short -term consequences of the Reformation with the belated and/or unintended consequences of the Reformation for Jews, positive and negative.

2. The philosophers of the French Enlightenment were somewhat anti-Semitic, but their ideas benefited Jews in important ways, especially in the United States. Nevertheless, resurgent Jewish nationalism (Zionism) is in large part a response to the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, and the failures of the Enlightenment’s promise of full civic equality in France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Discuss and give examples.

3. The Enlightenment’s philosophy of progress was anathema to many priests and rabbis, but it attracted many Jewish adherents, which contributed to the vehemence of anti-Semitism in many reactionary circles. Discuss and give examples of progressive Jewish thinkers who turned to Zionism.

Essay Topics for Unit Four

1. Hannah Arendt called the Dreyfus affair "a kind of dress rehearsal for the performance of our own time." James Carroll adds that the Dreyfus affair was "a kind of first act." What do you think Arendt and Carroll mean by this? What happened to Dreyfus, and why? How did the Dreyfus affair effect the perceptions of many Jews about the goals of assimilation and emancipation?

2. There has been a substantial increase of anti-Semitism in Europe, Africa and the rest of the Muslim world over the past two decades. In addition to neo-Nazi groups and Muslim extremists, large segments of the political “left” are involved. Discuss this state of affairs and its possible impact on future history.

10 3. The second Vatican Council, or Vatican II (1962-1965) brought about profound changes in Christian attitudes towards Jews and Judaism, but not without provoking controversy and unease among many believers. Discuss.

4. According to Stephen Englund (et. al.) the current status of Catholic-Jewish dialogue is ambiguous and problematic in several respects. Discuss his argument and the responses of Levenson and Connelly.