Every year during Holy Week, we Christians face a problem. The Gospel narrative that tells of the death of Jesus attributes blame to the Jews instead of the Roman authorities who were the ones that actually charged Jesus with insurrection and hung him on a cross, a Roman method of capital punishment.
Because of these Gospel narratives, the hateful term “Christ-killers” began to be used as a slur for Jews in some contexts. For the past 2,000 years, this unjust portrayal has led to antisemitic behaviors that have resulted in horror after horror being inflicted on Jewish people. And we know that antisemitism and violence against Jewish people is not a thing of the past, but still rages today.
A sign hangs from a fence outside the dormant landmark Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022, the fourth year since 11 people were killed in America’s deadliest antisemitic attack. AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar
Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar of the New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School, wrote an article in 2021 titled, “Holy Week and the hatred of the Jews: How to avoid anti-Judaism this Easter.” In that article she wrote about the difficulty that pastors and priests encounter when we speak about the death of Jesus and read the Gospels that reference “the Jews” as responsible for that death. She said, “Every year, the same difficulty surfaces: how can a gospel of love be proclaimed, if that same gospel is heard to promote hatred of Jesus’s own people?”
The Gospels teach us that if we want to change something, if we want to do that which is right, correcting the evils of the past and turning toward God, we must first tell the truth about the past and then repent.
Therefore, we’ll be sharing this statement about Christianity’s history of antisemitism. It was written in 2002 by the Christian Scholars Group on Jews and Judaism. During this Holy Week, I invite all Christians to reflect upon these words.
“For most of the past two thousand years, Christians have erroneously portrayed Jews as unfaithful, holding them collectively responsible for the death of Jesus and therefore accursed by God. In agreement with many official Christian declarations, we reject this accusation as historically false and theologically invalid. It suggests that God can be unfaithful to the eternal covenant with the Jewish people. We acknowledge with shame the suffering this distorted portrayal has brought upon the Jewish people. We repent of this teaching of contempt. Our repentance requires us to build a new teaching of respect. This task is important at any time, but the deadly crisis in the Middle East and the frightening resurgence of antisemitism worldwide give it particular urgency.
“We believe that revising Christian teaching about Judaism and the Jewish people is a central and indispensable obligation of theology in our time. It is essential that Christianity both understand and represent Judaism accurately, not only as a matter of justice for the Jewish people, but also for the integrity of Christian faith, which we cannot proclaim without reference to Judaism. Moreover, since there is a unique bond between Christianity and Judaism, revitalizing our appreciation of Jewish religious life will deepen our Christian faith. We base these convictions on ongoing scholarly research and the official statements of many Christian denominations over the past fifty years.”
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
