It.docx

It\'s been about 23 years ago. One of my closest friends back in the UK was at that point a rabbi. We were on faculty together. And he asked me to write an article on Luther and the Jews. And I tried and abandoned it. On the grounds it became clear to me that this is an issue that is exceptionally d...

It\'s been about 23 years ago. One of my closest friends back in the UK was at that point a rabbi. We were on faculty together. And he asked me to write an article on Luther and the Jews. And I tried and abandoned it. On the grounds it became clear to me that this is an issue that is exceptionally difficult to address from a historical perspective. And I felt at the time I was just not a good enough and experienced enough historian to even attempt it. That I needed to spend time just working on becoming a better historian before I could revisit the issue. The danger with addressing Luther and the Jews is because we cannot come at the issue without Auschwitz and Belsen and the final solution. The danger of coming to Luther and the Jews is twofold. On the one hand one can go in wanting to exonerate him from any responsibility for the Holocaust. On the other hand one can go in wanting to blame him for the Holocaust. The problem is that neither of those are particularly good questions for historians to begin with. But if you take the Holocaust out of the picture the danger is that in doing so you\'re already taking a kind of unacceptable moral stand. That\'s the problem. So the question of Luther and the Jews always really intrigued me. It actually intrigued me from even before I became a Christian in that I read the book that happens to be one of the most influential books for pinning responsibility for the Holocaust on Luther. And that is the rather, it\'s now outdated but in 35\... 40 years ago, this was every school, it was the one big book that every schoolboy had read. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by the American journalist William Shira. Shira was a fascinating figure. He was an American journalist, New York Times or something, during the 1930s. So he witnessed firsthand the rise of Nazi Germany. And then in, I think it was about 1961, he published this sort of thousand page history. of the Third Reich. It\'s brilliantly written. He was a journalist who could really write and you read it and it\'s an absolute page-turner of a history. Very outdated now of course. There\'s been a lot of archives studied since then. He wrote this just a little bit out of a decade after the events that he was describing. But early in this book he talks about German antisemitism and he gives a kind of genealogy of German antisemitism. And he points to the connections between Luther and Wagner, of course. Richard Wagner, the great composer and radical artist of the 19th century, was also a vigorous anti-Semite. And he points to a number of other\...there was a weird Englishman, a Houston Stuart Chamberlain, a very strange man. I don\'t mean this as a chauvinistic point but he was born English but he wished he was German. He learned German, he became more thoroughly at home in Germany than he ever was in England and he was a vigorous anti-semite and as an old man was part of the circle of the young Adolf Hitler. And of course Hitler himself was connected to Bayreuth where the Wagner Festival takes place. knew Cosima Wagner, Franz Liszt\'s daughter, who was married, Wagner\'s widow. So, Schyra sort of teases out something of this genealogy, and he traces it back to Martin Luther. Because in 1543, Martin Luther writes a notorious treatise on the Jews and their lies, in which, among other things\... Luther calls for the locking of Jews into their synagogues and the burning of them down to the ground. Would have been easy to dismiss as that\'s just Luther\'s typically bombastic rhetoric at one point, if it wasn\'t for the fact that that stuff really happened then in the 1930s and the 1940s. And Luther\'s writings were a staple, his writings as Jews became a staple of Nazi propaganda. I wrote a little book, Histories and Fallacies, a few years ago, which was, I wanted to write a book for undergraduate students at universities to help them do history. Get out from under some of the crazy theory that\'s sort of bogging the discipline down and just write good history. And in one of the chapters, I took Holocaust denial as my example because I think, you know, if you can\'t prove the Holocaust happened, you can\'t prove anything happened. You know, six million people disappear from Europe. They\'ve got to have gone somewhere. If you can\'t prove the Holocaust, then really history is up as a discipline. We can\'t prove, we can\'t demonstrate anything beyond a reasonable doubt. So I spent a little while doing research into Holocaust denial and I was really rather depressed at the number of Holocaust denial sites are very depressing as a genre anyway. Two things depressed me about many of the ones I came across was one, so many of them professed to be Christian. I think Biblebeliever.org. whatever the Australian end is, was a Holocaust denial site when I went there. And the other thing that depressed me was this was where you could go to download Luther\'s writings on the Jews. Holocaust denial sites typically link to Luther\'s writings on the Jews. So there\'s definitely a connection in the modern world between Luther\'s writing on the Jews and the Holocaust. Question is then, how do we deal with this? And I raise it on a course like this for two reasons. One, I raise it for the pastoral reason that I think if you ever mention Luther you will get feedback. Austin was telling me last night over dinner that he\'d given a talk on Luther at his church Sunday school and he\'d had a sort of\... that somebody had emailed him a very, very critical email, why are you teaching on this anti-Semite at your church? So you will come across it, I think, as an issue in your church if you ever mention or teach Luther. Probably in this year, 2017 being the 500th anniversary, you may come across it more common. I certainly experienced, whenever I give a Sunday school talk at another church on Luther, it\'s always the first question that was asked from the congregations. The one thing everybody knows about Luther, that he hated the Jews. So these days when I do my Sunday School talk, I introduce something of that into the talk to set myself up to answer that question. I also raise it because it\'s an interesting question that allows us to explore some aspects of historical method and to think about how to do history. That reason why I abandoned the project 22, 23 years ago is what makes the question interesting from a historian\'s perspective. One of the attractions of history to me is it\'s like a whodunit. My wife and I are addicts of European crime drama, you know, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, even Icelandic crime drama, a real geeky kind of interest. But we love the complexity of the stories, the whodunit aspect. To me, one of the attractions of history is history, it\'s puzzles. It\'s problem solving. You find\... You find something in history and you want to know why. How can I explain this? What\'s going on that this thing looks like this and happens at this particular moment? History is a detective puzzle for me. And the question of Luther and the Jews poses an interesting detective puzzle, which we\'ll come to in a little while. But first of all, I want to give some background. First thing to know about Luther. And the Jews is anti-Jewish feeling is not invented by Luther in Europe. There is already several centuries of anti-Jewish sentiment deeply embedded in European culture. For example, in the 13th century, 1290, the Jews are expelled from England, an expulsion that will actually only be lifted in the 17th century. There were Jews in England, but they had to live undercover. If you\'ve ever read, I love, there were some of those novels of Sir Walter Scott. You know, sometimes it\'s just great to read a novel with a straightforward plot with goodies and baddies and chivalry and the bad guy gets it in the end. That\'s Sir Walter Scott. Ivanhoe, in the novel Ivanhoe, Ivanhoe is cared for by a Jew and his daughter who are living incognito. Because the Jews have been expelled from England. We also know that in European literature from the 12th century onwards we find the emergence of what\'s called the blood libel. Sarah Palin used the term some years ago. I can\'t remember how she used it but I remember thinking at the time that\'s not the correct way of using it. You\'re just referring to slander. The blood libel is something very technical. The blood libel is\... refers to stories that claim that Jews kidnap little Christian babies and sacrifice them, crucify them and drink the blood and this sort of thing. These stories start to circulate from the 12th century onwards in Europe. That\'s actually quite important for a literary assessment of Luther\'s writings on the Jews. So the 12th century onwards the blood libel becomes a standard part of anti-Jewish propaganda in Europe. It\'s actually fueled in part by, you know, it\'s the dark side of a good thing. The 12th century, 11th, 12th century onwards, Christian preaching starts to focus much more on the cross than it had done previously. When you think about it\... We have a cross-centered piety. It\'s not hard to move from a piety where you emphasize the crucifixion to a world where you start to think about who put Christ on the cross. And anti-Jewish feeling seems to somewhat feed off this cross-centered piety in a perverted sort of way. So from the later Middle Ages, 12th century onwards, there is a rising anti-Semitism in Europe. We find it in Spain, of course there\'s significant Jewish population in Spain. I mentioned earlier in the week that Spain is interesting at the Reformation because Spanish Catholicism is more self-conscious about itself than you find elsewhere because there are alternatives, there are borders in Spain. You bump up against Islam, you bump up against the Jews and therefore you have to know who you are because\... who you are is not necessarily the default position. We know there was a lot of anti-Jewish feeling in Spain in 1391. A series of massacres of Jews takes place and forced conversions to Christianity. And Spanish literature abounds with the myth of the Jewish fifth column. That the Jews are there, exist, are plotting to subvert society. It goes back to what I said about the Anabaptists. Why are Anabaptists feared? Because you can\'t assimilate them into a world where civil society is built on the idea of everyone being baptized as soon as they enter the world. The Jews like the Anabaptists present a problem. Think about hippies in the 60s. Think about communists in the 50s. The fear, you know, communists were those who pledged their allegiance to the party and not to the Commonwealth. Not to the civic state and were therefore regarded as, rightly so, as subversive and dangerous. The Inquisition, of course, starts at the end of the 15th century and much of the focus of the Inquisition in Spain is on Judaism. So there is, what I\'m saying is, as I\'m building towards Luther, the first thing we need to do when we approach Luther is ask, is he the beginning of the story? Well, no, he isn\'t. Luther\'s appearing as part of the anti-Jewish European story after some 400 years of anti-Jewish sentiment. Beginning of the 16th century, there\'s an interesting incident surrounding the, it\'s called the Reutlin affair. the Royclin affair 1510 that doesn\'t appear to be very clear that better yeah the Royclin affair 1510 man called Johannes Feffer corn Johannes Pfefferkorn. He\'s Jewish and he converts to Christianity. I think he becomes a Dominican. Is it before the Reformation, of course. And Pfefferkorn begins a campaign for the destruction of Jewish literature. And he is opposed by the humanists. Ultimately the Emperor Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor, hires Johannes Reuchlin to produce a report on Jewish literature. Phepocorn wants it all destroyed. Reuchlin incidentally is the uncle of Philip Melanchthon, so he\'s part of a prestigious intellectual family. Reuchlin is the outstanding Hebraist of his day. So as far as Europe goes, he is the expert on Hebrew Bible. And also on rabbinic texts. And Roy Klin brings the report back and argues that Jewish literature should not be destroyed. Why do I tell this story? Because this story has gone down in the sort of the, in history as being a battle between a sort of self-hating Jew, Feffa Korn, and a philosemite, Roy Klin. In actual fact, the story is more complicated than that. Feffa Korn wants Jewish literature destroyed because he fears that the Rabbinic commentaries on the Old Testament, because they don\'t see Christ in the Old Testament, will prevent the conversion of the Jewish people to Christianity. So his reasons are not really anti-Jewish reasons at all. They\'re kind of evangelistic reasons. Wrong-headed, I think. But they\'re evangelistic reasons. Royclin\'s argument, now there\'s no doubt in my mind that Royclin wants literature preserved because he\'s a scholar and scholars like literature preserved. But Royclin\'s argument for the preservation, his public argument for the preservation of Jewish literature is that we need the world to see, we need to preserve this so that the world can see just how wicked and perverse the Jewish interpretation of Scripture is. So Royclin, when you look at the details, he\'s no phyllosemite. He\'s no philosemite. He\'s part of the general background anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish tradition of Europe at that time. That\'s all background to Luther. Okay now I want to introduce the what I call the you know the who done it aspect of the problem. A general, what I\'m going to articulate now is an extremely useful general principle. for when it comes to doing history. And it\'s this. The conventional doesn\'t really need to be explained. It is the unconventional that needs to be explained. What do I mean by that? If you go to England, you will find, as I mentioned this thing in the D Min class, you will find, you go into a home in England, there are doors on every room. That\'s because traditionally we like our privacy. If you visit my house, I\'m not going to show you around my house, I\'m going to escort you from the door to the sitting room and all of the other doors will be closed so that you cannot see how I live my life. If you go to England you will probably be more likely to be offered tea than coffee. If you go to England and you switch on sports on a Saturday afternoon, you are more likely to see what we call football, what you call soccer, or perhaps cricket, although cricket is generally played sort of during the week rather than weekends, or rugby, then baseball, or basketball, or hockey, which we actually call ice hockey because hockey in Britain is played on the grass typically, and we have to distinguish it from ice hockey by calling your hockey ice hockey. Is any of that weird? Not really in an English context. You don\'t have to explain that. Saying, well, I was in England is actually quite an adequate explanation for all of those things. Why? Because those are the conventions of English life. If I\'m in England, I do not need to explain the conventions of English life. If I visit England and I go into a house, though, and it\'s open plan, and I\'m offered coffee rather than tea, and I switch on the television and it\'s baseball not cricket. This is creeping, you know, one of my big, big, big hatreds is the American habit of wearing blue or grey suits with brown shoes. We never have done that in England. I say it\'s creeping into England now. But to me that\'s a sartorial abomination. Why? That\'s just not done in England. If I go to England and I see a man wearing a blue suit and brown shoes living in an open plan house watching baseball rather than cricket and drinking coffee rather than tea, that needs explaining. That needs an explanation. That\'s the strange thing. It is the unconventional, the unexpected that needs explaining. That\'s a good principle for doing history. One of the things is it means that when you\'re doing history, one of the first things that one does when you start looking at a particular period is you learn the conventions of that period. In order to do history properly, you need to learn the conventions of that period so that you can understand how people think and so that when you start reading texts and you start looking at behavior in that period, you know what is normal so that when somebody behaves out of the normal, that\'s what attracts you. That\'s what you zero in on and that\'s what you want to spend your time explaining. Well, let\'s move to Luther then. We\'ve done a lot of preparation. What I\'ve done thus far in this class is essentially establish as a norm in Western Europe in the late Middle Ages anti-Jewish feeling. Everybody hates the Jews. Everybody hates the Jews pretty much. Even Royclin hates the Jews. And that\'s the framework that I\'m then going to use when I come to examine Luther\'s attitude to the Jews. Is there anything unconventional about Luther\'s attitude to the Jews? Well, yes there is. But it\'s not his treatise of 1543. The treatise of 1543 on the Jews and their lies is the one that everybody talks about and focuses on. You go to the church in Wittenberg and if you look above the door there is what they call the Judensau over the door of the church. What is the Judensau? It\'s a gargoyle or carving in the shape of a pig with a rabbi with his arm, pardon the expression, but shoved up the pig\'s backside and a group of Jewish children suckling at the pig\'s teats. Massively offensive. Violently anti-Jewish, vile anti-Jewish thing. In fact after the war there was some discussion as to whether to tear, to start destroying the Judensau on German churches because it was a signal of saying, Jews not welcome. And it was decided that no, they would keep these there as a reminder, as a reminder of the legacy of certain strands of medieval and early modern Christianity. And the Judensau is still there, but the Judensau needs no explanation. It\'s just a particularly vile representation of the conventions. Luther\'s 1543 Treatise, that\'s not the one I\'m first interested in explaining. The one I want to explain, or needs explanation, is the 1523 Treatise that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. Now that\'s the Treatise that nobody talks about relative to Luther and the Jews, but it is fascinating. It is fascinating because it is such a decisive break with the conventions of the day. This is a positive Treatise, basically saying to Christians, it\'s a kind of outreach manual in some ways. Basically what Luther says is, Christians need to be really good neighbours to the Jews in their town. In order to win a hearing for the Gospel, they need to be kind and nice and welcoming to Jews because that is the way that they will win space for a hearing, for a presentation of the Gospel. It\'s a great treatise. It\'s a remarkable break with convention. It raises a question. In fact, it raises two questions in the sort of the whodunit puzzle. Why did he write it? The unconventional needs explanation. Why did he write it? Why did he so break with convention? And two, why does he change his mind in such a violent way by 1543? And I think the answer to those questions is one and the same actually. I think the answer is this and it goes back to the point that I\'ve been pressing a number of occasions during this week. I think Luther believes he\'s living at the end of time. I think he believes that Jesus is about to return and for him the Reformation is this great, we would say, revival of Christianity right at the end of time. And one of the marks, one of the things that must take place for Luther before Jesus returns is what? Conversion of the Jews. Conversion of the Jews.