The witness of Yad Vashem - how we treat the different other

For me, the consideration of culture, of human social life, normally includes questions of "self" and "other," and how they relate (questions which Miroslav Volf considers in Exclusion and Embrace). And how (and why) people build barriers between themselves and others, and how in certain situations those relationships become characterized by hostility and dehumanization (the depths of the "polarization" / "defense" reaction to difference, in the middle of Bennett's "ethnocentrism" in the DMIS). With that as context, I share a reflection on Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

I hesitate to write about my experience of Yad Vashem. To me it as a sacred place, a place that bears witness to an almost incomprehensible experience of suffering by one group of people at the hands of others. I feel, when I walk through the memorial, that I am walking among the wounded souls of a people. I ask God, whenever I visit, to touch my soul with the anguish of the Jewish people, reflected in the pictures and quotations, in the art and the exhibits. And I ask God to show me what this means for me as a fellow human being of those whose suffering is represented in this place.

The memorial is full of powerful images and striking quotations, many which scar one’s emotions, and others which lift one’s spirits.

“slay them not [the Jews]…scatter them abroad” (Augustine)

“where books are burned, human beings are also destined to be burned” (Heinrich Heine)

“the personification of the devil, as the symbol of all evil, assumes the living shape of the Jew” (Hitler)

“a country is not just what it does – it is also what it tolerates” (Kurt Tucholsky)

The exhibits bear witness to a feeling and perception of Christian ambivalence toward Jews and Judaism, and traces the attitudes and events in Hitler and Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jewish people:

The concept of German vs. Jewish “blood”

The so-called “Jewish question” and “Jewish problem”

The policy of Aryanization and discrimination

Anti-Jewish racial laws

Economic boycott

Stripping of civil rights

Forced registration and wearing patches

Vandalizing and expropriating of Jewish businesses

Flight, creating a refugee problem (no one wanted them)

The destruction of a whole Jewish way life

Experience of terror, jail, humiliation, abuse

The burning of synagogues

Confiscation of homes, real estate, factories, businesses, artistic and cultural treasures

The creation of ghettoes – incarceration behind fences and walls, large numbers of people being restricted to small sections of a city (as an interim measure to eventual total removal)

Resettlement, deportation

The final step in dehumanization and demonization of a people – the “final solution” – total annihilation, with gas chambers, and plans to murder 11,000,000 Jewish people

And the fact that (for the most part) fellow citizens and other nations did not notice, did not care, did not take action, or in some cases, acted as accomplices, directly persecuting Jews or taking advantage of their suffering and loss.

It is too much to take in.

“the world is divided [for Jews] into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter” (Chaim Weizman, 1937)

“all of us, dying here amidst the icy artic indifference of the nations, are forgotten by the world and by life” (Avraham Levite, Auschwitz, 1945)

And after the war, the fact that most Western countries did not want, would not accept, Jewish refugees.

There is a small bright spot in the witness of Yad Vashem, the testimony to those called “the righteous among the nations,” non-Jews who saved Jewish lives, people it says were (are) “a model of heroism, humane and moral behavior, and the preservation of the sanctity of human life.”

“God created all of us in the same image…everyone has the right to live” (Mary Szul, Poland)

“I do not know what a Jew is, we only know what human beings are” (Pastor Andre Trocme)

"I know that when I stand before God on Judgment day, I shall not be asked the question posed to Cain -where were you when your brother's blood was crying out to God?" (Imre Bathory, Hungary)

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

(Martin Niemöller, a German pastor and theologian)

And the reflections after the war, after the Holocaust, of a world lost:

“an entire Jewish world that existed and was destroyed”

“their dear ones had been murdered, their culture crushed, their homes ravaged, and they had been torn from their childhood places of origin – persons without a homeland, categorized as ‘displaced persons’”

“all is imprisoned within the cell of memory” (Itamar Yaoz-Kest)

“my people is no more” (Yitzhak Katznelson)

And praised. Auschwitz. Be. Majdanek. The Lord. Treblinka. And praised. Buchenwald. Be. Mauthausen. The Lord. Belzec. And praised. Sobibor. Be. Chelmno. The Lord. Ponary. And praised. Theresienstadt. Be. Warsaw. The Lord. Vilna. And praised. Skarzysko. Be. Bergen-Belsen. The Lord. Janow. And praised. Dora. Be. Neuengamme. The Lord. Pustkow. And praised… Amen.

(an excerpt from the book The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart)

How does one internalize such a witness? How does one answer the question that was ringing in my head as I tried to comprehend such large scale inhumanity, “how should we then live?”

I ask God to help me to understand, to give me sympathy for, the suffering of the Jewish people. And not to contribute to it. And Yad Vashem helps me to understand, in a small way, the importance of the nation of Israel to the Jewish people - having a place, a home of their own, a refuge. And the mentality that I think I see, of fear, acting like a cornered, threatened animal, striking out because of the spectre of being struck again, of annihilation as a people. I ask God to help me understand.

I can’t help but think – visiting Bethlehem and Ramallah and Hebron and Jerusalem – of the current experience of the Palestinian people, their suffering, their loss. And to think of the words I have heard so often (including from Jewish Israelis), of the tragedy of the abused becoming the abuser, the victim becoming the victimizer.

And I wonder what the lesson of the Holocaust and of Yad Vashem should be to us, all of us? Can Yad Vashem be a witness for peace?

Is the message, “never again will we (the Jewish people) allow this to happen to us”?  Or should it be, “never again will we (all people) allow this to happen to any human beings, and never – by God’s grace – will we (any of us) be the perpetrators of dehumanization and villianization of other human beings”?

May God allow us to internalize the witness of the many Muslims, Jews and Christians I have met in Israel and the Occupied Territories whose message is that we must treat every human being we meet as our brother, our sister, our friend, ourselves with a different language or religion or ethnicity, and that we must stand and work for societies, and a world, where every human being is treated with respect and dignity, their rights and humanity protected.

This, to me, is the message of Yad Vashem.

Do Muslims Belong in America?

In a recent blog at "Not the Religious Type: A Different Conversation About Faith," under the title "What's Our Role Vis-a-Vis Muslims?" (see http://notreligious.typepad.com/notreligious/2010/09/whats-our-role-vis-a-vis-muslims.html), the author quotes from an article in the New York Times about the place of Muslims in America, the difficulties they have been facing since 9/11 and most recently with the issue of the Qur'an burning by the church in Florida, and whether they are accepted by Americans - and asks what the response of his readers might be to Muslims in America.

As a "Christian," I deplore the anti-Muslim sentiments, statements, and actions taken by others who call themselves Christians.

As an American who has studied and taught American history, it strikes me that Muslims are facing what Jews and Catholics both faced, in the progression toward becoming an integrated, accepted part of the nation - suspicion re. their intentions, re. whether they are loyal to the U.S. or to their religion or some foreign authority, and would try to "take over" the U.S. in the name of and for the purposes of their religion (e.g., note the disturbance caused by Kennedy's run for President, with the question being asked, "if elected, who's directives will he follow - that of the American people, or that of the Pope?" It's hard to imagine now, but in 1960, that was a serious issue for people).

The issue for Muslims, then, is to answer the question, are they ready to embrace separation of church and state and freedom of religion? There is little freedom of religion in any Muslim country (which is one of the reasons Muslims enjoy life in America). Will they embrace the American way of free competition in the marketplace of ideas, where they have to win the day by persuading people, not by force? I think that a certain number (I have no idea as to percentages) of Americans are not yet convinced of the intentions and designs of Muslim immigrants and citizens (I hear many people I meet, asking these questions).

So, if you are Muslim, I would encourage you to continue working through these issues, and making your perspectives known. If you truly embrace American values, I am confident that you - like Jews and Catholics before you - will eventually be accepted into the mainstream. And I as a Christian American will work with you for you to be accepted.

In response to these sentiments, a friend of mine said:

"Your comparisons of religious systems is totally flawed. Give me an example of a Jew or Catholic that came to American soil and killed 3000+ people?? Or whose base religion would even honor that?

"The core of Islam is world domination through whatever means possible. Muslims by religion COULD NEVER accept AMERICAN values! Nor should they --it's against their religion! Islam is not about being assimililated into the culture. Islam wants to conquor the culture."

In response to which I would point out that the history of Christianity is very similar to the history of Islam. Well into the colonial period in America, Christians were persecuting and killing other Christians who disagreed with them. I don't think that was due to the core teachings of the faith - I see it as due to "fallen" (faulty, twisted, incomplete, broken - call it what you will) human nature, which is also at work in extremists who are killing in the name of Islam. The vast majority of Muslims I know do not believe what the extremists are teaching. I lived through the first Gulf War in Tunisia, and 9/11 and the second Gulf War in Egypt, and after those events in Lebanon and Jordan, and have never been threatened in any way (even though people were very upset with American policy and actions).

And I would draw another parallel - one of the things which many Americans fear from "conservative" Christians, is that those conservative Christians are out to "take over" America and impose their values on others. Muslims believe that Islam is true, and that the best scenario for mankind would be for everyone to embrace Islam (but I don't think most Muslims believe that should happen "through whatever means possible"); even as Christians desire that all people come to know and follow Jesus (but not through whatever means possible).

And one final "faith and culture" issue - are Christians about "being assimilated into the culture"? Jesus said that his followers should be "in the world but not of it." That doesn't exactly sound like assimilation. In fact, Christians have wrestled forever re. the relationship between faith and culture. H. Reinhold Niebuhr in his well-known "Christ and Culture" discusses 5 different ways in which Christians have responded to culture:

1. Christ against culture

2. Christ of culture

3. Christ above culture

4. Christ and culture in paradox

5. Christ transforming culture

I'll return to these in another post, but suffice it to say that the relationship of Christians to their culture has been anything but simple or straightforward. Miroslav Volf in "Exclusion and Embrace" talks about Christians having one foot "in" and one foot "outside of" their culture, being part of it but also in some way distant from it and able to critique and judge it.

There is much to reflect on, which is a major reason I decided to start this blog. My point here, in response to my friend's declaration about Islam and Muslims, is that Muslims and Christians are in much the same situation, regarding faith and culture. Both have experience with rejection of culture. Both have experience with adaptation to culture (the story of the spread of Islam is the story of the adaptation to the world's different cultural settings, with the faith of Muslims clearly reflecting both central Islamic cultural values, principles and practices, and the local cultural flavor wherever Islam took root - much the same as the spread of Christian faith through time and place). Islam is adaptable, as is Christian faith. Muslims read the texts and the history, and work through how to understand those texts and their history, and how to move forward into new situations. I believe that Muslims are capable of interpreting Islam in a way that will allow them to embrace life in America under basic American values such as freedom of religion and separation of church and state. And I believe it is in the interest of other Americans to encourage them in this process.