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Encouraging solidarity
Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, an Episcopal priest and leading scholar of Christian-Jewish relations at Boston College, says both Catholics and Protestants have done a lot of work in the last 70 years addressing antisemitism in the life of the Christian Church, building on the landmark Vatican II document Nostra Aetate.
But as he points out in his new book, Resisting Anti-Judaism: Practices of Christian Solidarity, there remain Christian practices that are implicitly anti-Jewish, and addressing these in the Church will enable Christians to more easily recognize and respond to antisemitic behavior in the larger world.
“Christian churches, broadly speaking, have done a really good job of rejecting anti-Jewish positions, which are now largely gone from the life of the Church,” said Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, the Kraft Family Professor and Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at BC. “What we have left are these little remainder elements that can make you realize there might be some more work to do.
“This book is written for Christian clergy, religious educators, music directors, and others responsible for the worship and educational aspects of congregational life. It is designed to equip readers to diagnose issues of anti-Judaism within their congregational contexts and then to develop constructive means of countering it.”
The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning is hosting a book launch webinar on November 11 at 12 noon, featuring Joslyn-Siemiatkoski; Peter Ochs, the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies Emeritus at the University of Virginia; and Philip A. Cunningham, professor emeritus of theology and co-director emeritus of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
The first half of Resisting Anti-Judaism looks at “stumbling blocks” in Christian practice and life, including the interpretation and presentation of the Scriptures in worship, song lyrics, and religious education materials. An example is the Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” which opens with “O come, O come, Emmanuel/And ransom captive Israel/That mourns in lonely exile here/Until the Son of God appear.”
“There’s a ‘lonely Israel’ that’s in exile and is mourning,” said Joslyn-Siematkoski. “Who’s Israel here? Do we mean the Jewish people? Are the Jewish people still longing and waiting and suffering until Jesus returns? What the Catholic Church and other churches have been saying over the past several decades is we should honor the ongoing religious vitality of the Jewish people. So maybe we don’t want to describe a ‘lonely mourning Israel’ because that casts a negative image about the Jewish people.
“On the other hand, someone could say, ‘Well, we think Israel here is the church.’ This is really about us longing for Jesus. But then all of a sudden, you’ve erased Jews from the story of salvation.
“This is an evocative hymn. Some people don’t feel like it’s really Christmastime until you sing this song in church. We want to honor that. So, in my book I don’t say we cancel ‘O Come, Emmanuel.’ Instead, we look at those words and figure out where we can substitute alternative words.”
Joslyn-Siemiatkoski contends that Christians could do more to center Jesus’ Jewishness during the Christmas season. He suggests Christian churches should take extra care during Holy Week, especially with the reading of the Passion (the trial and death of Jesus). He also raises issues with children’s educational materials that he says can present very binary descriptions of Jesus and his rivals, with those opposed to Jesus presented in “starkly negative terms and simplified emotional range.” He encourages Christians to teach the story of Jesus in ways that the people Jesus debates with don’t come off as “so simplistically and flatly bad.”
Joslyn-Siemiatkoski said Resisting Anti-Judaism is a synthesis of his talking to Jewish colleagues and responding to the needs of his students. Prior to coming to BC, Joslyn-Siemiatkoski taught at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Tex., where the students he taught “were aware they were going to churches where they had to deal with difficult gospel passages, difficult Bible passages. They were aware of the potential stumbling blocks that could be found in Holy Week.”
He team-taught with Rabbi Neil Blumofe, who encouraged Joslyn-Siemiatkoski to work on revising some Holy Week liturgies for his own Episcopal church. Rabbi Blumofe wrote the foreword for Resisting Anti-Judaism, calling the book “a gift.”
This fall, Joslyn-Siemiatkoski is teaching an elective titled “Antisemitism, Racism, and Christian Nationalism.” Next semester he will teach a course at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry titled “Facing Anti-Judaism in Parish Ministry.”
The book’s second part leans into the concept that Christians’ sensitivity to anti-Judaism in church practices builds solidarity between Christians and Jewish communities, which in turn helps Christians to recognize and respond to antisemitism in the broader world.
“We want to foster a covenantal imagination where Christians and Jews are envisioned as journeying together with God and towards God,” said Joslyn-Siemiatkoski. “Because Jews and Christians are bound together spiritually that means we can never stop paying attention to this relationship.
“It is crucial to have parishes and congregations develop local partnerships with Jewish synagogues or other communities. So when there is a problem—like antisemitic graffiti in a school or on a synagogue—Christians can show up in concrete ways to show solidarity, whether it’s Christian parents attending a school board meeting to say ‘This is a problem’ or congregational leaders helping to clean the graffiti off.
“This is a moment in time where many Jews feel alone,” said Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, who presents three case studies in the book of Jewish and Christian communities in Boston, Pittsburgh, and Lexington, Mass., that have come together in solidarity.
Joslyn-Siemiatkoski is modeling solidarity as an advisor to the Lexington Interfaith Clergy Association, through which he became a co-founder of Lexington United Against Antisemitism (LUAA), where congregations and synagogues collaborate to address issues of antisemitism. Joslyn-Siemiatkoski and two Christian clergy colleagues in LUAA developed a toolkit—included in Resisting Anti-Judaism’s appendix—to assess and address anti-Judaism in church practices.
“At the end of the day, this book is really about how to create healthy relationships between Christians and Jews. If Christians seek solidarity with Jews, it’s an exercise in developing these habits and skills that can also be applied to supporting other communities, such as the Muslim community or immigrants and refugees. This is really a way of living out the Christian vision that all people have fundamental dignity, and we are better when we are striving together for the common good.”