Justice pour la foi juive: Dialogue avec Pierre Pierrard.
Sullivan, William J.
Jacob Kaplan (le Grand Rabbin), Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1995.
Pp. 310. 100 F, paper.
Kaplan is a courageous man of faith who fought the shameless racism
of the Third Reich during the Vichy regime. He lived into his 100th
year, and died in 1994, a rabbi and veteran of both world wars. In
accord with the regulations of the Vichy Government, he registered as a
Jew, but he then wrote to the same government of his pride in being a
Jew and his shame as a French citizen that his government would demand
such a procedure of Jews to demean, denigrate, and even kill them. The
Vichy police captured him, but thanks to their venality he was able to
buy his freedom. In the course of that frightening incident, he watched
his wife and daughter escape capture in the anonymity of the crowd.
During the Holocaust few were heroes, many collaborated, and most were
content only to survive. Kaplan was what everyone would want to be in
times most would prefer never to face.
After the war, European Christians tried awkwardly at Seelisberg,
Fribourg, and elsewhere to undo the teachings that had contributed to
the Holocaust. However, the Finally boys were a reminder of the French
proverb that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Circumcised by their parents after the fall of France, they were
confided to a French Roman Catholic woman who facilitated their survival
but then conspired with nuns, priests, and perhaps even bishops to keep
them from their Jewish aunts for nine long years after the war. During
that time, someone even baptized the boys. In the same period a French
Protestant theologian wrote of the providential role of a suffering
Judaism as a reminder to Christians of the consequences of infidelity. I
know this theologian was not an Antisemite, and I do not believe the
others were either. However, they were all, along with so many more in
countries all around the world, the misguided survivors of wrong-headed
Christian teachings on the Jewish people.
In contrast is this statement from the Grand Sanhedrin assembled in
Paris by Napoleon I in 1807, ". . . every person professing the law
of Moses but not practicing justice and charity towards all who worship
God, no matter what their particular beliefs, sins seriously against his
law." But, Christians have not yet managed to say all that their
elder brothers in the faith want to hear from them.
Kaplan wished Christians would disavow any future attempt to
convert Jews to Christianity. Cardinal Lienart wanted that disavowal
included in the conciliar declaration on the Jews. However, the Fathers
did not agree, and Edith Stein's canonization would again make many
Jews wonder where the Roman Catholic Church as well as other Christians
really stand on this touchy issue. The State of Israel is mentioned but
not at great length. Pierrard posed no question on what was happening
then to Palestinians. Two millennia of Antisemitism, capped by the
Holocaust, makes Christians hesitant to raise honest questions even to
great men like Kaplan.
William J. Sullivan, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY
