OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | ANTISEMITISM | VILNIUS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS
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by Dovid Katz
VILNIUS—For centuries, missionaries have cunningly preyed on small, weak, fractured and vulnerable Jewish communities, cleverly roping in widely known and respected figures to lend a veneer of academic or intellectual legitimacy. At issue is whether the majority Christian culture is prepared to accept as equals a minority whose theology differs, without campaigns to “recruit souls” which implies the worst about the faith and people whose souls need to be “saved.” Indeed, the necessary conclusion about the inherent evil (in the case at hand historically including the charge of deicide) of the unconverted played its role in the mindset that was among the conceptual prerequisites for the Holocaust. Around 96% of Lithuania’s Jewish citizens were massacred. Some local priests risked everything to hide and rescue a Jewish neighbor. Others gave pep talks to the local shooters ensuring them that they were firing at the Devil himself. The issue is one that calls for humility, intercultural respect, and human sensitivity.
This is not to be confused with Christian-Jewish partnership and mutual love and respect, as exemplified by the many Christian and Jewish authors who have contributed to Defending History and joined forces in the cause of historic truth, tolerance and respect for all faiths (nearly all of DH’s Persons of the Year are Christians).
For many years, there has been a large investment in Judaic studies and activities here, sometimes with ulterior motives of covering for Holocaust revisionism, glorification of local perpetrators, local antisemitism, and to serve to delegitimize via exclusion bona fide Jewish critics. This new conference, “Yachad beYeshua Theology Conference” sponsored by the de facto (though perhaps in-denial) missionary movement Yachad BeYeshua is scheduled for 8-10 November (conference announcement and program; online registration).
UPDATE OF 1 OCT. 2024:
The office of Rabbi Elchonon Baron today released Rabbi Baron’s letter to the conference organizers, noting plans for a peaceful protest outside the event.
The use of the Hebrew name alone on top (translation: “Together in Jesus”) in the title serves, at once, to (a) obfuscate the content, and (b) sound like any good old wholesome Jewish organization down the block. But deception is neither a Christian nor a Jewish virtue, a deception compounded by (c) abuse of the term “theology” to mask crass and underhanded missionary activity. But the last line is revealing, including the two juxtaposed words “Jesus” and — “Mission” (as in “Mission to the Jews”). No more need be said.
The “mission” is also evident from the ostensible availability of tickets only for locals (“We have reserved our remaining tickets for Lithuanians to join us in this pivotal discussion”). Which Lithuanians do they have in mind for the prominent-in-the-program Christified (“messianic”) Sabbath? Of course, not mentioning that very many Jews very much believe in their own religion’s conception of Messiah, which happens to differ from that of Christian neighbors and friends. Moreover, Jews don’t put on “Judaized Sunday church services” to entice conversions from among those neighbors and friends. Or, to put it more crassly: They don’t put on Sunday church services dedicated to the “real Messiah” of their own religion or any other non-Christian faith. Elementary norms of intercultural and interfaith respect include the restraint to desist from purporting to put on another’s faith holy day services and celebration with the utterly disrespectful pasting-in of the differing cardinal beliefs of your own.
Happily, there are no serious Lithuanian theologians among the speakers. Serious theologians would not touch this with a bargepole. If this were verily a theology conference, there would be some bona fide rabbis and Jewish theologians invited to explain the view that Judaism ipso facto believes in the future messiah to come rather than one who came. But when artful propaganda is dressed up as academia, as we know from so many Holocaust conferences in Vilnius, the genuine “other opinion” is nowhere to be found, not on the program, not in the conference hall.
Lithuanian Jews have been shocked to see among the speakers two leading Lithuanian intellectuals who have made for themselves prominent careers, with many genuine significant accomplishments, in the realm of Jewish affairs. There are Vilnius University’s leading professor in Judaic studies, Prof. Dr. Jurgita Verbickienė, and master educator and author Vytautas Toleikis. To be sure, both eminent scholars have had their “scrapes” over Jewish issues. Toleikis, in a secret Facebook forum, once accused the editor of Defending History of being a Russian Jewish lackey who uses his black arts powers to hypnotize Lithuania’s Jewish community on matters of Holocaust history and antisemitism (for the “sins” of defending Fania Brantovsky and Rachel Margolis, and protesting city-center neo-Nazi marches). By contrast, Verbickienė, a member of the recent state Working Group convened to decide the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, very publicly made clear to Lithuanian television news just a few months ago that the legacy of the basketball games and rock concerts of her Soviet youth were just as important to commemorate as the five hundred year old cemetery, still home to thousands of intact human remains, which would be forever defiled if the Soviet dump in its center is restored to a conference and memorial center with seating for thousands (as recommended by her Working Group). As a matter of interest, will the Hebrew-named “United in Jesus” movement coming to town publicly protest plans to desecrate and defile the Old Vilnius Jewish Cemetery?
Jewish life here is never boring. One thing is crystal clear. Modern, democratic, peaceful and delightful Lithuania — with its Christians, Jews, and many others in ongoing friendly dialogue — needs this new conference, especially now during an interval of rising antisemitism, like a hole in the head.
Jesus himself would be the first to say so.
Moreover, the local intellectuals who make such fine hay of the tragic Litvak heritage might in the future be a trifle more sensitive to Jewish sensibilities. Maybe even show a drop of empathy.
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