On Tuesday, November 9, at 7:30 in the Emerson Suites, Dr. Susannah Heschel will speak about the intersection of Christian theology and Nazi racism during the Third Reich.On Tuesday, November 9, at 7:30 in the Emerson Suites, Dr. Susannah Heschel will speak about the intersection of Christian theology and Nazi racism during the Third Reich.
On the anniversary of Kristallnacht — the November 1938 Nazi pogrom against the Jews of Germany and Austria — Dr. Susannah Heschel will discuss Christian responses in Germany and other countries to Kristallnacht and Nazi anti-Semitism. She will address both those Christians who opposed the Nazi persecution of the Jews and Christian theologians who created a Nazi Christianity.
During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. According to Heschel, the surprisingly large number of distinguished professors, younger scholars and students who became involved in the effort to synthesize Nazism and Christianity should be seen not simply as a response to political developments, nor simply as an outgrowth of struggles within the field of Christian theology, but as suggesting underlying affinities between racism and Christian theology, affinities they recognized and promoted.
Heschel is the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of biblical scholarship and the history of anti-Semitism. She is the author of “Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus,” which won a National Jewish Book Award and Germany’s Geiger Prize, and “The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany.”
For more information contact Rebecca Lesses, associate professor of Jewish studies and coordinator of the Jewish studies program, at 607-274-3556 or rlesses@ithaca.edu.
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Kim Wojtanik, Humanities and Sciences Dean's Office, Ithaca College, at 607-274-3409, or at kwojtanik@ithaca.edu. We ask that requests for accommodation be made as much as possible in advance.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20101101144644896