As someone who studies Church history, the name David Kertzer has come up frequently. He’s a Jewish historian who writes about Jewish relations with the Catholic Church. The time period he mostly covers is from the fall of Napoleon to the Second World War. I used to think that he was of bad motive. Some Jews talk about Church history as solely a way for bashing the Church while completely ignoring the facts. Rabbi Tovia Singer comes to mind in this regard. I used to think that Kertzer was like this but I now no longer believer that he is.
David Kertzer is the son of a rabbi who was involved in interfaith dialogue with Catholics and Protestants. I’ve just read my first book from him and watched a couple YouTube videos. He doesn’t seem to be motivated by hatred but for telling the story about an institution that I believe that he genuinely cares about – the Catholic Church. I greatly admire the man.
That being said, his history is biased. I don’t believe that it’s intentionally biased. While Kertzer is a good man, he appears to have been indoctrinated into standard Jewish thinking. The holocaust wasn’t a Christian thing but earlier Christian persecutions paved the way for the holocaust. It’s seems logical seeing as how he deals with the time period before World War II.
I recently read The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism. Early on in the book, Kertzer tackles the big issue of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Kertzer seems to think that the Church claiming to be anti-Judaism as opposed to anti-Semitic is a convenient get out of jail free card. Kertzer denies this distinction.
Kertzer tries to show us that they’re essentially the same thing. It is true that the Church did things that were anti-Judaism that looked identical to what the anti-Semitic Nazis did. For example, the wearing of distinct clothing and forcing them into ghettos. This was done by both groups, and I’ll be honest, if I was a Jew living in those times, I would admit that both of these events would have looked very similar.
Eventually Kertzer quietly stops using the term anti-Judaism and simply uses anti-Semitism and the bait and switch is complete. He doesn’t make the argument since they’re clearly not the same thing. Kertzer admits that while the Church put Jews in ghettos and made them wear distinct clothing, they never promoted or endorsed an extermination policy against the Jews.
In Chapter 2 of The Popes Against the Jews, Kertzer acknowledges the fact that a conversion to Catholicism would free one from a Jewish ghetto in Christian lands. However in National Socialist lands, this couldn’t free one from a ghetto. Anyone who thinks that anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism are identical needs to answer the tough question of Edith Stein. Edith Stein was a woman born Jewish who converted to Catholicism and became a nun. She perished in the holocaust.
Why does Kertzer do this? Although I think he’s quite honest as a historian, his Jewish upbringing would have interpreted most of these facts for him. In 1896 the famous Zionist Theodore Herzl wrote of his desire for a Jewish state in his book The Jewish State. Before he gets into what the state will look like(which is extremely different than what it has become) he gives the reason why this state is needed. The reason is persecution. However, Herzl makes an interesting observation worth noting. He says:
Modern Anti-Semitism is not to be confounded with the religious persecution of the Jews of former times. It does occasionally take a religious bias in some countries, but the main current of the aggressive movement has now changed.
I find this statement to be a firm confirmation that anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism are two very distinct things. The Church has always been and still is anti-Judaism but it has always been opposed to the evil and racist ideology of anti-Semitism.
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