00:04:30.560 - 00:04:49.870

Hear God's people. You shall love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might hear God's people love God truly and your neighbor as yourself, hear God's people. God is

00:04:49.880 - 00:07:49.540

great. There is no God but God, God who has brought us here to this place and time , we praise your name. Let us pray, eternal God, our beginning and our end. We

00:07:49.550 - 00:08:05.550

thank you for calling us to this time and place . We thank you for your presence in this community , gracious God. We worship and adore you make your holy spirit move among us so that we may

00:08:05.560 - 00:08:24.850

follow Jesus, bind us together in love and faith so that we may support one another through all diverse gifts. You provide be our starting point and our haven and accompany us throughout this new academic year in

00:08:24.860 - 00:08:56.680

Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, we pray amen. It has been said that the second time feels better and it's true on behalf of the faculty , the staff and the board of trustees of Austin

00:08:56.690 - 00:09:18.360

Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I formally welcome you to the 2023 2024 academic year last year was one of transitions and adaptation as we welcome new institutional leadership and embrace a forward looking vision for the seminary. And in

00:09:18.370 - 00:09:37.320

the midst of those changes, we continue to celebrate the traditions we hold dear and the people who hand down those traditions. The board of trustees with reference to academic matters took the following actions during the 2022

00:09:37.330 - 00:10:09.770

2023 academic year. He granted tenure to the Reverend Doctor Calvin Brown Heel, he's associate professor in the Blair distinguished area of also appointed the Reverend Patricia as the instructor of Christian education. They were appointed the

00:10:09.780 - 00:10:30.990

rev the Reverend Crystal Silba Cormick as visiting instructor in evangelism and mission. Also by action of the board . The following people were reappointed the Reverend Doctor Sarah Allen as Director of Ministerial formation and Advanced Studies.

00:10:31.610 - 00:10:52.700

The Reverend Doctor Andrew Sky as director of the M I Y M program and research professor in Youth Ministry and Melissa Wigginton as research professor of Methodist Studies. By resolution. The board also designated the Reverend Doctor

00:10:52.710 - 00:11:13.230

David White as Ac Ellis and Nancy Rebel Nelson, Professor Emeritus of Christian Education. It's also the responsibility of the board to approve sabbaticals for the faculty so they can continue to research and write those wonderful books

00:11:13.240 - 00:11:28.150

, they write to fulfill our educational mission. So the board approved a six month sabbatical leave for the Reverend Doctor Phil Helsel effective January of 2024 also approve a six month sabbatical leave for the Reverend Doctor Cynthia

00:11:28.160 - 00:11:46.840

Rigby effective August 1st 2023 as well as approve a six month sabbatical leave for Eric effective July 1st 2023 . By the same authority, they accepted the sabbatical report of the Reverend Doctor Jennifer Lord and the sabbatical

00:11:46.850 - 00:12:03.640

report of Doctor Susie Park. We give thanks to God for the wisdom of these servants and the wisdom that they bring to this place and the inspiring work that comes from this air force. Thank you.

00:12:07.980 - 00:12:37.660

Now, I will invite to the pulpit, Doctor Caroline Helsel to deliver our 2023 convocation address, anti Semitism and anti Judaism. Thank you. And hello , my name is Carolyn Helsel and I'm a holi

00:12:39.040 - 00:12:52.910

that means that I'm a scholar of tics or the study of preaching. So, what am I doing up here with a title like Anti Semitism and Anti Judaism and History, Theology Society and Scripture by discipline

00:12:52.920 - 00:13:05.260

? I'm not a historian. I'm not a theologian , strictly speaking, I'm not a sociologist or a biblical scholar. I'm a practical theologian. When you stand up to preach the word of God, you

00:13:05.270 - 00:13:20.190

must be a historian. You must be a theologian , you must be a sociologist and you must also be a biblical scholar. You must be all these things because the word of God speaks to us in

00:13:20.200 - 00:13:35.490

history and preaching attempts to say something about God, which is the work of theology and whenever we preach , we are preaching to people who live in society and who are impacted by the issues facing society and

00:13:35.500 - 00:13:48.440

who have grown up mired in prejudices and assumptions about other people. And our primary source is a written is a text written thousands of years ago in a particular time and place to a particular people in a

00:13:48.450 - 00:14:01.340

particular context. And this primary text, the Bible has continued to speak to people across history all over the world in their own contexts. So we must do all these things, study history, theology,

00:14:01.350 - 00:14:15.690

society, and scripture. And in preaching, we must be mindful of the ways that our words impact others in today's technologically flooded world. It can sometimes seem as though words mean little. We are exposed

00:14:15.700 - 00:14:30.000

to an obscene amount of words. We consume words like we're drinking from a fire hydrant. I'm not against Tik Tok or Facebook or social media in general . But I think it endures us to flippant speech

00:14:30.010 - 00:14:43.910

. It can numb us to words, spoken un carefully to words as cotton candied entertainment. So how do we reclaim the ability to speak carefully in the discipline of preaching? We work to understand the larger

00:14:43.920 - 00:14:56.360

context and impact that our words have not only in what we believe about God, but in what we believe about our neighbor and how we speak about them . In 2008, I began studying how white preachers

00:14:56.370 - 00:15:09.120

can preach about racism. That was 15 years ago and the context was different. But in many ways , much the same white preachers were avoiding talking about racism in their sermons. And I wanted to offer

00:15:09.130 - 00:15:22.590

suggestions for overcoming this silence. Now, fast forward 15 years and here I am supposedly about to speak to you about anti-semitism and anti Judaism in history, theology society and scripture. How are these things connected

00:15:22.040 - 00:15:35.140

in his book Race, a Theological Count. Jay Cameron Carter traces how the theology of early church fathers morphed into a white racism. And he identifies the point of departure as when we lost sight of the

00:15:35.150 - 00:15:48.910

Jewishness of Jesus by turning Jesus into a universal Christ . We glossed over his part particularity as a first century Palestinian Jew. That idea stayed with me and I bought Amy J Levine's book, the misunderstood Jew

00:15:48.930 - 00:16:00.550

though it sat on my shelf getting dusty for years . My research interest at the time had me primarily focused on anti-black racism. So I didn't have the bandwidth for going deeper into the topic of Jesus's Jewishness

00:16:00.560 - 00:16:11.740

. Fast forward a dozen years or so. And I'm speaking at the Texas State Capitol in a press conference hosted by the Texas AC L U. On the topic of voting rights leaders were pushing a bill

00:16:11.750 - 00:16:25.060

that would impact access to voting which disproportionately impacts people of color. Another speaker at the press conference was Rabbi Neil Bloo who many of you may know because he taught Hebrew here last year and has taught many

00:16:25.070 - 00:16:33.950

classes at Austin Seminary. Over the years, we crossed paths only briefly in my time at Austin Seminary thus far. But I knew him from reputation and wanted to get to know him better. I blurted

00:16:33.960 - 00:16:45.230

it out. Would you like to teach a class together sometime graciously? He said yes. And as we met for coffee over Zoom and eventually we met for coffee and over zoom uh and eventually taught a

00:16:45.240 - 00:16:57.100

class together. This past spring. I was aware of how little I actually knew about Judaism. I realized how little my seminary education had prepared me for interfaith relationships. I didn't have a required world religions

00:16:57.110 - 00:17:07.930

class like you all do. I was also aware of how little I knew about the history of anti Judaism and anti Semitism. So I've been studying this past summer, the history of anti Judaism and the

00:17:07.940 - 00:17:19.670

development of anti Semitism once again, trying to wrap my brain around how to communicate back as a preacher . What I'm learning because if I don't know these things, someone with all the privileges of years of

00:17:19.680 - 00:17:32.590

education, how can the average person in the pew to help ensure that other Christians might benefit from conversations that Rabbi Bloo and I were having, I also applied for a grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian

00:17:32.600 - 00:17:44.520

worship to make videos for preachers and congregations to help them address anti Semitism. This spring. I will be sharing these videos with pastors from across Texas to see whether they actually impact the levels of familiarity with

00:17:44.530 - 00:17:55.330

Judaism and the history of Jews from the past 2000 years. My hope is that by learning about the history of the Jews and by studying how we speak about Judaism in our theologies, we can begin to

00:17:55.340 - 00:18:08.040

unlearn some of the implicit anti Judaism. We've inherited from our Christian forebearers and we can more quickly identify ways we can support our Jewish brothers and sisters in the face of ongoing anti-semitism and ongoing. It surely

00:18:08.050 - 00:18:23.940

is in 2022 an audit from the anti defamation league reported the highest number of us anti Semitic incidents ever recorded in 2022 alone, there were 91 bomb threats targeting Jewish institutions and a 50% increase of campus and

00:18:23.950 - 00:18:37.720

school incidents. The audit has been conducted since 1979 and they note that this is the third time in the past five years that the year in total has been the highest number ever recorded reported incidents include harassment

00:18:37.730 - 00:18:49.750

, vandalism and physical assaults. Texas is in the top five for reported incidents after New York, California , New Jersey and Florida. With Texas. These five states represent 54% of the total number of reported

00:18:49.760 - 00:19:06.010

incidents. And here in Austin in the fall of 2021 a student from Texas State set fire to congregation , Beth Israel later that same fall Anderson High school students discovered Swastikas painted on the tennis shed and a

00:19:06.020 - 00:19:18.780

senior parking spot as well as homophobic and racist graffiti for members of the targeted communities at Anderson High School . This was a traumatic event while some students reporting that they broke down into tears. A few months

00:19:18.790 - 00:19:32.420

later in Colleyville, Texas, a city just north of Fort Worth. On January 15th, 2022 a gunman entered the synagogue and took four people hostage, including the rabbi. After an 11 hour standoff,

00:19:32.430 - 00:19:44.220

the hostages were able to escape and the gunman was shot by law enforcement rabbi Charlie Citron Walker has been praised for his heroics. He threw a chair at the gunman and ordered the others to run for the

00:19:44.290 - 00:19:55.820

exit which is how they escaped. But he insisted that the tactics he drew on came from training including the group of them talking to the gunmen throughout the day to show them their humanity, whispering about strategies

00:19:55.830 - 00:20:07.650

and edging towards the door. These were all tactics learned from years of security training after previous threats to synagogues. When you're aware, you might be a target for violence. You learn how to do whatever

00:20:07.660 - 00:20:21.920

you can. Security training really ramped up after the violent attack in 2018 on the tree of life synagogue in Pittsburgh where a man with a military style assault rifle killed 11 people while shouting anti Semitic slurs.

00:20:22.190 - 00:20:33.580

The cover art for today's service commemorates commemorates those victims . But you may be wondering besides working for stricter gun laws in this country. What can we do ? The people in my church aren't anti Semitic,

00:20:33.590 - 00:20:44.890

they would never do something like this nor condone anyone who would. So why do churches need to know about it? First, a word about terminology. I've used my titles, the words anti-semitism and anti

00:20:44.900 - 00:20:56.550

Judaism. And I was more familiar with the word anti Semitism as being the appropriate word to use. But a new discovery, this word is rooted in a racist history at the height of quote racial science

00:20:56.560 - 00:21:08.630

. In the 19th century, some scientists were claiming that human differences were rooted in distinctions of race. A clearly definable group of people mostly differentiated by skin color or facial features. But there were a few

00:21:08.630 - 00:21:22.130

categories based on linguistics or the languages that a people spoke. So one racial category became Semitic relating to a family of languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. The name originally derived from Noah's Sons,

00:21:22.310 - 00:21:33.480

Shem and the coin, a Greek version of Sham being Sem. And while Semitic languages still exist, the word anti Semitism does not refer to people who are against these languages or even to all people who

00:21:33.490 - 00:21:48.880

speak these languages. When the racial category was created , it referred to Jews and the creation of Semite like the creation of race was useful for one purpose to justify oppression. So the word anti Semitism refers

00:21:48.890 - 00:22:03.570

to a specific kind of hatred of Jews, seeing them as a distinct and inferior race of people. So, anti Semitism is linked to calling Jews Semites , which reinforces a racialized understanding of Jewishness. But

00:22:03.580 - 00:22:17.020

anti-semitism is still widely used. Judaism. Scholar Stephen Beller describes the variety of ways that this term is used. He writes that quote, anti-semitism can refer to hatred of Jews that has stretched across millennia and

00:22:17.030 - 00:22:33.910

across continents or it is a relatively modern political movement and ideology that arose in Central Europe in the late 19th century and achieved its evil a in the holocaust or it is the irrational, psychologically pathological version of

00:22:33.920 - 00:22:49.560

an ethnocentric and religio centric anti Judaism that originated in Christianity's conflict with its Jewish roots and achieved its evil ay in the Holocaust or it is a combination of all of these Miller's book anti-semitism, a very short

00:22:49.570 - 00:23:03.810

introduction uh from Oxford University press focuses primarily on the political manifestations of anti-semitism beginning in the 19th century. And he traces the way anti Semitism function as a political tool to build alliances with other anti Semitic countries

00:23:03.820 - 00:23:18.960

and wealth by disenfranchising Jews and stealing their property. But Beller argues against describing anti-semitism by only talking about anti Semites, some uh some descriptions focus and rightly so on the perpetrators of the Anti Semitic movement.

00:23:19.010 - 00:23:32.560

But to talk only about perpetrators and never about actual Jews can be problematic while it's understandable. You don't want to suggest in any way that Jews deserve their mistreatment or caused anti Semitism. It's also important to

00:23:32.570 - 00:23:44.360

make sure you're not leaving out the real contributions Jews made to the social and political life in which anti Semitism took place in talking about anti Semitism. Beller also doesn't want to put all the emphasis on psychology

00:23:44.370 - 00:23:56.160

or the irrational beliefs that anti Semites have about Jewish people as being the primary problem of anti Semitism. Even though hatred of Jews definitely played a role in the injustices enacted against Jewish communities. It was not

00:23:56.170 - 00:24:14.640

simply individual actors, faulty ideas that wrecked such devastation . Rather, it involved individuals benefiting from such behaviors , politicians and citizens gaining or retaining power or privilege , which is itself a rational force. Though immoral

00:24:15.140 - 00:24:25.210

, neither does Beller want to label anti Semitism as an illness, a virus or disease as if it had a life of its own, apart from persons acting of their own accord, anti Semitism would not

00:24:25.220 - 00:24:37.330

exist apart from anti Semites, perpetuating and passing along their ideas and policies within the real world. So instead by way of describing anti-semitism, Beller says, the individuals who joined the anti Semitic movement took part

00:24:37.340 - 00:24:52.690

in the discrimination against and persecution of the Jews and benefited from this were not only the victims of their cultural heritage, but rather made conscious, rational if highly immoral choices from within that heritage, which were

00:24:52.700 - 00:25:06.380

influenced by the actual condition and behavior of actual Jews . Again, Beller focus is on the political manifestations of anti Semitism in Central Europe leading up to the Holocaust or the show. But his reference to the

00:25:06.390 - 00:25:19.140

cultural heritage that such individuals received developed over centuries before that time. So if we're to conceive of anti Semitism as a relatively recent and racially charged term, anti Judaism may be used to describe the much longer

00:25:19.150 - 00:25:32.900

history of anti Jewish sentiments expressed in the 2000 years prior Beller gives a brief history of the past 1000 years of this heritage. Even though prior to the 11th century, Jews were persecuted and had limited economic

00:25:32.910 - 00:25:44.460

opportunities. He begins with the first call to join the crusades in 10 96 because of the scale of the violence against Jewish community as a result, even though Jews were not mentioned in the Pope's wordings,

00:25:44.470 - 00:25:57.160

inviting people to join crusades against the enemies of Christ . Since Jews had already been labeled as Christ killers , they were automatically seen as the enemy and Jewish communities were attacked and Jews murdered. This view of

00:25:57.170 - 00:26:08.060

Jews being murderers created the context for another charge against them in England. In the mid 12th century, a boy named William of Norwich was found dead and not only were Jews blamed for the murder, they

00:26:08.070 - 00:26:21.740

were accused of having used the boy's blood in a ritual in the next century, this story would become what is known as blood libel and Jews were suspected of draining children's blood for use in making Matza for

00:26:21.750 - 00:26:33.250

Passover. At the fourth latter council of 12 15 , Jews were accused of desecrating the host or the bread of the Lord's supper as well as blamed for poisoning wells. The council also decreed that all Jews

00:26:33.260 - 00:26:47.840

had to wear distinctive clothing to tell them apart from Christians artwork around this time, portrayed them as pigs in France. In the year 12 42 the king known as Saint Louis, after whom we have a

00:26:47.850 - 00:27:03.050

city named ordered ST Louis ordered all copies of the Talmud be collected and publicly burned. It is estimated that 10,000 holy books, each one painstakingly copied by hand and passed down through generations went up in smoke

00:27:03.580 - 00:27:15.140

while Jewish communities were still able to exist in France . At that time across the channel in England, King Edward, the first expelled all Jews from his borders in the year 1290 forcing them to leave the

00:27:15.150 - 00:27:27.630

country altogether. 60 years later, in 13 50 Jews were expelled from what is now Germany. Around this time, Jews were also being accused of being the source of the bubonic plague as if the Jews

00:27:27.640 - 00:27:41.120

alone were intentionally getting people sick with the black death with all these accusations, some justified the destruction of Jewish villages and the expulsion of the Jews from their countries by pointing to these charges and saying that the

00:27:41.130 - 00:27:52.550

government officials must have seen them as valid concerns. However, officials typically denied such charges but they had a different motive because during this time, there were some Jews who served in the role of creditors to

00:27:52.560 - 00:28:06.200

these officials because they alone and not Christians were allowed to lend money with interest and they served an important role for princely authorities when they needed money. Jews then became known as greedy money lenders assumed to be

00:28:06.210 - 00:28:18.250

wealthy by stealing from Christians. But these same Jews were helpless if the princes or local leaders decided not to pay back their debts or banish them or have them executed, which is what often happened. And

00:28:18.260 - 00:28:30.490

remember when France, France, uh when French burned all of those talents but allowed the Jews to stay in 13 94 they too expelled all the Jews living from the French borders. And in 14 92 the

00:28:30.500 - 00:28:45.040

same year that Columbus sailed the same monarchs who sent him across the ocean, also sent Jews out of Spain. Estimates vary, but between 400,000 Jews from Spain had to flee resettling in other parts of Europe

00:28:45.050 - 00:28:56.950

or in the Middle East. And this was after the Jews of Spain had to endure the Spanish inquisition in which many were forced to convert to Christianity or be put to death. Jews who did convert were

00:28:56.960 - 00:29:08.460

called new Christians, distinct from quote old Christians and were suspected of returning to the Jewish faith and so not trusted to participate in society. The notion of purity of blood, seeing only Spaniards who had no

00:29:08.470 - 00:29:21.350

Jewish blood in their family was used to determine whether someone could hold public office, a New Christian or not. All Jews were forced to leave Spain in 14 92. And in 14 97 Portugal did the

00:29:21.360 - 00:29:34.100

same in 15 43 in Germany, Martin Luther pinned on the Jews and their lies writing about the dangers of Jews though they had been expelled for much of Germany for nearly 200 years. And that he sharply

00:29:34.110 - 00:29:47.610

lays out his own hatred of the Jews and charges the Catholic church with Judaizing using Judaism as an insult against the Pope, saying the pope like Jews wanted people to be slaves unto the law. And even

00:29:47.620 - 00:29:59.420

though Luther was writing 200 years after his country had already forced Jews to move away. Luther still expressed that Jews were so terrible as to deserve having their synagogues burned their homes, destroyed their young and strong

00:29:59.430 - 00:30:10.040

men forced into hard labor and ultimately that Jews should be forced to leave the country to purge Germany of all its Jews, which it had already done and which it had tried to do again in the 20th

00:30:10.050 - 00:30:22.390

century. Throughout these centuries. Orthodox Russia prided itself on being Jew free before it expanded in the 18th century to include parts of eastern Europe and with the annexation of these areas such as Poland, it inherited

00:30:22.400 - 00:30:33.690

communities of Jews who had been welcomed to Poland since the 13th century. In 18 15, Jews demanded civic rights at the Congress of Vienna and in response , violence broke out against them in the Hep Hep

00:30:33.790 - 00:30:48.320

riots of Germany of 18 19, eventually Jews gained political rights in Germany in 18 69. But there was backlash to this as well. And while the Jews had been invited to return to England by Oliver

00:30:48.330 - 00:31:00.210

Cromwell in the 16 fifties, it was not until 18 30 that English leaders considered granting Jews equal rights as citizens. That year, England took up its first bill promoting rights for Jews, but it failed

00:31:00.220 - 00:31:11.460

as did another 12 attempts. It took changes at the local level to gradually grant Jews civic rights. Lionel, the Rothschild A Jew was elected to parliament five times but was only able to take his seat

00:31:11.470 - 00:31:22.500

on the fifth time in 18 58. Meanwhile, in other parts of Europe, Jews were still being falsely accused of ritual murder. In 18 40 there was a charge of ritual murder against Jews in Damascus

00:31:22.510 - 00:31:34.000

and again in 18 82 in Tits which is in Hungary. And when Jews get charged with murder, riots break out and Jewish neighborhoods get ransacked and vandalized and Jews get killed. By the late 19th century

00:31:34.010 - 00:31:45.500

Jews have been granted equal rights in most of Europe , particularly in places most influenced by the enlightenment. Countries that continue to be anti Jewish were seen as backward. But of course, in those backward countries

00:31:45.510 - 00:31:59.960

, anti-semitism was flourishing with all of the power of rational justifications and powerful polemics about the dangers Jews presented to national security and well-being. And while these tropes had flourished throughout Europe. During the middle ages,

00:31:59.970 - 00:32:12.610

they were now confined to a few areas, but those areas still had a significant population of Jews and they had the power of industrialization and large scale mobilization to take millions of people, force them into concentration

00:32:12.620 - 00:32:24.160

camps and murder them with mechanical efficiency in what we now call the holocaust. But much of this prior history is not part of our usual education. The show or the holocaust is the main source of learning

00:32:24.170 - 00:32:35.280

. I had growing up about Jews and Judaism, I had a few Jewish friends and I knew they were synagogues in San Antonio. But the only knowledge I had about Judaism came from the Old Testament and

00:32:35.290 - 00:32:46.330

that Hitler tried to kill all the Jews among others , including people with disability, members of the LGBT Q community and Romas all in what we call the Holocaust. But I assumed like the story presented in

00:32:46.340 - 00:33:00.420

most W W-2 World War two movies that Americans liberated Americans who came across as non-jewish the prisoners of the camps. And that that was the end of anti-semitism . Traditional depictions of the defeat of Hitler's Nazi painted

00:33:00.430 - 00:33:13.430

as a victory against bigotry. And of course, I was never a Nazi. I never harbored anti Semitic ideas or biases, but this kind of story resembles, resembles an earlier story I had told myself

00:33:13.440 - 00:33:23.110

that anti-black racism was a thing in the past, something taken care of by the civil rights movement and something that I myself had did not harbor knowingly. But as I had to learn about racism so too

00:33:23.120 - 00:33:36.610

, with anti Jewish ideology just because you mean, well, doesn't mean you do no harm. You can still perpetuate racism and pass along anti Jewish ideas even if your intentions are good. And as we

00:33:36.620 - 00:33:47.890

gain, as we aim for greater intersectionality and addressing oppression, it's important to remember that not all Jews are white. The lives of thousands of Ethiopian Jews fleeing religious persecution and the Black Jews of America who

00:33:47.900 - 00:34:04.010

face anti black racism and anti Semitism speak to the complexities and overlapping realities of systems of oppression. But what we can do as Christians is acknowledge the commonalities shared between ongoing racism and anti Semitism because just as

00:34:04.020 - 00:34:17.320

Christianity has fueled the fire of racism, it has similarly ignited fires of anti Judaism. Professor at Fordham University. Magda has recently published her book Christian Supremacy reckoning with the roots of anti Semitism and racism in

00:34:17.330 - 00:34:30.600

it. She describes how the ideology of inferiority and both the oppression of Jews and the oppression of Black people. How this ideology of inferiority came from Christians interpreting scripture a particular way to justify that oppression,

00:34:30.020 - 00:34:45.070

viewing both groups as inferior and hence as a threat to white Christian supremacy is exemplified in the 2017, Charlottesville, unite the right rally with white Christian supremacists yelling things like blood and soil. Jews will not

00:34:45.080 - 00:34:59.760

replace us and White lives matter extremists who perpetuate hate crimes are typically anti-semitic as well as racist. Consider the 21 year old white man in Jacksonville, Florida who shot and killed three black people less than three

00:34:59.770 - 00:35:10.200

, less than two weeks ago on the 60th anniversary of the march on Washington who was wearing a vest painted with swastikas who carried a gun painted with swastikas as well. Hatred of Jews and Black people are

00:35:10.220 - 00:35:23.670

both part of white nationalist rhetoric that ignites violence, especially in a country where it is extremely easy to access military style assault weapons. And while I'm naming anti-semitism, anti-black racism, because those have been my

00:35:23.680 - 00:35:38.000

areas of research, I also want to name the other marginalized groups are also targeted by white nationalists and extremists including Muslims, Asian Americans, members of the LGBT LGBT Q community, persons who identify as Hispanic

00:35:38.010 - 00:35:51.180

or Latino native Americans, persons with disabilities, women and the elderly. What I'm trying to do is highlight the need for us to talk about anti Semitism as we're also seeking to identify as anti racist and

00:35:51.200 - 00:36:06.310

work against all forms of oppression and particularly at a Christian seminary. It is important that we wrestle with the fact that the long history of white supremacy began as and remains Christian supremacy as inheritors of this legacy

00:36:06.320 - 00:36:16.990

and as beneficiaries of Christian privilege, it is important that we attend to anti Judaism as part of our work of understanding what we're called to do in the world and we may not see ourselves as intentionally anti

00:36:17.140 - 00:36:30.110

Jewish, but we may harbor anti Jewish ideas or beliefs that continue to harm our siblings who are Jewish . Daniel Jocelyn Sima Cosy is the director of the Center for Christian Jewish Learning at Boston College. And

00:36:30.120 - 00:36:42.470

in an article, he published this June in the journal for Anglican and Episcopal history. He argues that what is potentially at stake is compromising the gospel message and bearing false witness. Christians bear false witness when

00:36:42.490 - 00:36:52.780

we say things about Jews and Judaism that distort the truth about who they are before God and what Judaism represents. Jo uh Jocelyn Siow, whose first name is Dan, which is how I referred to him

00:36:52.790 - 00:37:06.810

to avoid butchering his name anymore. During this address , Dan argues, speaking truthfully about the Jews is a theological moral and liturgical necessity. This means we must be careful in our speech, in sermons and

00:37:06.820 - 00:37:20.140

prayers and in our teachings about how we represent the Jews and Judaism to do this. We must understand what Super Session sounds like and where it came from . Dan clarifies that super session is quote commonly defined

00:37:20.150 - 00:37:35.530

as the belief that the church has replaced Israel as God's chosen people. This is the theological problem at the root of anti Judaism that Christians have perpetuated for nearly two millennia. Dan identifies several elements to super

00:37:35.540 - 00:37:50.070

sessions. First, Christians represent Judaism as an obsolete , spiritually arid religion and that Christians have quote fulfilled the spiritual longings of Israel by entering into full relationship with God through the person of Jesus Christ. And

00:37:50.080 - 00:38:02.960

as a corollary, the historical people of the Israel of the Old Testament are no longer necessary for the implementation of God's plan of salvation. And a note about the term Old Testament, some scholars have challenged

00:38:02.970 - 00:38:15.720

the use of the term Old Testament since it's coupled with the new uh suggesting already an inherent preference for the new as a replacement of the old saying instead that we should use the term Hebrew Bible. But

00:38:15.730 - 00:38:30.890

Jewish New Testament scholar, Amy Glavine objects, she says that we should continue to use the terminology Old Testament since it is old. She says AJ Levine uh points out that one of the problems for Christians

00:38:30.900 - 00:38:42.910

is that we assume Jews still follow the laws of the Old Testament exactly as they are written still today . However, Jews have continued to write and reflect and argue about scripture. Jews continue to debate and

00:38:42.920 - 00:38:53.560

rethink and reinterpret scripture in new ways today. And what is in our Old Testament is not exactly as what is the same as quote, the Hebrew Bible since Christian in some traditions include the apocrypha as part

00:38:53.570 - 00:39:02.970

of the Old Testament. And our books are not in the same order, but of course, I'm not in the Bible department or a biblical scholar. And I'm sure there are arguments to be made for

00:39:02.980 - 00:39:15.280

why others think it's better to refer to it as the Hebrew Bible. But back to the theological problem of super session. Dan Jocelyn Siow says another example of this is in the way Christians assume they are

00:39:15.290 - 00:39:28.780

the inheritors of the original covenant, the true Children of God, whereby Christians have pointed to say the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 80 as evidence that God has ended the first covenant with the people

00:39:28.800 - 00:39:38.950

of Israel. This kind of rhetoric was used by early church fathers interpreting the dispersal of the Jews as a sign that God had ended the covenant with them , leading the way for Jesus to be the sign

00:39:38.960 - 00:39:52.830

of the new covenant. And in this naming of the quote new covenant, we hear echoes from scripture where the New Testament writers, the early leaders of the Jesus movement were trying to distinguish themselves from other

00:39:52.840 - 00:40:02.330

forms of Judaism since there were many different ways to be Jewish in the first century, just as we have many ways of being Christian. And in the first century, there was also a lot of conflict

00:40:02.340 - 00:40:15.940

between these groups within Judaism. And so much of how Jewish leaders are presented in the gospel in the gospels has to do with this inter Jewish conflict rather than persons who saw themselves as over against and outside

00:40:15.950 - 00:40:29.680

of Judaism. Jesus, after all was a Jew , all of his disciples were Jewish and Paul identifies himself as a pharisee, claiming his status as an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham in Romans 11,

00:40:29.690 - 00:40:42.020

1 through two yet because of the existing inter Jewish conflicts, these early leaders of the Jesus movement wrote in ways that can now sound very anti Jewish, especially if we don't have a larger context. And

00:40:42.030 - 00:40:52.590

as Paul's mission himself, having grown up as a diaspora, Jew in Asia minor, far away from the hub of Judaism, that was Jerusalem and Galilee , he found himself well suited to spreading the message

00:40:52.600 - 00:41:06.130

of about Jesus to the gentiles. But when he writes to these communities of gentiles, he can sound very anti Jewish lifting up the spirit as opposed to the law as if these two could be separated.

00:41:06.140 - 00:41:19.380

As if Jews in following the law are not also nurturing their spiritual lives and connecting with God and living under Roman rule meant that it was much safer for these early communities of believers in Jesus to blame the

00:41:19.390 - 00:41:31.790

Jews for the death of Jesus rather than charging the Roman Empire with jesus' crucifixion. But absent of this context, the gospels have been handed down and these texts have been used against Jews throughout history, charging

00:41:31.800 - 00:41:43.220

them with conspiring, conspiring to kill Jesus, the Son of God charging Jews with de aside. And even if we do not say these kinds of things , we may talk about the Pharisees as the negative

00:41:43.230 - 00:41:55.820

example to Jesus. While Pharisees have come to stand for Jews, Jewish scholar, Amy Glavine points out , we don't need to have a negative example so that Jesus looks good Jesus can stand on his own

00:41:57.400 - 00:42:07.010

. So we must be very careful when reading and interpreting the New Testament, especially when so much of it has been used in harmful ways against our Jewish brothers and sisters. And when our habits of talking

00:42:07.020 - 00:42:17.370

about the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders in scripture often come across as sounding very anti Jewish today. And in looking to the Old Testament, we must also exercise care since we can echo the tone of super

00:42:17.380 - 00:42:30.540

sessions when we speak as if the Old Testament is simply preparation for everything that comes in the New Testament or speaking of the Old Testament, as pointing to Christ, even in our lectionary selections, there is

00:42:30.550 - 00:42:42.550

the sense that the New Testament is to be preferred or that the Old Testament has to speak to the gospel selection. Then Jocelyn Sisy shows a tradition of how the lectionary may pit a text from the Old

00:42:42.560 - 00:42:53.000

Testament as a negative example or foil to the one from the gospel reading another example of super session. So what do we do in light of this history ? How do we respond as leaders in churches and

00:42:53.010 - 00:43:07.130

the community? Dan provides helpful instructions for those of us interested in avoiding anti Judaism in our preaching and teaching. First, we must acknowledge that both Jews and Christians have a covenant relationship with the God of

00:43:07.140 - 00:43:21.940

Israel throughout Christian history. Christians have sought to understand this uniqueness apart from Judaism by claiming their superiority suggesting that Christians and not Jews are the true inheritors of divine chosen and favor. And yet to say this

00:43:21.950 - 00:43:32.690

is to deny the real relationship that God has in covenant with the people of Israel, a covenant that was not broken or changed by the coming of Jesus Christ as Christians, we believe that part of jesus'

00:43:32.700 - 00:43:45.240

work was to bring gentiles into relationship with God. And that work does not mean God rejected God's earlier covenant with Israel. Both Christians and Jews have a covenant relationship with God. And we need to avoid

00:43:45.250 - 00:44:00.630

bearing false witness by suggesting otherwise. Secondly, Israel is a theological concept and is important for understanding the relationship between Jews and Christians. Dan points out that because of Christians, critique of the modern state of

00:44:00.640 - 00:44:13.340

Israel's policies, often Christians avoid naming Israel at all . But the concept of Israel as a people can be likened to Christians using the word church with a capital c to mean people united in Christ around the

00:44:13.350 - 00:44:24.490

world, not just a physical space, retaining a sense of connection between the word Israel and the people of God we read about in the Old Testament is important. So we do not distort our own connection

00:44:24.500 - 00:44:37.400

with the word Israel. Christians in history have claimed that we are the new Israel, thus replacing the original Israel as the people of God. This erases from history and the present, the ongoing reality of

00:44:37.410 - 00:44:49.440

a living people who are directly linked to the real people of Israel from whom we receive the books, we call The Old Testament. Summarizing a better way to relate to scripture. Philip Cunningham offers maxims for

00:44:49.450 - 00:45:04.870

mutuality to help us such as you shall not advance any Christian narrative of salvation history that overlooks or discounts Jewish covenant of life and you shall not restrict the saving action of God's word. United with Jesus the

00:45:04.880 - 00:45:15.470

Jew to participants in the Christian revelation. In other words, we need to look at our prayers, our liturgies, and our practices of preaching and Christian education to examine what kind of message we're giving about

00:45:15.480 - 00:45:25.990

what salvation means and what we're saying about the Jews , Judaism and the people of Israel. But we need not do this alone. In fact, we have Jewish brothers and sisters who are in a relationship

00:45:27.000 - 00:45:38.170

with us. And when they tell that something we have said is harmful. We need to believe them . Dan Jocelyn Sisy says that it is sometimes easy to assume all the major work necessary for Christians to

00:45:38.180 - 00:45:52.130

amend for centuries of anti Jewish rhetoric and action has already been accomplished. For this reason. We can overlook the necessary work of repair and revision that remains one of the inherited sayings you may hear on campus

00:45:52.140 - 00:46:01.310

from our reform tradition. Another source of anti Semitic rhetoric, as you may remember from my brief reference to Martin Luther, but one of our favorite sayings is reformed and always reforming and we need to live

00:46:01.320 - 00:46:14.120

into that idea of perpetually being reformed by examining ways we may be unintentionally perpetuating harm on our brothers and sisters of the Jewish faith. Finally, I want to lift up Dan's advice for preachers and teachers.

00:46:14.130 - 00:46:29.530

It's not enough simply to avoid saying things that offend must actively also speak affirmatively of the Jewish people name in our worship services and sermons that the Jews are in a vital covenant relationship with God. Affirming the

00:46:29.540 - 00:46:40.630

Jewish people and their relationship with God is just as important as avoiding saying things that are super session. Jews and Christians are both in a covenant relationship with God and it is a mystery how we also have

00:46:40.640 - 00:46:53.990

been invited into this covenant as people born outside of the people of Israel. Now you've sat through 35 to 45 minutes of anti-semitism and anti Judaism in history , theology, society and scripture. Uh But I

00:46:54.000 - 00:47:05.250

hope that this address will lead you to seeking more knowledge about our Jewish brothers and sisters and trying to avoid anti Judaism in our speech, our sermons and our liturgy and my greater hope is that we can

00:47:05.260 - 00:47:40.980

work alongside our Jewish neighbors to confront anti-semitism and all other forms of oppression as we live out our faith together. Thank you. Thank you for that excellent address, Doctor Helsel. People of God. Let

00:47:40.990 - 00:47:57.600

us join together in prayer. I will bid you pray with the words, we pray to you. Oh God. And I invite you to respond here . Our prayer, let us pray for the unity

00:47:57.610 - 00:48:12.270

of the church, the whole human family and all the world. Saying here our prayer that churches of all traditions may discover their unity and exercise their gifts in service of all. We pray to you.

00:48:12.280 - 00:48:32.660

Oh God, you are that the earth may be freed from war, drought and disease. We pray to you or God that those who govern, do so for the people and exercise their powers for the

00:48:32.670 - 00:48:57.440

good health and well-being of all. We pray to you oh God, that you strengthen this nation to pursue just priorities, to feed the hungry, to house the homeless and to comfort and heal the sick

00:48:57.970 - 00:49:20.120

. We pray to you oh God that you will unite Israel as a people in the work of justice and truth for all people in the world and that you will continue to fulfill your covenant to Israel.

00:49:20.160 - 00:49:37.070

We pray to you, oh God that you predict to all who live, work or study at this seminary and strengthen us into deeper community. We pray to you. Oh God, that each student,

00:49:37.080 - 00:49:57.070

faculty member and member of the staff experience you. Oh God, that each one hears your specific call and responds in the moments, big and small. We pray to you. Oh God that we offer

00:49:57.080 - 00:50:15.210

and you accept our gratitude and thanksgiving for all servants of Christ. Now at rest, who with us await a new heaven. And a new earth. We pray to you. Oh God merciful God,

00:50:15.220 - 00:50:30.100

you form us into a new creation, shape us day by day through the cross of Christ, your son. Until we pray as continually as we breathe . And until all aspects of our lives are prayer

00:50:30.680 - 00:53:40.130

through Jesus Christ and in the mystery of the Holy Spirit, amen. As a community, we venture together in unity into the new academic year. In your coming efforts. May the Lord bless you and

00:53:40.140 - 00:53:52.520

keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his continence upon you and give you