Abstract
Jesuit Kaddish is an incisive and lucid work of “memory activism” examining the Holocaust and the Jesuits. It focuses a powerful light on a consequence of the “Original Injustice,” the 1593 decision to ban admission to the Society of Jesus of men from “Hebrew or Saracen stock.” This prohibition, a reversal of prior practice and in tension with Ignatius of Loyola’s respect for the lineage of Jesus, remained in place until 1946. Haunted by the memory of the Holocaust, author James Bernauer has long ruminated about the tragic blindness of so many of his Jesuit brothers, even as righteous brethren such as Alfred Delp continue to inspire him.
This is not simply a book about Jesuits and Jews. Rather, it is permeated with Jesuit sensibilities and spirituality—and a summons to the Society of Jesus to formulate a statement of repentance. Chapter titles reflect major elements of the Society’s tradition (e.g., examen, spiritual exercises) and significant works by its members, especially The Divine Milieu and The Barbarian Within. His initial chapter, however, moves out of the Jesuit arc to explore Pope John Paul II’s journey into an “ever deeper and more effective desire for a totally new relationship between Christians and Jews” (6). B. sees him as having provided a special service to the Jesuits. Briefly mentioning Pope John XXIII and Nostra Aetate, B. recounts some of the significant moments in the John Paul II papacy, including his visits to Auschwitz (1979), Rome’s Great Synagogue (1986), and to Jerusalem’s memorial museum, Yad Vashem (2000). Reference to this pope’s mixed legacy would offer fuller context for assessing his impact.
The pairing of the chapters on Jesuit hostility to Jews and Judaism—the demonic milieu—and on those who were righteous—the divine milieu—is compelling. In the former, B. identifies an attitude he sees as a distinctive Jesuit posture on the Jewish question: asemitism, a “call to a nonviolent indifference to Jews … a walling in of the Church in the face of what was perceived as the overwhelming power” of Jews (30–31). He poignantly asks whether the Jesuit principle of indifference, found in the Spiritual Exercises, had sabotaged Jesuit capacity for empathy. Was Jesuit silence after Kristallnacht a consequence of indifference?
Before turning to the divine milieu of righteous Jesuits, B. draws from Walter Ong’s notion of the “persistence of the barbarian within the communities of the cultured” (52). B. criticizes the narrow, rigid, and parochial Catholicism that equated morality with sexual purity and viewed obedience as radical submission. B. writes: “It is as if the long period of stress on a timeless natural law had made Christians deaf to the changing sounds of historically contingent evil” (61). For Jesuits, the blend of indifference and obedience too often resulted in conformity and hallowing of hierarchical structures.
Yet there were those who resisted, most notably the 15 Jesuits honored at Yad Vashem among the nearly 27,000 persons recognized as “Righteous of the Nations.” B. sketches varying ways in which righteous Jesuits supported Jews, including rescuing children; preaching against National Socialism, narrow nationalism, and an insular Catholicism; forming circles of resistance; and fostering scholarship on Christian origins in relation to Judaism. Records reveal that 96 Jesuits were imprisoned at Dachau, including 31 who died there.
B. notes that history documents the actions of those who resisted, but not the spirituality that inspired and sustained them. He speculates that immersion in Scripture may have played a role. Pre-eminent among those shaped by biblical texts was the Old Testament scholar Augustin Cardinal Bea, the long-serving rector of Rome’s Biblical Institute, where he helped to hide Jews. Bea’s formative role before, during, and after Vatican II is well-known. B., however, documents how Bea evolved over the years, moving from conventional views on Judaism to more nuanced ones as he engaged with Jews.
In his concluding chapter, B. returns to the reflective mode of his prelude. Given his earlier statement that Günter Grass’s novel Crabwalk was a metaphor for his feelings about the Holocaust, this chapter mirrors that metaphor, moving along without the cogency of the previous chapters. Two issues in particular are puzzling: (1) the brevity and lack of substantive detail in his section on “Jesus the Jew”, and (2) the scarcity of reference to Pope Francis, B.’s Jesuit brother. Briefly pointing to Francis’s cordial relations with Argentina’s Jews prior to his election to the papacy in 2013, B. omits mention of his deep friendship and collaboration with Rabbi Avraham Skorka, as well as the openness Francis has shown to interreligious reconciliation. B. ends with his own “Statement of Jesuit Repentance,” a draft for his brothers to ponder.
Jesuit Kaddish is a profound and poignant book, grounded in meticulous and extensive archival research and carried by the passion of its author.