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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (28788)	12/24/1999 7:56:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39621

Brumar, the most interesting thing about Luther is that he really was a "turncoat" and changed his attitude to Judaism as it happen to fit his needs. During his first period of activity (about 1513--23), Luther often condemned the persecution of Jews and recommended a more tolerant policy toward them, based on the spirit of true Christian brotherhood (unlike our friend Emile here). Commenting on Psalm 22 (around 1519) he roundly condemned the "Passion preachers who do nothing else but exaggerate the Jews' misdeeds against Christ and thus embitter the heart of the faithful (like Emile does) against them". Luther directly the Jewish question in his pamphlet "Dass Jesus Christus ein geborner Jude sei" (That Christ was born a Jew), arguing that the Jews , who were from the same stock as the founder of Christianity, had been right in refusing the "papal paganism" presented to them as Christianity (Torquemevada and company). Partly because of his polemics against the use of images in churches, he himself was was branded a "half-Jew" (semi-Judaeus) by church authorities. Luther had high hopes of converting a big chunk of the Jewish community to his form of Christianity, and indeed managed to convert few. Early missionary attempts by him have failed "not so much [ because of ] the Jews' obstinacy and wickedness, as rather [through] the absurd and asinine ignorance and the wicked and shameless life of the popes, priest, monks and scholars". Only after 1523, when his effort to convert more Jews to his faith failed, and under some pressure from the various Princes and Dukes he was "consulting", he wrote additional virulently anti-Jewish pamphlets like the one you cite. That is the reason that in these later pamphlets he always need to say "now that I really know the truth" (he did not "know before in the early period of 1513 to 1523, the first open pamphlet where he starts to complain about the Jews is dated 1526, and in the 1530, he has "Table talks" with increasing anti Jewish vehemence, I believe and by 1542-43 when the pamphlet you cite was written, he became ruthless and advocating nothing short of Genocide. I should add that other reformists of the time such as Heinrich Bullinger and Andreas Osiander criticized Luther's anti Jewish stance. I for one, forgive him his tresspasses since he showed great courage in holding onto his faith. I wish his followers would respect other's courage in holding to their own respective faiths. Zeev