Jewish-Christian Scholar to Speak of Nazi Influence on German Protestants

WORCESTER, Mass. – Susannah Heschel, a scholar of Jewish-Christian relations and the history of anti-Semitism, will give a lecture titled “The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany” on Wednesday, Nov. 18 at 7:30 p.m. in Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture, sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture and funded by the Kraft-Hiatt Program for Jewish-Christian Understanding, is free and open to the public.

Heschel’s lecture will focus on her recent book, The Aryan Jesus (Princeton University Press, 2008), which tells the story of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life. During the Third Reich, the Institute’s propaganda redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism.

Heschel is the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the  author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press, 1998), which won a National Jewish Book Award and Germany's Geiger Prize, and the editor of several books including Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays of Abraham Joshua Heschel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), a collection of her father’s essays; Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust with Robert P. Ericksen (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999); and Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism with David Biale and Michael Galchinsky (University of California Press, 1998).

With a grant from the Ford Foundation, she has convened a series of five international conferences of scholars in the fields of Jewish Studies and Islamic Studies. She is currently using a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to take two years of sabbatical to write a book on the history of Jewish scholarship on Islam. On Nov. 14, the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto will confer an honorary doctorate on Heschel for her scholarly achievements in the field of Jewish studies, and in particular her expertise in the area of Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Since 1999, Heschel has served on the Academic Advisory Committee of the Research Center of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and on its subcommittee on archival materials and publications.

The Kraft-Hiatt Fund, administered through the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, supports campus and community-wide educational initiatives that foster understanding of Judaism and Jewish culture, and dialogue between Jews and Christians. For more information, please visit www.holycross.edu/crec.

About The Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture:

Established in 2001 and housed in Smith Hall, the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture provides resources for faculty and course development, sponsors conferences and college-wide teaching events, hosts visiting fellows, and coordinates a number of campus lecture series. Rooted in the College's commitment to invite conversation about basic human questions, the Center welcomes persons of all faiths and seeks to foster dialogue that acknowledges and respects differences, providing a forum for intellectual exchange that is interreligious, interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international in scope.  The Center also brings members of the Holy Cross community into conversation with the Greater Worcester community, the academic community, and the wider world to examine the role of faith and inquiry in higher education and in the larger culture.