by Alan A and Joseph W
This week, the Pope hit the headlines for his admirable writings, making very clear to Catholics that they should not hold Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. Given that Christian antisemitism has structured Western thinking about the position of Jews to a significant extent, this development of the themes of Vatican II is a welcome intellectual stand against the miseries of the past.
Quite how deep rooted is the notion that Jews are collectively responsible for twisting the arm of the Roman state was illustrated this past week by an article that we both read in the Evening Standard, where art critic Brian Sewell has published a polemic against the treatment of John Galliano. The Evening Standard is a broadly liberal newspaper. It is therefore all the more disheartening to read Sewell’s article in it.
Sewell protests:
Galliano’s abuse – the dirty Jew, the gas chamber, the “I love Hitler” stuff – was abhorrent, and I perfectly understand the Jewish response to it, so raw is the memory of the Holocaust, but the hypocritical Pilatism of Dior, the handwashing for sacking him for anti-Semitism, is repugnant.
To underline his point, Sewell complains about Dior’s treatment of Galliano that:
This man was their employee and their duty of care obliged them to protect him from himself. Instead, they let disaster happen and then, realising that they might lose every one of their Jewish clients, dismissed him, and in so doing, utterly failed to save face but quite certainly destroyed him.
Just as Pilate is depicted as driven by his fear of Caiaphas, the Sanhedrin, their rented mob, and their potential for revolt, so too Christian Dior apparently fears that the Jews will boycott and undermine their brand. Like Pilate, Christian Dior takes the coward’s way out and crucifies John Galliano, instead of standing up to his Jewish persecutors.
Perhaps without realising it, Sewell is drawing on the antisemitic tradition that the Pope has challenged this week.
Does Sewell know what he is doing here? With the Pope’s words still ringing in many people’s ears. While acknowledging the racist nature of Galliano’s jibes, Sewell – remarkably – chooses to cast Dior in the role of Pilate, and Galliano, as Jesus.
Although the Pope has again reiterated the Catholic Church’s position that the crowd which the Gospels recall as calling to crucify Jesus were in no way representative of all Jews, Christendom has nevertheless associated the crowd with all Jews in Jerusalem at the time, and all Jews throughout the generations.
This idea of Jews being Christ-killers was supported over centuries by official Catholic teachings, as well as by zealous priests and officials. Yet as the Pope finally wrests this idea away from the Catholic Church, Sewell makes one desperate, final attempt to cling onto it.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reveals that Galliano believes that he has Jewish roots, with which his is reportedly obsessed. We already know that the targets of his racial abuse were not actually Jewish. Such is the strange nature of antisemitism, that a possibly part-Jewish man can hurl anti-Jewish abuses against non-Jewish strangers.
Some might imagine that the Pope’s words will finally banish the spirit of Christian antisemitism from Western society once and for all. But in reality, this spirit will merely shift and take other forms.
That is why, in 2011, it is acceptable to compare Christian Dior to Pontius Pilate for sacking an anti-Semite, but not acceptable to say that the Jews killed Jesus.
Such is the strange nature of antisemitism.
It rather puts one in mind of these words of Jesus, from the Gospel of Matthew:
“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.’