Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope (Paperback or Softback)

Jesus was a Jew. Yet nineteen centuries after his death, hatred inspired in part by the long-standing tradition of Christian anti-Judaism played a significant role in the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

How are Christians and Jews to deal with this jarring historical incongruity?

In Jesus and the Holocaust Joel Marcus—a Jew by birth, a Christian by choice—offers stirring meditations on the relationship between the deaths of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis and the death of one innocent Jew on the cross. Basing his work on sermons he originally preached on Good Friday 1995, a date that also corresponded with the fifty-year anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, Marcus weaves reflection on Bible passages together with poetry and narratives about the Holocaust. He shows how the hope that Christians have always found hidden in Christ's darkest hour can shed light on one of the most tragic events of our recent history—and vice versa.

Ellen T. Charry is Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Theologyat Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned a PhD inreligion from Temple University following an MSW fromYeshiva University and BA from Barnard College. Charry'sinterest is in the Christian life, and her books includeBy the Renewing of your Minds, Inquiring afterGod, and God and the Art of Happiness. From1998 to 2010 she was a member of the Theology Committee ofthe House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church. Currentlyserving as an editor-at-large for The ChristianCentury, Charry has also served on the editorialboards of the Scottish Journal of Theology andPro Ecclesia, and was formerly editor ofTheology Today.