Speaking up- Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Identification with the Jews

Abstract

<p>Dietrich Bonhoeffer baffles Christian pacifists and Jewish writers, who cannot conceive that a German Lutheran pastor would risk his life siding with Jews by joining the conspiracy against Hitler. Christian theologians like Lacey Smith, Walter Harrelson, James Beck or Stephen Haynes, and Jewish critics like Emil Fackenheim, Stanley Rosenbaum, Ruth Zerner and Mordecai Paldiel, read political or purely humanitarian motives into Bonhoeffer's actions. However, a comprehensive examination of Bonhoeffer reveals a profound solidarity with Jews in his messages of freedom for all and of peace for the universal community of God.</p> <p>Bonhoeffer did not stop speaking up for marginalized Jews in Nazi society. From his university years, when he learned Jewish teachings and equated their "cause of peace" with restored sociality in Christ, until his conspiratorial involvement as a dissident factfinder and smuggler of Jews out of Germany, Bonhoeffer unconditionally identified himself with his Jewish "brothers."</p>