James Rudin
  • Home
  • About
  • Appearances
  • Books
    • The People in the Room
    • Pillar of Fire - A biography
    • Christians & Jews: Faith to Faith
    • Cushing, Spellman, O'Connor
    • The Baptizing of America
  • Publications & Reviews
  • Contact

A grim anniversary for Dietrich Bonhoeffer marks what might have been

1/30/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
(RNS) — The four saddest words in the English language are “what might have been.…”
Eighty years ago, as war clouds gathered over Europe, the 33-year-old Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, then a faculty member at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, returned to his native Germany after a short stay in the United States.

At the time, Bonhoeffer believed his church’s response to Hitler and Nazism was marked by weakness and cowardice. He saw his country consumed by a monstrous cancer that had devoured nations and had already murdered many hundreds of people on its way to murdering millions.

Frustrated and angered, Bonhoeffer went home to join the political underground movement in Germany. He wrote: “Not in the flight of ideas, but only in action is freedom. Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of living.”
​
It was a fateful and ultimately lethal decision. Six years later, on April 9, 1945, a month before the end of World War II in Europe, the Nazis executed Bonhoeffer for his opposition to the regime.

Read More
0 Comments

Behold, America: The Entangled History of "America First" and "The American Dream"

1/30/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Many American Jews shuddered as Donald Trump proclaimed, “The American Dream is dead!” and “America first!” to rally crowds during his 2016 presidential campaign. We remembered how, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, these slogans were an open call for virulent anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sentiment, white supremacy, xenophobia, and nativism.

Sarah Churchwell, a professor of American literature and humanities at the University of London, deftly deconstructs the origins and evolution of those two highly charged phrases in her new book Behold, America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “The American Dream” (Basic Books).

The term “The American Dream” first appeared in a 1900 editorial in the New York Evening Post, a newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton and owned today by Rupert Murdoch. It warned readers that “discontented multimillionaires” constitute the “greatest risk” to “every republic” and threatened “The American Dream.” In its original context, the term represented a broad-based progressive aspiration for a just, equitable, and freedom-loving society.

Read More
0 Comments

Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis

1/30/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller is best known for his celebrated confession:
​
  • First, they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out--
  • Because I was not a Communist.
  • Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
  • Because I was not a Socialist.
  • Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
  • Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
  • Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
  • Because I was not a Jew.
  • Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
These oft-quoted words at Holocaust commemorative observances might lead you to believe that Niemöller was sympathetic to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. Not true.

Matthew D. Hockenos, professor of History at Skidmore College and author of Then They Came for Me (Basic Books, 2018), writes that Niemöller (1892-1984) was not incarcerated in concentration camps because he opposed the mass murder of Jews or other atrocities, but for insisting on the political autonomy of German Protestant churches in Nazi Germany.

Read More
0 Comments

    Rabbi James Rudin

    Check in often to see the latest publications from James Rudin.

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    September 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    October 2014
    March 2012
    February 2011
    December 2006
    August 2005
    April 2005
    September 1987
    June 1987
    February 1987
    September 1986
    May 1984
    December 1974
    August 1972

    Categories

    All
    Appearances
    Articles
    Religion News Service
    Reviews

    RSS Feed

Picture
All Titles
Picture
All Titles
Picture
All Titles
HOME
ABOUT
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
APPEARANCES
CONTACT

The Official Website of James Rudin - ©2015-2023 - All Rights Reserved.
​Website by Stage Door Designs