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One Destiny: An Epistle to the Christians
An Unforgettable Forgotten Book by Sholem Asch
January 8, 2008
Sholem Asch, One Destiny: An Epistle to the Christians, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945.
Sholem Asch was a Polish-born (1880) Jewish author and essayist. He married the daughter of Polish-Jewish writer, M.M. Shapiro, and was influenced by the haskalah movement. Although he began writing in Hebrew, author I. L. Peretz persuaded him to switch to Yiddish. After visiting Palestine in 1908, he moved to the U.S. in 1910; becoming a citizen in 1920. After living again in Poland, then France, and Palestine, he settled in the U.S. in 1938.
In his works, Asch examines the Jewish experience in varied historical contexts. After attaining notoriety in the Jewish world, he stigmatized himself through writing his 1939-1949 trilogy The Nazarene, The Aposte, and Mary, all sympathetic portrayals of Christian origins written in Yiddish. He could scarcely design a better way to discredit himself within the Jewish community. Still, he remained from first to last a loyal Jew, spending his last years in Bat Yam, Israel, and passed on in London in 1957.
In this little book, Asch explains his spiritual credo: service to the God of Israel and to the unique spiritual wonder of Israel’s miraculous preservation despite all her historical depredations, and the miraculous spread of the Judeo-Christian idea in the pagan world. He sees these developments as "a single, divine event . . . , two poles of a world which are always drawn to each other, and no deliverance, no peace, and no salvation can come until the two halves are joined together and become one part in God” (8-9).
Chapter One, “The Will of God,” shows how the well-being of all the nations was in view from the beginning of Israel’s/Abraham’s faith. The divine intent to bless the world is evident in the historical preservation of Israel and in the miraculous spread of Christianity in the pagan world during the first three centuries. He views both realities as unexplainable apart from divine intervention. In Chapter Two, “In the Shadow of Death,” Asch exposes the satanic character of Nazism, portraying the heartless and depraved systematic slaughter of European Jewry, events accomplished with the active complicity of many nations, especially Germany, and the passive complicity of the West.
Chapter Three, “The Poisoned Well,” explores the anatomy of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism, and how these developed in Christian space, despite being antithetical to the nature of the teachings of Christ. Chapter Four, “The Son of God and the Son of Satan,” explores how the Jewish people were preserved despite the vengeful activity and cultural penetration of the spirit of anti-Christ, here seen as that spirit antagonistic to the triumph of the will of God through the Judaeo-Christian idea, ever striving for the destruction of Judaeo-Christian civilization.
Sholem Asch
Chapter Five, explores the Judaeo-Christian idea which Asch sees to be rooted in Christianity’s and Judaism’s common faith in the Messiah, entailing the prospect of ultimate justice, reward, and resurrection. He sees the Christian and Jewish communities sharing a unique, divinely-crafted unity, not shared with Islam, which lacks such a Messianic faith, or with other world religions. His thinking has strong affinities with Nostra Aetate, 4, and the documents and statements flowing from it, especially under John Paul II.
Asch demonstrates some historical naïvete, as when he views the Soviets as unambiguously the friends of the Jews, and he is unaware that Sufi and Shia Islam have a messianic figure, the Mahdi. Despite these flaws, this small work evidences remarkable prophetic energy and power.
Of the seminal thoughts scattered throughout, ten merit special attention:
1. Jewish faith is universal in its intent from its earliest beginnings. This is in accord with the interpretation preferred by most of the missiological community.
2. Yeshua is unparalleled as an agent of the actualization of the Jewish ideal. Asch consistently admires Yeshua, finding fault only with those whom he believes misrepresented him or betrayed his teachings.
3. The preservation of the Jews and the vitality of triumphant Christianity in the pagan world are a unique historical wonder. Christendom and Jewry are united, “two parts of a single whole." This concurs with Mark Kinzer’s paradigm of “a schism destined to be healed."
4. Christianity is a form of Judaism. This is reminiscent of the thought of Yehezkel Kauffman, in Christianity and Judaism: Two Covenants. C. W. Efroymson, translator. (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press) 1988, where he views both Christianity and Islam to be extensions of Judaism which alone could uproot idolatry from the pagan world. For Kauffman, "Islam and Christianity enabled the pagan world to turn from idolatry to the God of Israel, without having to become Jews" (41).
5. Christians and Jews benefit mutually from the riches of each other's heritage and history.
6. The sufferings of the Jews out of faithfulness to God, at the hands of anti-Semitic Christendom, demonstrate how these Jews were more aligned with the teachings and heart of Christ than were their persecutors. This thought is echoed by Mark Kinzer in Postmissionary Messianic Judaism.
7. Asch positions himself with the Messiah within the Jewish community, and from there honors an indissoluble bond with Christians who await the Messiah. This would seem to be a challenging paradigm for Messianic Jews to emulate.
8. The key word to describe the interrelationship between Judaism and Christianity is "partnership."
9. Asch speaks of "the Jewish Christian Man," perhaps his version of Paul’s "One New Man."
10. He speaks of “the dominion of God. . .the commandments [God] has given us through his chosen prophets -- both of the Old and the New Testaments. . . . these teachings created our civilization, which we call the civilization of the Jewish-Christian idea. We live and die for this civilization, because it is the only one which contains the possibility of salvation for our life at present and hope for life after death in the expectation of the resurrection of the dead" (86). In this, his concept of the Kingdom of God is strongly continuous with history, positing the triumph of God’s will and ways on the stage of humanity’s strivings.
This book is important to my work because it presents an impassioned and credible agenda for Christianity and Judaism at work in the world together, serving God. His views strongly resemble Catholic decisions evident in Nostra Aetate, 4, a major document from Vatican II, and in documents and statements flowing from that Declaration, especially during the reign of John Paul II.
The ten points enumerated above need to be explored from a Messianic Jewish perspective, and many if not all are adaptable to our own self-consciousness. Much that is here in Asch’s work will find its place in my own.
