Betrayal of Spirit: Jew-hatred, The Holocaust, and Christianity

The author draws on a combination of personal experience and theological reflection to examine how anti-Semitism invaded, occupied, and dominated the human mind through history. His insightful theological interpretation of the history of Jew-hatred in Christendom provides a way of understanding how anti-Judaism differs from anti-Semitism and reveals how anti-Semitism created the possibility of, but was not a direct cause of, the Holocaust. The author addresses questions such as: In what ways does the history of anti-Semitism explain the Holocaust? And, in what ways does it not explain the Holocaust? How do we explain the unexplainable? What was the role of religion in Nazi thinking? What should we make of the Intentionalism/Functionalism debates among historians? The responses to these questions reveal the interplay between rational and irrational, religious and racial components that combined to make the Holocaust a dreadful reality.