Ori Z. Soltes is the author most recently of Jews on Trial: Judges, Juries, Prosecutors and Defendants from the Era of Jesus to Our Own Time. His many other books include Embracing the World and The Glory of Ukraine. He teaches theology, art history, and philosophy at Georgetown University, and he is based in the Washington, D.C., area.
Q: In your latest book, you look at Jewish-related trials over the
past two centuries. What were some of the biggest changes over that time
period, and how did things remain more or less the same?
A: Two things change in the course of the book and the
history that it depicts. Most obviously, Jews go from being an accepted
minority by the Roman pagan imperium to a sometimes intensely disfavored
minority by most medieval Christian states, to being nominally accepted in a
post-revolutionary modern world but then radically disfavored by the late
19th-century due to the shifting view of Judaism as a race rather than a
religion.
Indeed the historical narrative is complicated here and
elsewhere by the too-often unacknowledged complication of defining Judaism--as
religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, body of customs and
traditions, etc.
Appositely, I deliberately continue to re-angle the precise
way in which Jews are "on trial": Jesus is a Judaean, not a Jew; the
Inquisition theoretically has nothing to do with openly practicing Jews, but
with heretical Christians; Spinoza is a Jew tried by other Jews influenced by
the Inquisition; Eichmann is a nominal Christian tried by Israeli Jews--and so
on.
Part of this second issue is a function of the definitional
complication to which I refer in relation to the first issue.
And in any case, this re-angling also wishes to make a
point--which is what does NOT change over time: that the Jews seem always to be
on trial in the court of world opinion, whether accused of mock-crucifying
Christian children or spying for the Soviet Union or being suspected of being
unable to offer a major Nazi a fair trial.
Q: You write about Jesus’s trial that there are “radical
differences between the Gospels and the non-Gospel sources.” What are the most
important differences, and what do they signify?
A: The most radical differences are a) Jesus' significance
for the world of which he is part; b) the actual role of the Sanhedrin, and in
general, the Judaeans, versus the Romans, in leading to his demise; c) the
nature and specific role of the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate, in the
narrative.
If one recognizes that the Gospels take some time to achieve
canonization--they are being written between circa 70 and 110 CE, and the
entire NT does not achieve canonization until 395, at the Council of Hippo--and
that during that time, nascent Judaism and Christianity are not only struggling
with each other regarding who has the Truth vis-a-vis God and how to fulfill
the Covenant, but are also struggling for acceptance by/from the pagan Roman
authorities, then one realizes how and why, over the time between the trial and
crucifixion and the final writing down of the various Gospels that end up
making it into the canon, the perspective becomes skewed: Pilate becomes a
virtual innocent, the Romans are white-washed and the Judaeans become the
villains.
This is politically necessary if Christianity is to survive,
much less flourish. And given the translation complication of distinguishing
between "Judaeans" and "Jews," the villains over time
become not the Judaeans but the Jews.
Q: The 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, you write,
“had to be made an example.” What were the circumstances leading up to his
expulsion from the Jewish community?
A: Alas, for Spinoza, his community was made up mostly of
refugees from Spain and Portugal and from an Inquisition that had come to direct
itself mainly toward the heresy of Judaizing, and was now living in a place
that had successfully asserted its independence from Spain only a few
generation earlier--but for whom the fear that this situation might change and
revert to a Spanish, Catholic, Inquisition-dominated reality seems to have
remained in force.
Moreover, as open as the Dutch republic was to diversity of
religious perspective, there was clearly a fear on the part of the Sephardic
rabbinic leadership that, should their community, or a notable member of it, be
suspected of not being God-believing--that this would be too much for the Dutch
authorities, who would step in and expel the community.
It was also just plain bad timing that Menasseh Ben Israel
was in England by the time the proceedings came to a head. He may well have
been wise enough to protect his former student from the narrow-minded madness
of his colleagues.
Q: Moving to more recent times, you write that the case of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg “cut directly against the assertion that the
American legal system inevitably leads to justice.” Why do you think that?
A: In analyzing everything that I have read about the
Rosenbergs, I am firmly convinced that their trial was subject to improprieties
and/or prejudicial blindnesses, and that their execution was rushed, offering
no opportunity to mount a more potent defense or a second look at some of the
evidence and its alleged implications--and that this would not have happened
had they (and perhaps even more importantly, Judge Kaufmann and all the other
key figures involved with their trial) not been Jewish.
This is NOT an argument for their innocence (or their
guilt!); it is an argument for the unique impropriety of the procedure that led
to their swift execution.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on three largish projects at the moment. One
is to find a publisher for my book, God and the Goalposts: A Short History of
Religion, Sports, Art, Politics and War. (Feel free to propose ideas!)
The second is to finish gathering and inserting all the
images for the book for which I DID finally find a publisher (it's a very long
book!) on Tradition and Transformation: Definition and the Historical Challenge
of "Jewish" Art.
The third is to finish writing (I am about 75 percent done)
a book called Magic and Religion in the Greco-Roman World: The Beginnings of
Judaism and Christianity. These and a steady stream of smaller projects do
manage to keep me from slipping into the well of boredom.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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