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Yet I hope they will forgive Jewish people (and anyone of conscience who knows the cathedral’s history) who may be hesitant to extend our congratulations.
As the Church grew in power, Jewish resistance to conversion remained a thorn in the side of Christianity. Since Jesus himself was Jewish, our nearly universal refusal to convert implied something invidious about us.
By the 13th Century, Church leaders had come to suspect that the Talmud – more than any other Jewish book – is what kept Jews Jewish and prevented our acceptance of Christian theology. Across Europe, representatives of the Church staged numerous public "disputations" between Christians and Jews. Judaism was typically defended by a learned rabbi, while the prosecution was often an apostate Jew – a convert to Christianity whose knowledge of the Talmud was sufficient to give him credibility and to enable him to quote Talmudic passages.
At the first of of many nadirs of this period, in June of 1239, Pope Gregory IX ordered the Catholic kings of Europe to seize all Jewish books and to examine them for heresy. King Louis IX was the only European monarch to heed the Pope’s orders. He was perhaps encouraged by the apostate Jew who betrayed the Jews of France, Nicholas Donin, who was angry with the French rabbis and had traveled to Rome with accusations against the Talmud. Donin personally delivered the Pope’s letter to Paris, which included the order that “those books in which you find errors of this sort you shall cause to be burned at the stake.” On March 3, 1240, French soldiers confiscated approximately 10,000 handwritten volumes of the Talmud from every synagogue and yeshiva in France.
The investigation took about two years and culminated in a public trial. Donin served as prosecutor and the defense was led by two of the greatest Tosafists, Rav Yechiel of Paris (Donin’s former teacher) and Rav Moshe of Coucy.
Question for your table - Do you agree with Ms. Boehm? Does Notre Dame represent the best of civilization?
One of the most virulent videos from the burning of the Cathedral on April 15, 2019 shows the main spire falling. This video appears to have been shot from the nearby City Hall Plaza (Place de Hotel de Ville) where the Talmud burning took place. However, it may have been shot from the Holocaust Museum, which is about the same distance.
Your thoughts?
(By the way, Jewish history does point toward a happy ending... for example, click the above image.)
Shabbat Shalom
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