Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope

By: Joel Marcus

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Synopsis: Jesus was a Jew. Yet nineteen centuries after his death, hatred inspired in part by the long-standing tradition of Christian anti-Judaism played a significant role in the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. How are Christians and Jews to deal with this jarring historical incongruity? In Jesus and the Holocaust Joel Marcus—a Jew by birth, a Christian by choice—offers stirring meditations on the relationship between the deaths of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis and the death of one innocent Jew on the cross. Basing his work on sermons he originally preached on Good Friday 1995, a date that also corresponded with the fifty-year anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, Marcus weaves reflection on Bible passages together with poetry and narratives about the Holocaust. He shows how the hope that Christians have always found hidden in Christ's darkest hour can shed light on one of the most tragic events of our recent history—and vice versa.