33. On Rachel Weeping for Her Children.

Dearly Beloved

The most profound and thought provoking moment of my year occurred when I heard the Choir of St John's College sing, with appropriate gravity, the anthem by George Kirbye (1565-1634) entitled Vox in Rama. The translation is "A voice was heard in Rama, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more." That passage occurs both in the Old Testament in the context of the sack of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in Jeremiah 31:15 and is recapitulated as an Epiphany reading in the Christian Church mourning the massacre of the innocents in Matthew 2:18. Historians doubt the authenticity of the slaughter of the innocents by Herod. That in no way diminishes the text; it may be related to the sufferings of the Jewish people in general or that recently experienced under the Selucid tyrant Antiochus IV who wanted to eliminate Jewish culture entirely, which led to the rising of the Maccabees, but in many ways that was a sinister warning of the sufferings to come after the Jewish Revolt against Roman rule and the sufferings of Jewish people in Mediaeval Europe up until the Holocaust only seventy years ago. Apparently Rama was the holding area for Jewish prisoners before being exported as slaves to Babylon.

At about the same time as I heard Kirbye's anthem in St John's there was a radio programme on Henri Tajfel who was Professor of social psychology in the department where I was a postgraduate studying behaviour in wild animals. Tajfel was originally from Poland and all his family had perished in the Holocaust whilst he fought in the French army. He was one of a number of Jewish people who subsequently devoted their academic lives to attempts to understand what it was about human nature that allowed such a disaster as the Holocaust. His contribution was to show that people will form groups under the slightest pretexts, and that they will subsequently discriminate against those people who are from other groups.

Einsatzgruppen were death squads, part of invading Nazi forces in eastern Europe ordered to shoot civilians, especially intellectuals, politicians, Roma but above all Jewish people. One of the most dire aspects was the participation with the Einsatzgruppen of Schutzmannschaft or Auxiliary Police who were local people and outnumbered the German SS and Order Police by a ratio of about 8:1. We are thus confronted with Christians shooting and killing their innocent neighbours. If Tajfel was correct one might have expected the traditions of Christianity to have dominated and for local people to take significant action to defend the Jewish people who were, not only their neighbours but a crucial part of their heritage, and protect them from death by shooting. Once again a voice could be heard as Rachel mourned her children, but many local Christians seemed to have been oblivious to that recapitulated biblical text.

We are still no nearer to understanding why anti-Semitism keeps recurring as surely as shingles follows chicken pox. I have no particular solution except to remark, that just as Ignatius Loyola is reputed to have said about acquiring Christian faith “Give me a child until he is seven and I'll show you the man” perhaps that applies to anti-semitism too. After all, in the Mediaeval period Jewish people were allowed to lend money so that Christians could remain free of the taint of usury. That allowed people to despise the usurer whilst at the same time resenting the debt and their creditor. Even today the stereotype of the Jewish banker ruling the world is a recurrent anti-Semitic trope.

As Christians we should remember Rachel in Rama crying for her children and remind ourselves that if we followed Christ's teachings Jewish people would inevitably be protected. Anti-semitism, like other forms of racial prejudice, represents a failure of Christian obligation and the Christian ideal. We have often been oblivious to the import of Vox in Rama.

Peace and love,


Paul.

Completed: 6 August 2020


Photo: Paul Munton
A Praying Mantis(Mantis religiosa)
 It looks although it is praying whilst it is actually preying on its fellow insects


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