Adventures In Heresy

Guest Reviewer: Shlomoh Sherman
Adventures In Heresy By Samuel Meyer - Philosophical Library, NYC
hc $10.00

The author of this one hundred and eighty-six page book announces, in his preface, that he has written it "as a tribute to (the historian) Maitland in his quest for understanding and his abhorrence of anachronism." If a thread of commonality may be drawn through the eight short essays which constitute the work, it is this: that in matters of religion one must look beneath the surface of the immediate, the dogmatic, and (what is taken for granted as) the historical, if one is to acquire a newer (truer?) perspective of the motives of men who have had a part in generating the faiths by which we live.

We are informed in the initial essay, from which the book derives its title, that even those who ought be the most objective, the Gibbons, the Toynbees, the Maitlands, the recorders of our history and traditions, lose their objectivity when confronted with ideas and occurences counter to their established and comfortable weltanschaung.

Such an occurrence follows the incident, in the year 1222, of the British deacon who "had turned Jew for the love of a Jewess," and who subsequently paid for this indiscretion with his life at the stake. The author's hero, Maitland, wrote concerning this episode: "This is good law. It is a precedent to be followed when occasion shall require."

The author finds this incredible, since the execution took place after the Magna Carta had come into existence, and nowhere is there any report of the proselyte's legal recourse. Yet the historian was moved to observe that "Everyone (in England) would agree that this self-made Jew must be burnt, that his death was demanded by all law human and divine..."

Meyer asserts, and develops support for the assertion, that when it comes to the Jews, even the most sophisticated and "impartial" minds could fall prey to the nascent European anti-Semitism of the period. As he puts it, "In spite of their genius and originality, it was a pity that (they) should fall under the Teutonic spell with its naive espousal of periodic crises and impending doom."

The author traces the affinity between the sentiments of such "high-minded men and the precursors of German Romanticism which led to the ultimate horrors of the late 1930s and early 1940s.

In the essay, "The Stained Glass Window," Meyer analyzes the on-going and self-perpetuating idea of the existential guilt of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus, despite Vatican II. He discusses the underlying motivations and points out that there were men involved with Vatican II who felt that to completely repudiate the charge of deicide would be tantamount to "implying that (the church) no longer believed in the divinity of Christ." Above and beyond all discussions, arguments, and "dialogues," he states that the most effective antidote to the poison of the "Christ-killer" charge is the State of Israel.

Ideas are not the issue. Ours, he maintains, is not to prove our innocence. He quotes Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz's essay, "The Post-Christian Era": "To be told after sixteen centuries of oppression and persecution in Christian lands by those responsible for these acts. of inhumanity that the Jews are not a people cursed by G-d is an offense not so much to Jews as to G-d."

Not ideas, but empirical lessons taught to the world that we are indeed living in the post-Christian era, the era of the political impotence of the church. Such lessons are exemplified by the continued existence of the State of Israel. Meyer quotes the father of Anne Frank: "The State of Israel teaches that there will be no more Anne Franks.

There will be dead heroes, if need be, but no more martyrs."

Other essays in this interesting and well-written book include, "The Sermon and the Synagogue," an examination of the intent of the Sermon on the Mount as a possible negative reaction to the rise of the Mishnaic Judaism of Yavneh and an interesting interpretation of the contrast between the ideas contained in the adages "an eye for an eye" and "turn the other cheek"; "The Kingdom of God Kosher Style," which examines the tension between Torah and Gospel and its affect on anti-Semitism; and an analysis of two books which investigate a completely radical understanding of the history and the message of the New Testament
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Included are well-compiled footnotes and bibliographies. This is a volume which. merits the attention of the contemporary thinker