Susannah Heschel (NHC Fellow, 1997–98)

Fellowship Work Summary, 1997–98

Susannah Heschel completed work on the introduction, and an essay on "Making Jesus an Aryan: The Politics of New Testament Scholarship during the Third Reich," for a volume she co‑edited (with Robert Ericksen) entitled Betrayal: The German Churches and the Holocaust, to be published by Augsburg‑Fortress Press (1999). She completed research and reviewed archival materials for her book‑length project on Protestant theologians in Nazi Germany (for University of Chicago Press), and wrote drafts of four chapters. She also wrote several articles on material drawn from the book project which have been accepted for publication. While at the Center, she enjoyed the publication of two books during early 1998: Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press) and Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (University of California Press). She wrote a number of other articles which are forthcoming, including "Church Protests during the Third Reich: A Report on Two Cases," Kirchliche Zeitgeschicte; "Deutsche Theologen für Hitler: Walter Grundmann und das Eisenacher Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben," to appear in the Jahrbuch of the Fritz Bauer Institut, Frankfurt am Main; "Redemptive Antisemitism: The De‑Judaization of the New Testament in the Third Reich," in Literary Studies in Luke‑Acts: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Joseph B. Tyson, edited by Tom Phillips and Richard Thompson (Mercer University Press); "The Vagina as Fetish: Feminist Analysis of the Laws of Niddah," in Der Shayne Yid: The Jewish Body, edited by Sander Gilman and Robert Jütte (a catalogue accompanying an exhibit at the Juedisches Museum, Vienna); "Israel als moralische Konflikt," in Mein Israel, edited by Micha Brumlik (S. Fischer Verlag); an essay in The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, edited by Simon Wiesenthal (Schocken Books, 1998); "Meeting of the Spirit, by the Spirit: The Relationship between Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr.," which appeared in the summer 1998 issue of Conservative Judaism and will also be published in Black Zion: African‑American Religious Encounters with Judaism, edited by Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch (Oxford University Press); "Judaism: An Overview," "Judaism: Modern," and "Judaism: History of Study," to appear in Encyclopedia of Women and World Religions, edited by Serinity Young (Macmillan Reference); and "Abraham Joshua Heschel," for the Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, edited by John Hayes (Abingdon Press). She also wrote an essay on relations between Israel and American Jewry for The Nation; another on the Vatican's "Reflection on the Shoah," for Dissent; and two articles‑‑"Abraham Joshua Heschel," in Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture, and Society (January/February, 1998), and "Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr.," in Fellowship 64 (January/February 1998). She presented two papers: "Revolt of the Colonized: Wissenschaft des Judentums as a Challenge to Christian Hegemony in the Academy," for a conference on The Impact of the German‑Jewish Experience on Western Culture, at Ben Gurion University; and "The Revival of Theopaschite Traditions in the Post‑War Era: Abraham Heschel's Influence on Christian Theology," for a symposium at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Locally, she presented papers at Duke University; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and at Greensboro; the Triangle Jewish Studies Seminar; and at synagogues in Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina.