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Martin Luther published a number of statements and works about Jews. He has been accused of Anti-Semitism, primarily in relation to his work On the Jews and their Lies, though his defenders have said he exhibited Anti-Judaism

Luther's statements about the Jews

Luther's first known comment on the Jews is in a letter written to Reverend Spalatin in 1514 he stated:

I have come to the conclusion that the Jews will always curse and blaspheme God and his King Christ, as all the prophets have predicted....For they are thus given over by the wrath of God to reprobation, that they may become incorrigible, as Ecclesiastes says, for every one who is incorrigible is rendered worse rather than better by correction.

In 1519, Luther challenged the doctrine "Servitus Judaeorum" ("Servitude of the Jews"), established in Corpus Juris Civilis by Justinian I in 529. He wrote: "Absurd theologians defend hatred for the Jews. ... What Jew would consent to entrer our ranks when he sees the cruelty and enmity we wreak on them—that in our behavior towards them we less resemble Christians than beasts?"

In his 1523 essay That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, Luther distinguished between the religious yet emphasises the racial aspects of the Jews telling his followers that

"When we are inclined to boast of our position we should remember that we are but Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord. Therefore, if one is to boast of flesh and blood the Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are."

In August 1536, Luther's prince, Elector John Frederick of Saxony, issued a mandate that prohibited Jews from inhabiting, engaging in business in, or passing through his realm.

On the Jews and Their Lies

In his 1543 book On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther goes further than the widespread sentiments of his times. He states: "There is one thing about which they boast and pride themselves beyond measure, and that is their descent from the foremost people on earth, from Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and from the twelve patriarchs, and thus from the holy people of Israel." Luther uses Jewish internal quarrels to incite hatred against all Jews when he quotes the words of Jesus in Matthew 12:34, where Jesus called the Jewish religious leaders (Pharisees) of his day "a brood of vipers and children of the devil", and attributes this characteristic to all Jews. In the book, written three years before his death, Luther describes the Jews as (among other things) "miserable, blind, and senseless", "truly stupid fools", "thieves and robbers", "lazy rogues", "daily murderers", and "vermin", likens them to "gangrene", and recommends that Jewish synagogues and schools be burned, their homes destroyed, their writings be confiscated, their rabbis be forbidden to teach, their travel be restricted, that lending money be outlawed for them and that they be forced to earn their wages in farming. Finally, Luther advised "f we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country" and "we must drive them out like mad dogs."

Luther advocated an eight-point plan to get rid of the Jews as a distinct group either by religious conversion or by expulsion:

1. "...set fire to their synagogues or schools..."
2. "...their houses also be razed and destroyed..."
3. "...their prayer books and Talmudic writings... be taken from them..."
4. "...their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb..."
5. "...safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews..."
6. "...usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them..." and "Such money should now be used in ... the following ... Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed ..."
7. "...young, strong Jews and Jewesses ... earn their bread in the sweat of their brow..."
8. "If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country" and "we must drive them out like mad dogs."

Schem Hamephoras and Luther's final sermon

Several months after publishing On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther wrote another attack on Jews titled Schem Hamephoras, in which he explicitly equated Jews with the Devil.

In his final sermon shortly before his death, Luther preached "We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they might become converted and would receive the Lord" .

Luther's influences on the fate of the Jews

Luther's sentiments were echoed in the Germany of the 1930s. According to Daniel Goldhagen

One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany. The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.

It was Luther's expression "The Jews are our misfortune" that centuries later would be repeated by Heinrich von Treitschke and appear as motto on the front page of Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer.

On the Jews and their Lies has been described as "a notorious Antisemitic document"); according to Paul Johnson, it "may be termed the first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust."

According to Diarmaid MacCulloch, "Luther's writing of 1543 is a blueprint for the Nazi's Kristallnacht of 1938".

In his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer wrote:

"It is difficult to understand the behavior of most German Protestants in the first Nazi years unless one is aware of two things: their history and the influence of Martin Luther. The great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of the Jews ..." Luther's advice "... was literally followed four centuries later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler."

Roland Bainton, noted church historian and Luther biographer, wrote with reference to On the Jews and Their Lies: "One could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was written. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial". This is later echoed by James M. Kittelson writing about Luther's correspondence with Jewish scholar Josel of Rosheim: "There was no anti-Semitism in this response. Moreover, Luther never became an anti-Semite in the modern, racial sense of the term."

According to Heiko Oberman, "he basis of Luther's anti-Judaism was the conviction that ever since Christ's appearance on earth, the Jews have had no more future as Jews."

Richard Marius views Luther's remarks as part of a pattern of similar statements about various groups Luther viewed as enemies of Christianity. He states "Although the Jews for him were only one among many enemies he castigated with equal fervor, although he did not sink to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition against Jews, and although he was certainly not to blame for Adolf Hitler, Luther's hatred of the Jews is a sad and dishonorable part of his legacy, and it is not a fringe issue. It lay at the center of his concept of religion. He saw in the Jews a continuing moral depravity he did not see in Catholics. He did not accuse papists of the crimes that he laid at the feet of Jews."

In 1988 Lutheran theologian Stephen Westerholm argued that Luther's attacks on Jews were part and parcel of his attack on the Catholic Church — that Luther was applying a Pauline critique of Phariseism as legalistic and hypocritical to the Catholic Church. Westerholm rejects Luther's interpretation of Judaism and his apparent anti-Semitism but points out that whatever problems exist in Paul's and Luther's arguments against Jews, what Paul, and later, Luther, were arguing for was and continues to be an important vision of Christianity.

Reactions of Lutheran bodies

In 1983, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, noting that "Anti-Semitism and other forms of racism are a continuing problem in our world," made an official statement disassociating themselves from what they describe as "intemperate remarks about Jews" in Luther's works.

In 1994, the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America publicly rejected what it described as "Luther's anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews," and their "appropriation... by modern anti-Semites for the teaching of hatred toward Judaism or toward the Jewish people in our day."

Notes

1. Paul Johnson: A History of the Jews, 1987. p.242
2. Siemon-Netto, Uwe. "Luther and the Jews." Lutheran Witness 123 (2004)No. 4:19.
3. OVERVIEW OF 2000 YEARS OF JEWISH PERSECUTION. ANTI-JUDAISM: 1201 TO 1800 CE at www.religioustolerance.org. Retrieved December 15, 2005.
4. Elliot Rosenberg, But Were They Good for the Jews?, 1997. p.65
5. "On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543." in Luther's Works Tr. Martin Bertram. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971.
6. Paul Johnson: A History of the Jews, 1987. p.242
7. "On the Jews and their Lies, 1543."
8. Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation, 2003. p.666-667.
9. Reformation at Florida Holocaust Museum, www.flholocaustmuseum.org. Retrieved December 15, 2005.
10. Luther, Martin: Works. Weimar ed., vol. 51, p. 195
11. Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 3, p. 336
12. William L. Shirer, Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich ISBN 0671728687, 1990. p.236
13. Bainton. Here I Stand. Nashville: Abingdon Press, New American Library, 1983, p. 297
14. Heiko Oberman: The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, 1984. p.46
15. Richard Marius Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). p.482.
16. Kittelson. Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986, p. 274
17. Q&A: Luther's Anti-Semitism at Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, www.lcms.org. Retrieved December 15, 2005.
18. Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community, April 18, 1994, www.elca.org. Retrieved December 15, 2005.

Bibliography

• Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978. ISBN 0687168945.
• Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther, 3 vols. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985-1993. ISBN 0800607384, ISBN 0800624637, ISBN 0800627040.
• Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1987. ISBN 0060915331.
• Kittelson, James M. Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986. ISBN 0806622407.
• Luther, Martin. "On the Jews and Their Lies, 1543" Translated by Martin H. Bertram. In Luther's Works Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971. 47:137-306
• Oberman, Heiko A. The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation. James I. Porter, trans. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. ISBN 0800607090
• Siemon-Netto, Uwe. The Fabricated Luther: the Rise and Fall of the Shirer myth. Peter L. Berger, Foreward. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1995. ISBN 0570048001.
• Siemon-Netto, Uwe. "Luther and the Jews." Lutheran Witness 123 (2004)No. 4:16-19. ]
• Tjernagel, Neelak S. Martin Luther and the Jewish People. Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1985. ISBN 0810002132

External links

• On the Jews and their Lies (excerpts) at Medieval Sourcebook
• Martin Luther and the Jews (PDF) by Albrecht, Mark. Essays Online Mequon, WI: Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, 1999.
• Antisemitism - Reformation from the Florida Holocaust Museum.
• Luther and the Jews (PDF) by Siemon-Netto, Uwe. Lutheran Witness 123 (2004) No. 4:16-19.
• Martin Luther article in Jewish Encyclopedia (1906 ed.) by Gotthard Deutsch
• Martin Luther - Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor by Peter F. Wiener
• Martin Luther’s Attitude Toward The Jews by James Swan

• Anti-Semitism
• Jewish Christian topics