J'Accuse!...Dreyfus and the Principalities and Powers

In 1895 in Paris, Alfred Dreyfus, an army officer, was convicted of handing over French military secrets to the Germans. He was condemned to life imprisonment for treason, was ceremonially stripped of his military rank, his insignia were removed and his sword was ritually broken before he was sent to Devil's Island for the rest of his days. He was 35.

Evidence subsequently came to light that suggested that Dreyfus was not the traitor after all. A new head of intelligence, George Picquart, reported that he had scrutinised the documents on which Dreyfus' conviction had been based, and deduced that another man, Ferdinand Esterhazy, was the spy. However, a re-trial astonishingly affirmed Dreyfus' guilt, a verdict that sent my predecessor Dean Hensley Henson into an 'unspeakable rage'. It took four years of tortuous legal process for him to be pardoned and a further seven before he was officially exonerated. He was re-instated in the army, and served with distinction in the Great War. He died in 1935.

The story is the subject of Robert Harris' latest novel An Officer and a Spy. Not knowing anything about Dreyfus beyond the bare facts of this cause célèbre, I found it to be an absorbing read. As in all his books, Harris, an ex-journalist, researches his material with meticulous care - and in the case of the Dreyfus Affair, there is a lot of it. Harris' makes Picquart his mouthpiece and his use of the historic present (how John Humphrys must hate it!), together with his mastery of the plot's endless twists and turns, makes the novel a superbly vivid read. 

You don't necessarily expect beach reading to be memorable, but (always the mark of a good book) I am continuing to think about its big themes. For make no mistake: this was the most dramatic political scandal in modern France, and one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in western judicial history. It sharply divided public opinion at the time, led to protests on the streets, and even now more than a century later its consequences continue to reverberate in French political and religious consciousness.

Three factors made it so toxic. The first is that Dreyfus was from Alsace. He came from lands that had been occupied by the Germans since the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870. France's humiliation in the generation before Dreyfus was an open sore that was never going to heal (as the Great War demonstrated). So anyone accused of treason in relation to this bitterly hated enemy would inevitably incur huge public wrath. And this was perhaps the first example of an event where the power of 'public opinion' would count for so much.

The second is the conduct of politicians and the military. What came to light during the affair was the extent to which the very highest echelons of the French army had colluded with lies, forged documents and falsified evidence all because of an a priori doctrine that if Dreyfus had been convicted by a military court, its findings had to be sacrosanct. It took courageous 'intellectuals' (a word first coined during this affair) to insist that the conduct of the case raised serious questions about the integrity of the nation's senior leadership. The novelist Émile Zola was in the forefront of this 'Dreyfusard' protest against the corruptions of power and the comprehensive culture of the cover-up. He wrote a famous article that appeared on the front page of a national newspaper, J'accuse! as a result of which he was also arraigned before a court of law. 

But by far the most powerful forces at work in the affair were due to the fact that Dreyfus was a Jew. His conviction played right into the barely-suppressed anti-semitism of the fin de siècle. This ugly strain ran from top to bottom of French society. A torrent of abuse towards Jews was rapidly unleashed, some of it acted out as physical violence. Jews were not only mercenary and manipulating. Dreyfus had demonstrated that they were not to be trusted. Their claims to assimilation as authentic French citizens were exposed as hypocrisy. And even when Dreyfus was reinstated, the anti-Semitic genie would not willingly get back into the bottle, as is evidenced by the treatment of French Jews under Nazi Occupation, and the spate of anti-Jewish episodes that continues to this day. 

So Robert Harris' book, while it doesn't set out to moralise, does offer food for thought about our contemporary society: how we deal with one another as nation-states, how we lead with integrity in public life, our covenant with the armed forces, how we conduct judicial processes, how we listen to victims, and above all, how we handle religious, ethnic and cultural difference in society, especially when it comes to minorities. All this could be said to be about how we 'speak truth to power'. Dreyfus was an historical watershed whose central issues are still very much with us, in Britain no less than France. We need to be vigilant if we care about our values as a nation.

It's amazing how much you can learn from what you read on the beach. 

That Jew Died For You: a reflection

A video produced by Jews for Jesus hit the national headlines yesterday. It shows Jewish holocaust victims being transported by rail to the gates of Auschwitz. Here the infamous selection takes place. Some go to the right - the ones spared to work. Others go to the left - to the showers (i.e. as the film helpfully explains in parentheses, to be gassed).

It is all tastefully done in black and white. The effect, enhanced by the musical score, recalls Stephen Spielberg's Schindler's List. That film, unforgettably, has a single person depicted in colour, the little girl in the red coat. Here too, Jews for Jesus offer hommage. But this time, the figure in colour is a man who has taken his place in the line. He carries a cross. There is a momentary pause as he comes up to the selection guards. Then he too goes to the left - voluntarily. 'Just another Jew.' The video ends with a quotation from Isaiah 53 and the strap line: 'That Jew Died For You'.

I watched it with a growing sense of unease. Surely no-one would use the Holocaust as an evangelistic tool? Perhaps I hadn't grasped what Jews for Jesus were trying to do. As I tweeted yesterday, I was trying to understand my bafflement, still wondering if the vociferous denunciation of it in the media was a trifle hysterical. But as I went on thinking about it, as a person of Jewish descent myself, I began to see it more clearly for what it is. Here are three points to consider.

First, it seems to me that the video tramples heavily over holy ground where we ought to take off our shoes and tremble. To many, it simply lacks sensitivity to the victims of the Holocaust. This place of awe demands a particular kind of silence. Words should only be spoken, if at all, with the utmost reverence and carefulness. To colonise and exploit the suffering of so many millions in this way is extraordinary. You are surprised to see it done at all, especially by people who claim the title 'Jew'. 

Secondly, the film is theologically flawed. I don't argue with the words 'That Jew Died for You', even with their calculated offensiveness: as a Christian, the belief that (however I understand this greatest of mysteries) Jesus' death was 'for me' is basic to my faith. But the idea that the Father exacts wrath on his beloved Son is one which, if I accepted it once, I can no longer make sense of, still less subscribe to. What is more, if the doctrine requires Jesus to be 'punished', the implication is that the gas chamber where he goes with his cross is a 'punishment' on all its victims, an idea which once stated is patently offensive, for it colludes in precisely the distorted mentality of the oppressor for whom Jews are punished simply for being Jews. If the film had simply intended to show that in solidarity with the pain of humanity, Christ continues to bear the marks of crucifixion in his own body, it would have been different. But the assertion of a doctrine of atonement at the gates of Auschwitz is understandably perceived as dishonouring the memory of those who perished there. To the religious instinct, it's not the statement of a doctrinal formula but articulating questions like 'Where is God in all this?' 'How can we speak any more about God's justice and love?' that demonstrate spiritual empathy and that mature faith, like the Book of Job, stays and wrestles with.

Finally, and this isn't a point I've seen discussed, there is plenty of New Testament evidence about how the first Jewish converts shared their new-found faith in Jesus. St Paul is especially articulate. He knew how his own Jewish people had suffered a couple of centuries before in an era of fierce perscution under the Hellenising Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes. During the 2nd century BCE Jewry underwent a holocaust that is vividly recorded in the books of the Maccabees and testified to in apocalyptic works like Daniel. Many Jews suffered terribly for their faithfulness to the Covenant. Yet although Paul can place Jesus in the line of Jewish martyrs or 'witnesses' who suffered for the covenant, he does not elide its meaning with suffering from a different era whose own integrity must be honoured. He does not place Jesus among the Maccabean martyrs and say 'whatever was the reason they died, that Jew died for you'. His belief in the historical as well as the theological uniqueness of Jesus' crucifixion makes him careful not to overstate the precedents. We should learn from his reticence, always the mark of a responsible theologian.

So I wish those who made this film had thought better of it. Intelligent Jewish-Christian dialogue has never been more needed than now, not least in relation to the Holocaust. I can't see that this video, however well-meant, will help foster friendship and respect among the Abrahamic faiths. Neither Jews nor Jesus have been well served.