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Jewish Community News

June 2004

This Month in Jewish History: June

by Alexis Rubin

June: Pope rejects gift;
woman laments daughter's marriage;
paratroopers capture city

Rome, June 23, 1295

Prior to the second half of the 20th century, Catholic pontiffs believed their primary responsibility concerning Jews was an obligation to bring about their conversion to Christianity. Some held that leniency would lead them to the baptismal font; others insisted only severe treatment would force Jews to abandon Judaism.

In hopes of attaining lenient treatment from the Holy See, Jewish leaders regularly offered each new pope congratulatory greetings and gifts. With these good wishes came requests for a written declaration (known in Latin as Constitutio pro Judaeis) reconfirming the Jews’ basic rights to life and protection, and the freedom to practice their faith.

On June 23, 1295, when a Jewish delegation extended the traditional greetings to Pope Boniface VIII, they presented him with one of their most precious possessions: a Torah scroll. The pope seemed to take little notice. As he strode past, however, he tossed the Torah back at them, telling these well-wishers that Jews were incapable of comprehending the true meaning of the Five Books of Moses.

Boniface’s nine-year reign reflected this strident anti-Jewish view. He supported claims that Jews tortured the consecrated communion wafer in reenactment of Jesus’ torture on the cross and encouraged the seizure of Jewish moneylenders’ property as punishment for usury. Moreover, he insisted that once baptized, irrespective of age or compulsion, Jews had to remain Christians. This ruling set a precedent for Church law that guided papal actions for centuries to come.

Flatbush, Colonial New York, June 7, 1743

While Jewish life in early America offered unprecedented opportunities and freedoms, the increased social interaction between Jews and Gentiles led to increasing instances of intermarriage. American synagogues tried various strategies to discourage their members from marrying outside the faith. A New York City congregation excluded anyone who married a Christian and forbade its hazzan to officiate at such weddings. In Philadelphia, congregants blotted out the name of anyone who wed a Christian. In South Carolina, a Charleston synagogue denied burial in the congregation’s cemetery. Individ-ual Jews also expressed their distress concerning intermarriage, as the letter below illustrates.

On June 7, 1743, Bilhah Abigail Franks, the wife of a prominent New York Jewish merchant, wrote to her son Naphtali telling him of his sister’s marriage to a wealthy, socially-prominent non-Jew. “I had heard the report of her going to be married to Oliver Delancey…,” Abigail wrote. “My spirit was for some time so depressed that it was a pain to me to speak or see any one.”

Coincidentally, in the early years of the 20th century, a street named for a member of the same Delancey family would become home to many Russian-Jewish immigrants. Here on Delancey Street these newcomers confronted American life, with all its promises and challenges, including the ever-present issue of intermarriage.

Jerusalem, June 7, 1967

When Egyptian President Gamal Nasser moved his troops into the Sinai Peninsula in May 1967, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait joined Egypt in calling for Israel’s annihilation. The Jewish state protested, but the UN refused to take action and, within weeks, the war of nerves exploded into a war of bullets. Although vastly outnumbered, Israeli forces took a mere six days to push the Egyptians out of the Sinai, capture the West Bank from Jordan and force Syria off the Golan Heights.

On June 7, 1967, jubilant Israeli paratroopers captured the Old City of Jerusalem and restored Jewish sovereignty there for the first time in nineteen hundred years. “We [soldiers]…went down to the Western ‘Wailing’ Wall,” Moshe Dayan wrote later, “…some [troops] wept openly, many prayed…” Following Jewish tradition, Dayan scribbled a few words on a piece of paper and inserted his prayer between the Wall’s stones: “May peace descend upon the whole House of Israel.”

Nearly 40 years later, hopes for peace have proven to be as elusive as they were before the Six Day War began.

Alexis Rubin is a Jewish history teacher, writer, researcher and syndicated columnist. Her articles, essays and book reviews have appeared in historical journals, Jewish women's magazines and community newspapers in the U.S. and in Canada.

This Month in Jewish History