ABSTRACT
Christians have historically tried to make Jews feel guilty for the death of Christ; they have succeeded only in making them aggrieved victims. As the pope has recently acknowledged, it is the Christians who are guilty for making the accusation and for all the consequences that have ensued. Christians, after all, are born in original sin, Jews are not. But there is something distinctive about the way Jews feel guilty about their parents or their children or their relation to the world. Jewish guilt is the motive for moral passion, the constant worrying about whether one has done right, done enough, done too much. Most of the other contributors were clearly uncomfortable with the subject; it forced them to think against the tendency of their lives, which was not to think about their Jewishness. In the centuries of wandering, the Jew has learned to shift for himself, to adapt, to accommodate, to disappear and reappear, to invent and reinvent himself.
