Notre Dame is wondrous, but is it moral?

This month the world celebrated the restoration of Notre Dame of Paris, a truly remarkable building, especially considering it was constructed in the 13th Century. Yet I hope they will forgive Jewish people (and anyone of conscience who knows the cathedral’s history) who may be hesitant to extend our congratulations.

Notre Dame – like many European cathedrals – is an explicit monument to the perceived or hoped-for downfall of the Jewish People and our religion. This great architectural achievement has been the badge of the French Catholic Church since its completion in 1250 CE. They laid the cornerstone in 1164 and during the 86-year construction period, this rising symbol of French Catholicism paralleled a rise in official French antisemitism.

As the Church grew in power, Jewish resistance to conversion remained a thorn in the side of Christianity. Since Jesus himself was Jewish, our nearly universal refusal to convert implied something invidious about us.

By the 13th century, Church leaders had come to suspect that the Talmud – more than any other Jewish book – is what kept Jews Jewish and prevented our acceptance of Christian theology. Across Europe, representatives of the Church staged numerous public “disputations” between Christians and Jews. Judaism was typically defended by a learned rabbi, while the prosecution was often an apostate Jew – a convert to Christianity whose knowledge of the Talmud was sufficient to give him credibility and to enable him to quote Talmudic passages.

At the first of many nadirs of this period, in June of 1239, Pope Gregory IX ordered the Catholic kings of Europe to seize all Jewish books and to examine them for heresy. King Louis IX was the only European monarch to heed the Pope’s orders. He was perhaps encouraged by the apostate Jew who betrayed the Jews of France, Nicholas Donin, who was angry with the French rabbis and had traveled to Rome with accusations against the Talmud. Donin personally delivered the Pope’s letter to Paris, which included the order that “those books in which you find errors of this sort you shall cause to be burned at the stake.” On March 3, 1240, French soldiers confiscated approximately 10,000 handwritten volumes of the Talmud from every synagogue and yeshiva in France.

The investigation took about two years and culminated in a public trial. Donin served as prosecutor and the defense was led by two of the greatest Tosafists, Rav Yechiel of Paris (Donin’s former teacher) and Rav Moshe of Coucy.

On May 13, 1242, the verdict was issued: the Talmud contains heresy and all copies must be destroyed in a month’s time. King Louis IX ordered the burning of all known copies. The execution of this verdict on June 17, 1242, was joyfully supervised by priests and bishops and King Louis himself. For this and other acts of piety, Louis was later beatified (declared a “saint”). Catholics remember him as the epitome of the Christian King and even named a major North American city in his honor.

Notre Dame de Paris (Peter Haas / Wikicommons)

The trial was conducted in front of the nearly-completed Notre Dame cathedral. The symbolism of this location is very important. Look carefully at the main entrance: flanking the central doorway are two statues. The one on the left depicts a woman with her head held high and a staff in her hand. She is Icclesia – the Christian Church. The statue on the right has her head down with broken staff and a snake around her eyes. She is Synagoga – Judaism.

These symbols, found on numerous European cathedrals, mean quite plainly that the core mission and meaning of this building is the triumph of Christianity over Judaism. Make no mistake: the building itself is an intentional monument to the supposed downfall of the Jewish People. This history should inform our response when, 777 years later, Notre Dame of Paris burned.

For example, consider the reaction of Barbara Drake Boehm, senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval Cloisters branch in New York (her voice shaking): “It’s the very soul of Paris, but it’s not just for French people. For all humanity, it’s one of the great monuments to the best of civilization.”

Question for the reader – Do you agree with Ms. Boehm? Does Notre Dame represent the best of civilization?

One of the most viral videos from the burning of the Cathedral on April 15, 2019 shows the main spire falling. This video appears to have been shot from the nearby City Hall Plaza (Place de Hotel de Ville) where the Talmud burning took place. However, it may have been shot from the Holocaust Museum, which is about the same distance.

One wonders whether the placement of the Holocaust museum there is a statement of repentance or a historical irony – so close to two locations that are associated with virulent antisemitism and that surely contributed, through the persistence of cultural memory, to the Holocaust itself.

The current caretakers of Notre Dame have had five years and 900 million dollars to restore their beloved church. I had hoped to see the offensive grand entryway modified. Alas, le plus ça change…

In 1242, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg witnessed the burning of the Talmud in Paris and wrote, “My tears formed a river that reached to the Sinai desert and to the graves of Moshe and Aharon. Is there another Torah to replace the Torah which you have taken from us?”

Your thoughts?

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