How A Christian Friend Helped Make Me A Better Jew: The Tale of an Interfaith Encounter

For The Tacoma News Tribune
June 2003

Just when I begin feeling that my religious ideas are starting to gel, just when I start to think that the many religious thoughts and perceptions swirling within me are beginning to settle into some semblance of a cogent world-view, something or someone always seems to come along and stir everything up again.

Rev. David Alger did that to me recently – he’s the director of Associated Ministries of Tacoma/Pierce County, and if he wasn’t such a good friend, I might actually hold it against him.

I had invited David to come to Temple and speak to some of our high-schoolers about Christianity.  At one point, I asked him about an anecdote I’d heard regarding Adolph Eichmann, Hitler’s aide in charge of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.”  Evidently, while Eichmann was awaiting his war-crimes trial in Israel in the early 60’s, a Christian clergyman said something along the lines of, “Give me a few hours with Eichmann, and I can get him into heaven.”

As a Jew, I find this abhorrent.  The minister seemed to be saying that he simply have a chat with the murderer of so many millions of my people, get him to proclaim that he had “seen the light of Christ,” and thus “make all-gone” with the horrors he had perpetrated.

So, with our high school students eagerly listening, I asked David Alger for his reaction to this story.  He paused for a moment, acknowledged that the issue is a difficult one, and then said something I’ll never forget.  “I don’t think any human being is irredeemable.”

I took his response to mean that, although what Eichmann did was unspeakably evil, God created human beings with enormous potential.  We all can do good in our lives and, when we don’t, we can turn our lives around and become good.  As a result, God never gives up hope for any of us, and we shouldn’t, either.  Even for murderers.  Even for mass murderers. Even for mass murderers such as Eichmann who killed of millions of  innocent people.

In other words, while the possibility of turning Eichmann around in a few short hours might have been stretching it, David was saying that in principle, even he – even Eichmann – was essentially redeemable.

As for me, I had previously been comfortable in my delicious indignation over the suggestion that Eichmann could get into heaven, but now I was confused again.  I was confused because I found myself agreeing with David – even horrible criminals can turn their lives around, so we shouldn’t give up on them.  I was confused because, nevertheless, I couldn’t imagine a heaven worthy of the name ever allowing a man like Eichmann anywhere near it.  I confused, very confused.  And I hate it when Alger does that!

So I thought a lot about what David had said and, in time, I reached a few conclusions.  First, I still disagree with him.  Judaism teaches that we can only make things right with God and other people once we’ve gone through the long, gut-wrenching process called atonement – a process that involves changing our behavior and compensating those we’ve wronged for their losses.  Unlike the act of turning to Christ, atonement in Judaism is essentially an external process – one that gets played out in the world around us and demands certain behaviors.  Done right, it never means wiping away the past, but dealing with the past instead, and righting the wrongs we have committed.  Eichmann’s crimes, “unrightable” as they were, precluded his ever being able to atone for them.

My other conclusion was that much of what David had said was absolutely correct.  He helped me realize that there is indeed virtue in never giving up on other people – that  the most horrible evildoers can turn their lives around.  Since righting their wrongs is often impossible, they may never reach heaven, but they can always take significant steps toward becoming good, righteous human beings. 

I still don’t think Eichmann ever could have made it into heaven, but we should always try to get the bad-guys, even those as evil as Eichmann, to become good anyway.  

I reached a third conclusion, too.  I don’t really hate it when Alger shakes me up the way he did.  Actually, I love it.  He makes me think; he makes me question ideas I’ve never questioned before, he makes me struggle and become a better Jew.  I still passionately embrace my Jewish values, of course, but now, with David’s help, those values have become stronger and far more nuanced than they were before. 

Day after day, my religious values continue to gel into an increasingly coherent world view.  I just hope that they never set completely, because then they would render me impervious to enriching encounters such as the one this rabbi had with his good Christian friend.