Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2018
Watersheds of human history are often given symbolic recognition through radical breaks in the way we date things. Thus in Christendom reference is made to B.C. and A.D.; some Jews and Christians have agreed on a mutual resort to BCE and C.E.; while in Islam H.A. stands for the alldecisive year of Mohammed's Hijra (Migration). Perhaps 1941 is to be identified as Year One of the Holocaust (basing it upon the “killing phase” of the program against the Jews). On this reckoning the present analysis is offered in the year 34 of the Holocaust. But the symbology A.H. would mean confusion with Muslim usage. An alternative, for English usage, is BFS, before the Final Solution, and F.S., in the year of the Final Solution. (Any symbology faces the criticism of being either arbitrary or contrived. A still further alternative is B.A. and A.A., before and after Auschwitz. There are substantive objections to singling out Auschwitz, and yet there is no doubt that this name has become the single most powerful symbol of the Holocaust.)
page 34 note * Jews will quite properly resent the brazen use of “we” on the part of Christian. I have no desire to argue the point. The Christian dares to claim that he is part of the Jewish family. In entitling my new book Your People, My People I seek to do honor to Ruth and to all poor pagans who are brought within the family of Israel. In the present exposition a few of the ideas from that study are adapted and applied. In this article I have not wished to obscure the vast differences between Jewish and Christian understandings and witness; these differences are stressed in various writings of mine.