DoronAvraham doron591@bezeqint.net Teaching the Holocaust in multicultural classrooms and in places which have experienced mass violence raises the question of whether specific methods of teaching are required. One of the answers is that Holocaust education in these cases should facilitate the creation of parallels and similarities between past events and the experiences of the learners. This concept is contrasted with a historicist approach, which studies and comprehends each event in its own particular context. Such a stance focuses on the subject matter and much less on the identity of the learners.

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Beginning in the early nineteenth century, spokesmen for German nationalism invoked confessional reconciliation as a precondition for future unification. While the confessional divide between Catholics and Protestants seemed to hinder German unity, advocating ecumenical Christianity appeared to advance national consolidation. The article suggests that this endorsement of ecumenism was part of a tradition of confessional conciliation manifested in German Pietism since the seventeenth century. Early German Pietists sought ecumenical Christianity not merely in an eschatological sense, but also in a specific historical one. Nineteenth-century neo-Pietists nationalized and politicized these earlier ideas of interconfessional reconciliation.

From the 1830s, Prussian conservatives started to contemplate the meaning of nationalism and national identity. The continuous efforts of liberals to bring about German national unification according to modern criteria, and the constant change in the social and economic structures, required the definition of nationalism on an alternative basis. In order to address the severe difficulties faced by society and to avoid national unification based on revolutionary foundations, Prussian conservatives defined German national identity on the basis of particular social relations and order, and on a unique version of religious devotion and designation. At the same time, however, the conservatives did not assign any political importance to these national peculiarities and continued to adhere to the traditional pattern of state and political authority. Such a definition of national identity was considerably different from the later fascist and racist national ideologies. In this regard, the conservative version of nationalism, as developed until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, cannot act as a precursor to National Socialism, as some historians have argued.

Historical discussions about German Pietism's posture toward Jews underlined Pietists' attempts at their conversion as the dominant feature of their relationship. Contesting orthodoxy, Pietists favored a lenient attitude toward Jews, arguing that their change of heart might hasten salvation. However, revisiting Pietists' texts, I argue that from the late seventeenth century on, these awakened Protestants acknowledged the improbability of conversion. By the new meaning they gave to religious adherence, Pietists believed that mere baptism would not turn Jews into Christians. In fact, as they developed closer acquaintance with Jews, they came to realize that their efforts at mission would not succeed. More than any other confessional strand, Pietists conceptualized Jews not merely as those who denied Christ as the messiah. They also came to see the Jews as a people whose belief in God crossed beyond religious devotion into a unique, inalterable culture, and who therefore should be constructively tolerated.In 1675, Lutheran theologian Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705) published his Pia Desideria, the text that heralded the emergence of German Pietism. Mirroring Paul's prophecy in the Epistle to the Romans, Spener held that, after all heathen peoples embraced Christianity, the majority of Jews, at least, would follow suit. According to Spener, such predictions are already detectable in the Hebrew Bible, for example in the book of Hosea, 1 where the prophet declares that after the people of Israel are exiled, they will return to seek their Lord (Hosea 3, 4-5). This vision, endorsed by the pioneer of German Pietism, set the tone for the positive Pietist attitude towards the Jews. Until the late eighteenth century, such anticipation was shared by