War and Remembrance

p. 740

Aaron Jastrow, a great humanist Jewish author and journalist, tells of visiting a Christian church for the first time: “So long as I live, I shall not forget the shock of seeing a great bloody naked Christ hanging from a cross on the front wall, where in a synagogue the Holy Ark would stand; nor the strange sweetish Gentile smell of incense; nor the big painted saints on the side walls. I was stunned to think that for the ‘outside world’ (as I then regarded it), this was religion, this was the way to God! Half-horrified, half-fascinated, I stayed for a long time. Never since have I felt so alien and alone . . . .”