Tangled Traditions: A Mennonite Reckoning with Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the Nakba
To be effective peacemakers, we must reckon with antisemitism
Seeking to live out Jesus' call to love God and neighbor, Mennonites around the globe have been at the forefront of restorative justice and peacebuilding. Author Lisa Schirch grew up in the faith tradition and, because of Mennonite peace education, was inspired to become a professor of peacebuilding as well as an advocate for just peace in Israel and Palestine. But as she engaged emerging research about European Mennonites during and after the Holocaust, she began to reckon with difficult truths not only about Mennonite ties to Nazism but also Mennonites' ongoing struggle with antisemitism.
According to Schirch, this tangled history begins long before the horrors of Nazism. In the 1500s, early Anabaptists turned to Jewish scholars to better understand Scripture, where they found not only insight but a Jewish Jesus. Across the centuries, Anabaptists and Jews both experienced persecution by European authorities, including exile, martrydrom, loss of property, and lack of citizenship, which drove many of them to the margins of the continent.
Today, Mennonite peace theology continues to be informed by early Anabaptist oppression, which has manifested in advocacy for marginalized groups around the globe. This includes advocacy for Palestinians, with North American Mennonites engaged in relief and peacemaking work in Israel and Palestine since shortly after World War II. Mennonites have emerged as some of the most vocal Christian advocates for Palestinian rights. Writing in the ongoing context of the war in Gaza, Schirch invites readers to grapple with how Christian antisemitism, including Mennonite complicity, not only led to harm against Jews but also helped shape the forces that led to the Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes and lands amid the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
Tangled Traditions seeks not to unravel these interwoven legacies into neat resolution but to examine how such knots can become sites of moral and spiritual insight. Drawing from trauma healing and peacebuilding, Schirch proposes that reckoning with tangled histories can generate new possibilities for accountability, humility, and solidarity. The book invites readers of all backgrounds to reflect on what it means to bear witness, seek truth, and pursue a just peace. What if solidarity begins not in separation, but in shared entanglement--in the messy, painful, but sacred work of facing history and choosing repair?
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