Abram Polyak

Abram Poljak (born March 28, 1900 , † October 23 or 28, 1963 in Crespera , Canton Ticino ) was a Russian-German author.

biography

Although Abram Poljak wrote a wealth of writings, his autobiographical information is extremely sparse: He grew up in Yekaterinoslav , Russia (now Ukraine ) as the son of Jewish parents. Poljak was a child prodigy on the violin and had to play for the Russian tsar at the age of four. After the pogrom in 1905, he left Russia with his parents and moved to Germany (Leipzig). Up to the age of seventeen he lived entirely by music, but then became very seriously ill. Poljak was exposed to the worst anti-Semitic attacks at school; it would have been a mercy not to have become bitter, Poljak said. After dropping out of music studies, his parents hoped he would train as a rabbi, but instead began studying philosophy. According to his own statements, he was politically active in Jewish organizations and rose to a leading position. After marrying a Christian in 1924, he left the "Jewish sphere" in his own words. In 1927/28 he held lectures on Jewish topics such as Jewish philosophy, Jewish mysticism, neo-orthodoxy and Zionism for three semesters at the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum in Leipzig, which was led by Pastor Otto von Harling , who was active in the Jewish mission .

He published Between Man and God and other writings on the Jewish Christian community . Until 1930 he edited a small German daily newspaper and after his release he lived as a freelance writer. His Confederation of Religious Communism was dissolved in 1933, he himself was arrested but released again.

1935 or 1937 he founded in London with his wife Pauline Rose, who emigrated art historian Agnes Waldstein and Albert von Springer , the Jewish Christian Union (Jewish Christian community), which he in 1936 also wanted to make in Vienna, but was prevented by the government from. In 1937 he was in London and The Cross in the Star of David appeared in its second edition. Poljak stated that the Jewish Christian community is the will of all Jews who believe in Christ and the mission of the Jewish people. Through his writings and lectures, an international circle of friends is emerging that will create the Jewish Christian colony in Palestine. From 1940 to 1944 Poljak was interned on the Isle of Man and in Canada.

After the war he traveled to Palestine, where in 1947 he founded a small Jewish Christian community. In 1951 he settled in Germany again and founded the Jewish Christian Reich Brotherhood , which was renamed the Reich Brotherhood of Jesus Christ in 1954 because it included both Jewish and Gentile Christians. In the same year, the foundation stone of the so-called Patmos settlement in Möttlingen was laid .

criticism

Poljak's Jewish-Christian end-time congregations met with criticism from both Jews and Christians. In the Israeli War of Independence, for example, they were attacked by Jews and a member of the espionage for England was suspected. The criticism on the part of the evangelical church was unanimous. On the occasion of Poljak's lecture tour through the Federal Republic of Germany in 1951, Otto von Harling , managing director of the German Evangelical Committee for Service to Israel , warned all regional churches against Poljak. Its theological ideas are questionable, especially with regard to the idea that Christians of Jewish origin must gather in their own communities separate from the churches. Poljak's understanding of the end times and Israel, which more or less corresponded to that of Christian Zionism , also met with rejection. In 1954, the Protestant regional bishop Martin Haug warned against the teachings of Poljak, which he described as the "Judaization of the New Testament".

Poljak's worldview is filled with ideas about a divine providence. He takes these thoughts so far that he claims that Hitler also had a "historical mission". Poljak's interpretation of the Holocaust is shaped by a simplistic cause-and-effect principle: "If we Jews had not deviated from God's ways, He would not have given us into the hands of the anti-Semites."

Fonts (selection)

In the years 1938 to 1948, articles were written for the monthly Die Judenchristliche Gemeinde and the booklets The smashed swastika and Hitler as a general and spiritualist .

• Meditations , Chemnitz 1922 (self-published)
• Between humans and God , Moros-Verlag Chemnitz 1924
• Jewish Christians in the Holy Land , European Publishing House Leipzig 1936
• The Jewish Christian Community , Vienna 1937 (self-published)
• The Cross in the Star of David: Contributions to the Jewish Christian Question , Self-published Vienna (1st and 2nd edition 1937), Aeschlimann Thun (3rd edition 1939, 4th edition 1941), Patmos-Verlag Neckargemünd (6th edition 1951)
• Jewish Christianity , Aeschlimann Thun 1939
• The bible on faith healing , The Jewish Christian Community London, 1939
• The Jewish Church , Verl. D. Jewish Christian Municipality of Köniz-Bern 1946
• The smashed swastika , Verl. D. Jewish Christian Municipality of Köniz-Bern 1947
  • Under the title: Smashed swastika: Hitler als Feldherr u. Spiritist , 5th edition Patmos-Verlag Stuttgart 1952
• Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... , 2nd edition, Patmos-Verlag Neckargemünd 1951
• Jewish Christians in Israel: Paulinische Judenmission; Jewish Christian community , Patmos-Verlag Neckargemünd 1951
• War and Peace: Sermons and Letters from Captivity , Patmos-Verlag Neckargemünd 1951
• The olive branch , Patmos publishing house / publishing house of the Jewish Christian community of Liebefeld-Bern 1951
• Letters from Jerusalem , Patmos-Verlag Stuttgart 1954
• On the way , Patmos-Verlag Möttlingen 1958
• The world situation in the light of the biblical-prophetic word , Patmos-Verlag Möttlingen 1958
• Hitler as a general a. Spiritist , Patmos-Verlag Möttlingen (reprint) 1962
• Consolation and Hope , Patmos-Verlag Möttlingen 1963; New edition 1970

Web links

• Literature by and about Abram Poljak in the catalog of the German National Library
• Archive with selected articles by and about Abram Poljak
• The Imperial Brotherhood at religio.de
• The messianic movement

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Das Kreuz im Davidstern, Self-published Vienna (2nd edition) 1937, p. 17
2. ↑ Thomas Küttler : Controversial Jewish mission. The Leipzig Central Association for Mission under Israel from Franz Delitzsch to Otto von Harling . Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2009, p. 70
3. ↑ Federico Dal Bo: The Theological and Cultural Challenge of Messianic Jews. Towards a New Jewish Paradigm? , in: Nathanael Riemer, Avidov Lipsker, Michał Szulc (eds.): Jesus in the Jewish cultures of the 19th and 20th centuries . Potsdam: Universitätsverlag, 2015 ISBN 978-3-86956-331-2 , p. 45
4. ^ Letters from Jerusalem , Patmos-Verlag Stuttgart 1954, p. 74
5. ↑ On the Protestant criticism of Poljak see Gronauer, Gerhard: The State of Israel in West German Protestantism. Perceptions in church and journalism from 1948 to 1972 (AKIZ.B57). Göttingen 2013. pp. 89–93.
6. ↑ Evangelisches Gemeindeblatt für Württemberg, 45 (1951) No. 50, p. 2.
7. ↑ Hitler as a general a. Spiritist , Patmos-Verlag Möttlingen (special print) 1962, p. 12
8. ↑ The Jewish Church , publ. D. Jewish Christian Municipality of Köniz-Bern 1946, p. 18