How to Fail at Jewish-Christian Relations

HOW TO FAIL AT JEWISH-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS

TALK TO THE WOODROFFE SOCIETY 

OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD,

6 NOVEMBER 2017

For reasons which will become only too obvious, I’d like to speak on how to Fail at Jewish-Christian Relations (JCR), this from the Christian side of things. 

I begin with an anecdote that doesn’t involve me, but which is true. Rabbi Julia Neuberger tells of giving a talk at a Christian seminary. At the end, a seminarian said: “I myself have no problem with woman rabbis.” Rabbi Neuberger smiled, and thought: “That’s nice, but what’s it to you?” “But,” the young man continued: “What about the sacrifices? Are you physically strong enough to perform the sacrifices.” The good rabbi confided: “I came very close to saying: ‘It’s alright unless they struggle’”. But instead she explained to the Christian at necessary length how rabbinic Judaism is different from the religion of the Old Testament, that home and synagogue (or shul) had well and truly replaced the Temple, and prayer and learning had replaced sacrifice. 

That seminarian has done us all a favour. For we will all fail at JCR if we allow ourselves to think that Judaism is the religion of the Old Testament. One powerful introduction which both your chaplain and I once heard, from an Orthodox rabbi, [Rabbi Norman Solomon) began with the Mishnah, the first rabbinic document, compiled around 200 CE, consisting largely of legal details absent from the Scriptures themselves. And increasingly one is encouraged to think of Judaism and Christianity as sibling religions. After all, after the Mishnah (200 CE) there were a good three centuries before the Talmud (in two versions, Babylonian and Palestinian) was itself completed, and it is on the Talmud that much later Judaism rests. In other words, the rabbis (or, within the family, Chazal, chachamim zikhronam livrekhah - our Sages, may their memory be blessed) were giving definitive shape to Judaism as we know it - in precisely those days when the Church Fathers were giving shape to Christianity, through councils and creeds. In Roman Catholic circles, it is now commonplace to speak of the Jewish People as “our elder brother”. Precisely how much older is not the point. That is more a nod to the understanding that Judaism has a more direct link at least to aspects of the Hebrew tradition which is our common ancestor. [It is not a term without its own difficulties. Jews, knowing the biblical stories, know that the elder brother often loses out to the younger.]

In saying that Judaism is not the religion of the Old Testament, I have brought us into another way to fail at this relationship. I was once speaking to a Jewish audience about modern Catholic approaches to Judaism. (Does Pope Francis think that Jews are “Anonymous Christians”? was the title, with more than a nod to Karl Rahner.) As I was outlining some of the recent texts, I mentioned, with heavy, heavy scare-marks “the Old Testament”, as that is the language both used and defended in the Catholic documents. Still, in questions, someone - an extremely gentle, gentleman who I consider a friend - gently insisted that that language was offensive. This because for Jews it is the only Testament, and is in no sense old, in the sense of needing modernising, replacing, or fading away. 

There are ironies here. What I have just been saying about Judaism and Christianity as sibling religions can be reframed thus: neither faith treats the Hebrew Scriptures as complete in themselves. For Christians, they are completed by the New Testament. For Jews, they are complemented by the later Mishnah and Talmud and stories in the form of midrash. This latter set is called “the Oral Law” or “the Oral Torah” (Torah she-be-al-peh) alongside the Written Torah (Torah bikhtav). Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner speaks of rabbinic religion as being the Judaism of the Dual Torah, on this basis. Another point: one thing orthodox Christians certainly do not mean by calling the First Testament “Old” is that it is worn out or passing away. In orthodoxy it is axiomatic that it remains Revelation. And that one Gd is revealed from Genesis to Revelation. That the “God of the Old Testament” is war-like and judgemental is one of the earliest Christian heresies (Marcionism) even though it is a popular trope in wider culture. I sometimes make the point this way: it would be better if we spoke of “the Original Testament”, that would convey more about the interaction between the two Testaments.

But we must turn from these lighter matters to more weighty ones. I have to say you will fail at JCR if you think you can say anything wholly right about Jewish belief. There is a book, author Menachem Kellner, entitled Must a Jew Believe Anything? The majority report is No. A Jew is one who identifies as belonging to the Jewish People and typically does, or tries to do, Jewish things, around circumcision, diet, the day of rest, and of course ethics and compassion. If you go to shul (synagogue) and try to speak of Gd, it is not at all unlikely that you will meet someone who says, “But I don’t believe in Gd”. Again, if you were to try to convert, it is likely you will be asked all kinds of questions about your kitchen, and how you spend your Saturdays. But it is unlikely you will be asked about your belief in Gd. 

There are different layers here. For some, in synagogue as in college, only the Dawkins’ definition of Gd counts. That is: Gd as an item within the universe, who, if he existed, could be examined and analysed like any other item in the universe, so that the statement “that there exists at least one supernatural being” is the one to be tested. Well, that is as far from the orthodox Christian understanding of what “belief in God” is as it is the traditional Jewish one. For others, it is quite specifically the Holocaust, or the Shoah which destroyed faith in Gd, Gd as benign. Before the Shoah, the mainstream idea was that Gd would indeed allow the Jewish people to suffer and even endure persecution for the sake of Gd, but would never abandon them or let them be destroyed. That kind of “covenant” seemed to burn in the ovens of Auschwitz, to many. But, over and above these points, it is the case that faith or belief play a different role in Judaism than in most forms of Christianity. 

In Christianity, the creed is recited solemnly in the middle of the eucharist and at other times. In Orthodoxy, according to the letter of the text, catechumens are sent out before it is recited, such is its mystery and power. We may insist that to say “We believe in Gd the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit,” the “believing” in question is more about trust, or even giving your heart to Gd-so-named, than it is about accepting a quasi-scientific proposition, but this only emphasises the importance of the creed. In Judaism, there is no creed as such. There are the 13 Principles of the Rambam (Maidonides) which have much of the feel of a creed. They refer to Gd as creator, as one, as eternal, as incorporeal, and to Moses as unequalled Prophet and Torah as revelation. But these are recited right at the end of the service, really as a jolly little tune. Certainly, one can be a very devout and observant Jew and take issue with many or most of the Principles. 

That said, it has happened time and again to me that I have heard a Jew say “we Jews don’t really do theology; that feels like abstraction and surmise to us” after they have actually just offered some truly beautiful theology, or interpretation of a Bible story. The joke is that to be Jewish you don't have to believe in Gd, you just have to obey Gd. But there is no doubt that that obedience involves worship, praising Gd, thanking Gd, asking for good things from Gd. And (a different point) the distinction between “Orthodox” and “Progressive” Judaism is theoretically at least a matter of doctrine, whether all of the Written Torah is direct revelation from heaven. So I would say that Judaism has to do with Gd as much as Christianity does, and so by extension with belief. But the framework for any reflecting on Gd is that one is not in a school of faith, but a school of interpretation, where all questions can constantly be asked.

If it is hard to know whether or how to speak of Gd in JCR, it is at least as hard to speak of Israel. A former director of the Council of Christians and Jews tells of giving a talk about the eucharist, and its resonances with Jewish practice. The first question was indeed on the bread and the wine. But the second was on the State of Israel and its actions. And this happened again and again. She ended up “biting the bullet” and setting up the Forum for the Discussion on Israel-Palestine, with Jews, Christians and Muslims integral to the task. The scope for misunderstanding is great. In the first place, it is always worth checking whether a Jewish person is speaking of the person, Jacob-Israel, the People Israel (Am Yisrael) or the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael) or the State of Israel (Medinat Yisrael). 

When it comes to the State and its policies, there is no one position that is the Jewish one. Debate on all aspects is fierce and complex. It happens that a clear majority of Jews in this country do support “the two state solution” and are typically against the settlements. But the bigger picture and the smaller details are all disputed. 

By no means do all Jews identify as Zionist. Some indeed do say that they are anti-Zionist on religious grounds; they believe Jews cannot have full power in the land before Messiah comes. For others, the grounds would be that they are against all nationalisms. Others would be non-Zionist, simply believing that the heart of their Judaism lies elsewhere. 

However, the vast majority would want to insist that Zionism is not a dirty word; Zionism is an honourable position, even for Jews who do not share it. Zionism is simply the view that the Jews are a people like all all peoples, and that as such the Jewish people are as entitled to self-determination as any other people, and that, at least since 1948 this has meant self-determination in the form of the nation state of Israel. This is felt, as much as it is thought about. Amos Oz writes movingly about his father talking to him on the day independence was declared. His father says he should rejoice. They now lived in a country where no one (no fellow-citizen) would humiliate or attack them simply for being a Jew. They were, in the ordinary sense of the word, safe.  

Notice that in giving this account of Zionism I had no recourse to talk of Gd. Indeed, before the Second World War Zionism was secular in the main, and often expressly socialist. Think of the kibbutzim. But after the war, for obvious reasons, religious Jews were also as drawn to Zionism. So indeed often reference is made to the centrality of the Land in the Bible, and of the longing for Zion expressed time and again in the Jewish liturgy. Beyond that, some even think about the refounding of the nation in the Land as miracle, as the dawn of redemption, as messianic at least in embryo. But this is by no means the only way to be a religious Zionist.

I do believe it is true that in discussions with Jews one can indeed criticise any aspect of Israeli politics. Just be aware that Zionism to your partner does not mean “what Netanyahu and those to the right of him do” but an honourable and broad network of ideas. And also be aware that Christianity has a long and ignoble history of valorising Jewish powerlessness. Think of the wandering Jew of St Augustine’s thinking, destined to wander the earth without power or dignity, for killing Christ and rejecting Gd. This has played no small part in the ongoing relationship. So Jews will be suspicious if they pick up a sense that Jews or Israelis are being held to a standard no other people must keep, as if Jews are uniquely to be distrusted with power, always on probation as it were. But over and above all of that, just don’t approach any Jew (who is not already a friend), and expect them either to defend Israeli policies in the light of your objections, or for that matter to disassociate themselves from them, for your convenience. 

Speaking about Jesus Christ is a good way to fail at JCR. I am not thinking so much of the question: “why did you Jews not accept Jesus as the Messiah?” I assume we can all see how, within the Jewish framing of things, Jesus does not figure. Jews did not “reject” Jesus any more than Christians have “rejected” Muhammad, or Baha’ullah, or Joseph Smith. I am thinking of what really prompted my title today. In the (otherwise) excellent book edited by Rabbi Tony Bayfield, Deep Calls to Deep, I have a chapter seeking to set out the orthodox creedal position on Jesus Christ - the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity - in ways that made sense to Jews. I drew heavily on John Zizioulas’ work, Being as Communion. I said that rather than think of the classical creeds as the Hellenisation of Christianity, they can be thought of as the biblicisation of Hellenism, i.e. bringing Hebraic ideas right into the heart of Hellenistic religion. The core conviction being: whereas in Hellenism, Gd, or the Most Real, is always distant from us, and our point of contact can only be indirect, via emanation after emanation, the Biblical understanding, shared by Jews and Christians, is that when one meets with Gd, it really is Gd one meets, Gd as Gd is Gd. Gd is not distant, but with us as-it-were as Agent. Christians and Jews, then, disagree about where one meets with Gd most centrally (at Sinai or at Calvary), but still share more in common than is usually thought. I drew secondarily on the work of Daniel Boyarin, who insisted that in some strands of Second Temple Judaism, a heavenly messiah was already thinkable, as found in some interpretations of the Son of Man in Daniel. I did not win any of my Jewish readers round, at all. Maybe it was because of the difficulty of comparing Christian belief with Jewish “belief” at all. Maybe it was the Boyarin reference, where I was giving two much credibility to fringe or heretical Jewish texts. I don’t know. 

Much more could be said. For rabbinic Jews, the Pharisees are the forerunners of the rabbis, and are heroes, and liberal reformers. To criticise any view as “Pharisaical” will win you no friends. Jews also tend to reject any teaching of “original sin” and of “salvation”, if “salvation” is taken to mean rescue from damnation. But, over and above all such details, Jews are very much aware of the power-imbalance in the relationship. There are well over a billion Christians in the world, under 20 million Jews. About half this nation identifies as Christian, about 0.5% as Jewish. And Christians have, let me put this delicately, played to their numerical strength, in persecuting Jews, and not least in setting up false “disputations” where the Jew was always bound to lose to the Christian. 

But I leave you not on that note, but on this one. My sense is that JCR are bound to fail, if by success we imagine a state of being where each fully understands the other. I can describe my involvement only as an oscillation, where I move from thinking “we are at heart the same”, to “no, we are very different”, and back again. Cardinal Kasper has called Judaism “as a sacrament of every otherness”. [Address on the 37th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate, 2002] As such, it is a mystery we can never wholly understand. I say, with my best Hebrew, Amen.