Jews and Christians Together. A. Christian van Gorder

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СКАЧАТЬ the street. There was legitimate panic/controversy when a mosque-lookin’ building was constructed near the town that turned out to be the Catholics, though that was really just as bad.”19

      Conservative Christians often assume that all other religions besides their own are false. Israel, as presented in the Bible, is seen as a hard-hearted and stiff-necked tribal people that has already rejected Christ and chosen, instead, a stern, ritualistic legalism. Christians must evangelize Jews because, if Jews do not accept Jesus as their Messiah, they will burn forever in an eternal hellfire for rejecting God’s gift of salvation. In many conservative Christian congregations, the idea of interfaith dialogue is of little concern. Students from such churches can live their entire lives without ever hearing a voice from another religious tradition or a citation from the scriptures of another faith. It is far more common for Christians in Central Texas to come from religious backgrounds where the evangelism and conversion of Jews, and not appreciation of them, is the first concern of Jewish-Christian interactions. In fairness, this intent comes from their sincere convictions, learned from an early age, that the religious traditions of others are insufficient, and, because of that, the loving thing is to seek their conversion.

      Because of this, simply teaching about Judaism as a broad religious category objectively fails to address harmful preconceptions rooted in understandings of the Bible. Before non-Jews are presented with neutral “facts” about a historically frozen Judaism, one should ask whether they are interested only in such details in order to increase evangelistic effectiveness or whether there is a hope to partner with others in a constructive dialogue rooted in progressive mutual respect.

      For many North American Jews, the goals of interfaith dialogue are quite basic: appreciating key similarities and differences. Even such a straightforward objective, however, can go far toward reducing prejudices among those who have never seen interfaith dialogue in their own lives or in the lives of their churches. Conservative Christians who begin with negative preconceptions about the inferiority of the faiths of others can be nudged towards the idea that entering dialogue with those of other faiths serves, at the very least, to deepen their own self-understanding and even lead them into a stronger embrace of their own faith. In an ideal world, the goals expressed by Rosanne Catalano and David Fox Sandmel could become a strong incentive for interreligious engagement: “Jews become stronger Jews and Christians become stronger Christians; through the encounter with the ‘other’ we come to know ourselves better.”20

      Such a sentiment assumes a greater potential for Jewish-Christian engagement than can be realized in a few hours of one semester during a class for twenty students in Central Texas. How do such ideals relate to those Christians who have never contacted anyone who represents any kind of a lived and actual Jewish perspective? A disquieting sense of smug isolation leads to a sense of religiously relational segregation. History is filled with the rationale for religious ghettos and cultural quarantines that result in the strengthening and elevation of myopic bigotry. The traditional and fear-motivated background of some individuals, convinced that they alone know the truth about God Almighty, makes their desired sense of isolation a sought-for reality to be securely reinforced in order to keep the faith, instead of opening it up to challenge.

      Anyone can see, in the most graphic and hellish of all examples, that anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany was directly related to fostering among non-Jews a perception of Jewish otherness and strangeness. While the Jews of Nazi Germany were forbidden to work or to marry non-Jews, there is little need for such restrictions where there are no Jews to be found. Central Texas, for example, is largely a Juden-Frei (a Nazi term to mean “free of Jews”) zone. While the Nazis of Germany worked hard to create the conditions for the ghettoization of the Jews in order to foster Nazism’s brutal power and its passionate nationalism, the modern context of many socially isolated individuals across North America presents no barriers to the creation of a sense of desired exclusion or unchallenged condescension or even revulsion towards “the other.” Sadly, false assumptions, rooted in strict exclusivist religious convictions of superiority, are rarely threatened or challenged by the seeking out of direct personal interactions with people of other faiths.

      A lack of neighbor-to-neighbor interactions means that Jews are often nothing more than one-dimensional caricatures in the minds of those conservative Christians who are certain that they alone know the truth about God. Because such people may not actually know any flesh-and-blood Jewish people, there is little motivation to empathize with the idea of a Judaism that thrives and gives deep meaning to the lives of its adherents.

      At the same time, many already feel that they have learned all that they will ever need to know about Judaism through the clearly delineated explanations of the New Testament bestowed upon them by their trusted religious authorities. The evidence in the Bible is there for all to see. The New Testament shows—without doubt—that Jews are eternally lost, separated from God, and need to accept Jesus as the only possible and long-foretold Jewish Messiah. For some students, four hours in a world-religions survey that introduces them to contemporary Judaism might be all that keeps them from careening into adulthood free from any sense that such a metanarrative might be false. A few remarks from a rabbi are all that they will have to counter the far more pervasive church-based approach to a static and historic Judaism that has rejected Christ, which may be all they hear for the rest of their lives.

      Motivations for Writing

      A basic question for interfaith discussions is whether Christianity is inherently anti-Jewish. Peter A. Pettit claims that a “systematic denigration of Judaism in favor of Christianity became standard in Christian teaching.”21 In fact, the very founding of Christianity, as it gradually emerged from Judaism, was fundamentally a critique of Judaism.

      Jon Levenson notes that a neutral observer would assume that Christianity and Judaism share “a basis for good relations,” which is rarely actualized because “Christianity, for the most part, has viewed itself as the fulfillment of Judaism, the true and enduring Judaism as it were.”22 While early Christians came to think that Christianity had superseded Judaism, making it of no value, some virulently anti-Semitic Christians later came to see Jews as a community in league with the pernicious deceptions of the devil.

      Our hope in writing this book is to encourage learners, students, congregants, teachers, priests, pastors, rabbis, cantors, and people of goodwill to advance mutual respect between Jews and Christians. In many ways, this book can only begin to scratch the surface of achieving such an objective. The ten topics that have been selected are chosen because they might serve as possible starting-points for further discussions between Jews and Christians. The Hebrew word for “friend”—yedid (ידיד)—has at the core of its meaning the idea of extending a hand of welcome and embrace to another. How can we reach out across barriers of misunderstanding? Why is this imperative? This book’s conclusion explores how discussions between Jews and Christians can overcome what some see as intractable differences along creedal lines by focusing on fostering social justice partnerships. This is a straightforward starting point, even if all other appeals or approaches fail, because both faiths are deeply committed to “mending the world.” For both traditions, peace and justice in this world are intimately linked with right worship of a Holy God, and the failure to confront the various evils of a world in rebellion against the Divine is a distorted expression of faith that is unable to bring right reverence and appropriate honor to God.

      Jewish-Christian dialogue, of course, has always been in a state of constant flux throughout two millennia. On the positive side, there have been many positive developments over time that have promoted mutual appreciation and genuine respect. A clear example of this includes fresh considerations by both Jews and Christians about the issues surrounding interfaith marriages.23 Hanspeter Heinz is correct that, within the past forty years, Jewish-Christian relations “have become stable enough” to withstand new “burdens and stumbling blocks.”24 In the last century, the scarring and deep trauma of the Holocaust branded an entire generation. Even the events of history, however, play a fresh role in the ways that adherents of the two faiths relate to each other.

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