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.
A Multivalent Judaism
It is vital to emphasize to Christians learning about Judaism that there has never been one distinct form of Judaism. Jewish communities are dramatically diverse and have thrived in a wide variety of places as remote as Yunnan, China; Bukhara, Uzbekistan; and in Alexandria, Egypt.25 There are Black Jews, Yemeni Jews, Asian Jews, and Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, to name just a few. Judaism cannot be limited to a narrow frame of reference that includes only the familiar streets and neighborhoods of Israel or North America.
When we teach together, we talk about our own specific starting points to illustrate the inherent diversity that is found within each faith. We also start by stressing at the outset the deep and historic roots that Judaism has within the North American story. There were, for example, strong Jewish communities in the original United States colonies. John Rousmaniere claims that, at the time of the American Revolution, there were about one thousand Jews living throughout the colonies.26 One of the earliest Jewish communities was founded in Newport, Rhode Island in 1658. By 1763, Newport Jews had built a stunningly attractive synagogue in support of that community. Substantial numbers of Jews, however, did not come to the New World until the end of the nineteenth century when waves of persecution forced the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia to flee to cities such as New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia, Galveston, Toronto, and Montreal. Today, more than six million Jews live throughout Canada and the United States. We also introduce students to the terms Ashkenazim (Jews originating from Central Europe) and Sephardim (Jews originating from the Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean shores) to help students see how interculturality is another vital point of complexity within the myriad dimensions of the modern Jewish world.
Since the “Survey of the World’s Religions” course is tasked with introducing many different faiths, there are only four class sessions allocated in this overview to cover the vast breadth of Judaism. Our first objective is to introduce students to the four major branches of North American Judaism.
We begin our survey