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Coming to Terms with Christianity

By Assaf Sagiv




 
The intensity of Judaism’s traditional antagonism toward Christianity cannot be overstated. Throughout their history, Jews have preferred torture, death, and even mass suicide to forced conversion to the Christian faith. This enmity toward Christianity even found its way into Jewish liturgy: Recited by observant Jews three times a day, Birkat Haminim, “the Blessing Against the Heretics,” was originally written as a prayer for the downfall of Christians and all apostates. Though the blessing has been revised over time—primarily out of fear of non-Jewish reprisal—its spirit of rage has outlived any textual modification.
Jewish acrimony toward Christianity was not solely a reaction to the persecution suffered by the Jewish people under Christian rule, however. It also has a lot to do with the fact that, almost from its inception, the Church claimed to be Judaism’s replacement, the new (and universal) “Israel of the spirit” that superseded the old “Israel of the flesh.” The Israeli philosopher and Orthodox Jew Yeshayahu Leibowitz, known for his sharp tongue and blunt style, repeatedly stressed this point in his writings. “Christianity… is nothing but the denial of the right of Judaism to exist,” he maintained. “The relationship of Christianity to Judaism is unlike that of other religions or faiths, whether pagan or Islamic, which deny the Torah of Israel and would nullify it. Christianity does neither, but claims that it is Judaism and there is no Judaism apart from it.” Therefore, asserted Leibowitz, Judaism feels nothing but “repugnance” toward Christianity: “This feeling is an integral aspect of the living Jewish awareness and is very different from the Jewish attitude to other forms of worship of strange gods, and, needless to say, to Islam.” Alas, lamented Leibowitz sarcastically, the deep-seated Jewish hatred of Christianity “has ceased to exist among those Jews who rejoice at the absolution of Judaism by the Vatican Church Council and attribute importance to its statement concerning the ‘guilt of the Jews.’ [This hatred] is hardly characteristic of modern Reform Judaism in the United States and is completely absent from the secular State of Israel.”
Harsh words, and, for the most part, quite wrong. In contrast to the impression one might get from Leibowitz’s polemics, the truth is that even among Orthodox Jews, notable figures have disapproved of Jewish contempt for Christianity. Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, for instance, a leading posek (“decisor” of Jewish law) of the twentieth century, held an opinion diametrically opposed to that of Leibowitz. Indeed, in a 1965 letter, Weinberg went so far as to condemn halachic rulings that, in his view, conveyed an inappropriate, condescending, or disparaging attitude toward Christians:
In my opinion, it is fitting to put an end to the mutual hatred between the religions. More than Christianity hates Judaism, Judaism hates Christianity. There is a dispute if the Torah forbids stealing from Gentiles, and everyone holds that deceiving a Gentile and breaking a pledge made to him is permitted…. According to Maimonides, if a Jew has sexual relations with a Gentile [woman], the Gentile should be killed, because she has driven the Jew to sin. This law treats the Gentiles the same way it treats animals. [But] Maimonides arrived at this ruling on his own. It has no basis in the Babylonian or Jerusalem Talmud. We must solemnly and formally declare that in our day this does not apply. (Emphasis in original.)
As a Holocaust survivor, Weinberg had experienced firsthand the atrocities of antisemitism. Nevertheless, he courageously rejected expressions of extreme animosity toward Gentiles. Crucially, he did so without forsaking the tradition of his forefathers and without appearing to grovel before the Church. Instead, he understood that Judaism has to purge itself of its accumulated resentment of Christianity—and that it must do so in an earnest and public manner.
Weinberg, a progressive figure by all accounts, may have been prone to modern sensitivities. The fact of the matter, however, is that conciliatory statements about the Christian faith had been voiced by important Jewish leaders in earlier times, when the concepts of tolerance and pluralism were far from common. One of the most prominent of these leaders was Rabbenu Tam. This distinguished twelfth-century rabbi almost lost his life in the anti-Jewish riots that accompanied the Second Crusade, and he witnessed firsthand the destruction of the French Jewish community of Blois at the hands of a bloodthirsty mob. Despite these grim experiences, Rabbenu Tam rejected the claim—whose most renowned exponent was the great theologian Maimonides—that Christianity is a form of idolatry. In accordance with this stance, he did not forbid Jews to form business relationships with Christians. Other Jewish decisors were concerned lest a Gentile invoke the name of his god when entering into a contract, and the Jewish partner would thus be guilty of participating in an idolatrous act. Rabbenu Tam, by contrast, ruled that a Christian oath is not problematic, because “in the present times, they all take oaths in the name of their saints, but do not view them as deities. Although they mention God’s name along with the others, they have a different intention in mind, so that, in any case, their oaths do not involve idolatry, as they too have the Creator in mind.” (Emphasis mine.)
The assertion that the Christians have the “Creator” in mind—i.e., the same God in whom the Jews believe—and that, therefore, a common denominator unites both religions, can also be found in the writings of Rabbi Moshe Ravkash, a leading seventeenth-century posek. In his halachic treatise, Be’er Hagola (“The Well of the Exile”), Ravkash criticized the analogy, popular among Jews of his time, between the biblical Egyptians who afflicted the People of Israel and Europe’s Christians:
The Gentile nations under whom we, the Israelite nation, take refuge, and among whom we are scattered, believe in the creation of the world and in the exodus from Egypt and in the pillars of religion, and they are devoted to the Creator of the heavens and the earth…. Not only is there no prohibition against saving them, but we are even required to pray for their well-being.
Possibly the most favorable Jewish statements on the Christian faith were made by Rabbi Jacob Emden in the eighteenth century. One of the most esteemed Jewish thinkers of his generation, Emden was not content simply to point to those beliefs that Judaism and Christianity held in common. He also extolled Jesus as a great spiritual figure worthy of the Jewish people’s deepest appreciation. Emden believed that Jesus and his disciples never intended to convert the Jews or to abolish the Torah’s commandments. Instead, they took it upon themselves to spread a universal moral code among the nations of the world and to purge humanity of idolatry:
But truly even according to the writers of the Gospels, a Jew is not permitted to leave his Torah…. We see clearly here that the Nazarene and his Apostles did not wish to destroy the Torah from Israel, God forbid…. The writers of the Gospels never meant to say that the Nazarene came to abolish Judaism, but only that he came to establish a religion for the Gentiles from that time onward. Nor was it new, but actually ancient; they being the Seven Commandments of the Sons of Noah, which were forgotten. The Apostles of the Nazarene then established them anew. However, those born as Jews, or circumcised as converts to Judaism… are obligated to observe all commandments of the Torah without exception…. It is therefore a habitual saying of mine… that the Nazarene brought about a double kindness in the world. On the one hand, he strengthened the Torah of Moses majestically, as mentioned earlier, and not one of our sages spoke out more emphatically concerning the immutability of the Torah. And on the other hand, he did much good for the Gentiles… by doing away with idolatry and removing the images from their midst. He obligated them with the Seven Commandments so that they should not be as the beasts of the field. He also bestowed upon them ethical ways, and in this respect he was much more stringent with them than the Torah of Moses, as is well-known.
One might take issue with Rabbi Emden’s theological interpretations, but his main argument cannot be discounted. As Emden rightly points out, Christianity instituted a system of beliefs and values that greatly advanced human morality, bringing it closer to the ideal espoused by Judaism. In its own way—and on a much wider scale—Christianity carried on the campaign against paganism that the early Hebraic religion had begun. It fought against the same abominations that the Jewish Bible condemns: ecstatic fertility rites, human sacrifice, and other licentious practices. Moreover, wherever Christianity established itself, it advocated a tradition rooted in Judaism, praising what Nietzsche, the Church’s sworn enemy, called “the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness.”

Indeed, even the harshest Jewish critics of Christianity have been hard put to discredit its enormous cultural and spiritual contribution to the world. Maimonides admitted as much when he said that the Christian faith “paves” the way for the coming of the Messiah, because it will “prepare the whole world to serve God with one accord.” Ultimately, this acknowledgment that Judaism and Christianity (as well as Islam) share the same fundamental goals may permit us to hope that both religions’ mission to improve the world might also hold the key to repairing the damaged relationship between them.
  


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