Jews and Christians Together. A. Christian van Gorder
Undergrads have told me that I am the first rabbi—or sometimes even the first Jewish person—that they have ever met. This explains why some of their questions seem to be based on stereotypes about Jews and Judaism. A student told me: “No offense, but when I think “Jewish”, I think “Fiddler on the Roof” and I think that that’s what Jews should look like and you don’t look like that.”6 Another student explained, “I was taken aback when I met you. I had the foreknowledge that the speaker for our class was from a traditional background and I had a preconceived idea of what he should look like. I imagined you would be a heavy-set long-bearded man in a dark suit with thick, black-rimmed glasses to complete the ensemble.”7
After I came to a class one student wrote a response to her visit to our synagogue: “It was neat to see that the temple was not a museum and that all the people who went there were normal people. I might have seen any of them around Waco and not even taken a second glance.”8 Waco is a growing community of about 240,000 with a Jewish population of no more than 400 individuals, many of whom do not attend either of the two synagogues (one is Conservative while the other is a Reform congregation) on a regular basis. Central Texas Jews have a long history of dealing with both well-meaning and myopic neighbors who often try to evangelize them into the Christian faith. In response, most at-large public programs co-sponsored by the two congregations tend to focus on education about the Holocaust (Shoah).
“The rabbi is basically half a Christian . . .”
What are the various views held by Christians about Judaism? Andrew White thinks that there are three main ways that Christians have approached Judaism: “replacement theology, remnant theology, and recognition theology.”9 The first view, “replacement theology,” is widespread among Evangelicals, who often call this view “supersessionism.” Christianity has superseded Judaism, a religion that is irrelevant, ineffective, misleading, and, therefore, must be replaced. For some conservative Christians, supersessionism is the logical way to view Judaism. This is a central “elephant in the room” in Jewish and Evangelical interactions.
Jewish-Christian theological dialogue best begins with a few basic questions: What are the goals of our conversations? How should our objectives be articulated? How should discussions about Israel proceed? How do religious and political loyalties affect each other in discussions? What is the relationship between respectful learning and the need to promote mutual respect? How should Jewish presentations of faith proceed in contexts where some Christians openly assume that Judaism is deficient, and that Jews must become Christians in order to please God?
Talking about Judaism is a challenge for some Bible Belt students who have not been raised to equate being Jewish with being an average North American and have no personal frame of reference about Judaism. For some, Jews exist only in the ancient pages of the Bible and they have scant knowledge of rabbinic and modern Judaism. One student wrote, “I knew from my Sunday School that the Jews were the chosen people and that they did not eat hot dogs, but that was about it.”10 “Jew”, for this student, was a historical category understood through the filter of their Christian worldview assumptions. Another student perceptively wrote, “I had trouble understanding the rabbi because I feel like I view everything from a Christian perspective.”11 Still another explained that “Rabbi Fuller is basically half-a-Christian because he believes in half of the Bible.”12
For some conservative Christians, Judaism is reduced to the historically frozen religiosity of the Pharisees who lived during the time of Jesus. One student who visited the synagogue mused, “I felt like I was travelling back in time to the Old Testament. I felt like I got to see my roots. It was so cool.”13 Meeting Jews, in this view, is like meeting ancient religious dinosaurs. When one student visited the synagogue, they realized that “Jews truly value Old Testament culture and practices instead of chasing after modern advances and conveniences.”14 It can be that simple for those who have spent their entire lives hearing about “Jews” in their Sunday school classes. Another student wrote, “I am so accustomed to seeing Christians devoting themselves to worship, prayer, and teaching, and it was surprising to see people from another religion being so devout. This really opened my eyes and spurred my inner questioning about why other people believe as they do.”15 Students are sometimes surprised to discover genuine piety within the synagogue, perhaps based on a superficial reading of the Gospels in which “the Jews” are sometimes presented as a hypocritical foil to the heroic role of Jesus as he confronts formalistic and sanctimonious religiosity.
Christians often learn about the general category of “Judaism” through their church and Sunday school classes, in which biblical-era typecasts have been the unquestioned norm. It has even been assumed that North American Jews still sacrifice animals in their neighborhood temples and dream of one day restoring sacrifices at the temple of Jerusalem so that countless gallons of sheep’s blood can soothe the wrath of God. Some repeat the claim of televangelist Pat Robertson that Jews somewhere are secretly breeding red heifers so that they can be sacrificed in Jerusalem’s soon-to-be-rebuilt temple. One student wrote, “Judaism was about the same today as it was during the times of the Bible, minus the Temple.”16
Such a misguided starting point will stubbornly remain if conservative Christian teachers and pastors continue presenting Judaism as an ancient preface to the truths of Christianity. One of the key interpreters of Judaism to conservative Protestant Christians in North American churches is the publisher David C. Cook via a host of Sunday school curricula that they publish which underscore the ancient biblical-era nature of Jews and Judaism. In one example, one lesson taught that “The Jews continued to bring trumped up charges against Jesus.” Another widely used Sunday school curriculum publisher, Gospel Light, described Pontius Pilate as a “mere pawn for the Jewish community’s animosity toward Jesus.”17 Christians who claim to have no tolerance for anti-Semitic views should recognize that such lessons foster negative views about Jews through caricatures of a people locked forever into a distant past.
Many non-Jews think of Judaism as an exotic religion, remote from their lives. One student, after visiting a Shabbat service, observed, “It was like stepping into a different world. It was a very new and wonderful experience.”18 When people assume everything is different about Judaism it is a challenge to help them gain a more accurate view. Some students have admitted to me that they’ve yet to meet a real live flesh-and-blood Jew. In some parts of North America, such an experience is almost inconceivable, but it is common in many rural mono-religious towns and villages in central Texas. One student claimed, “In my Erath County hometown our idea of a different religion was the Methodists down 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