Jews and Christians Together. A. Christian van Gorder
starting point because Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s goal—to help individuals to see Judaism as a “religious civilization and not a religion exclusively”27—puts the spotlight on deep-seated issues at the heart of North American Jewish identity. Next, we turn to Reform Judaism, a historical movement that began in Germany (ca. 1810) and instructs modern Jews to accept that the Prophets and their views on social justice are just as important as the divinely inspired Torah. When one student learned that a Reform congregation tends to be more liberal than a conservative one, that student chose to attend the Reform service because “I transposed my experience of liberal verses (sic) conservative churches and assumed that services would be shorter, and people would pay less attention to me at the Reform instead of the Conservative congregation.”28
Finally, I (Fuller) introduce dimensions of Orthodox and Conservative approaches to Judaism. In our classes, I introduce myself as a representative of Conservative Judaism in relation to my other sympathies towards other forms of North American Judaism. I explain how the Conservative movement began as an attempt to bridge the extremes of a vigorous Reform movement in Europe and North America with the seeming intractability of Orthodoxy. We also introduce Hasidism because many students have heard about this movement through books, movies, and scattered snippets of popular culture. Christians often seem to find the stories of Hasidic teachers who call for an intimate relationship with God in line with their own views on how faith is all about “knowing God,” an idea that many assume is absent in other forms of Judaism. We will discuss the ways that we present these various traditions in greater detail in Chapter 7.
In the End is the Beginning
Jacob Neusner noted that the challenge devotional Judaism provides to some Christians is both an inward and an outward dimension: “Christians have typically preferred to dismiss Judaism rather than ask why their own religion has not developed in the same way as others.”29 Even though the road toward respectful Jewish-Christian dialogue seems long, the need to improve such relations is obvious, making the task of removing barriers along the way well worth the effort.
Each reader comes to this book with their own experiences, or lack thereof, in Jewish-Christian interactions. Because the goal of education is always more education, our effort in beneficial Jewish and Christian interactions is an incomplete work in progress. It is hard to disagree with Rabbi Chaim Schertz’s (Harrisburg, PA) warning from Jewish tradition that “all beginnings are difficult.” Our prayer in this effort is a familiar one: “May the words of our mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing before Thee—the Lord our Rock and our Redeemer.”
Chapter Two
Gods of Two Mountaintops
The believer asks no questions while no answer can satisfy the unbeliever.
—Yiddish Proverb
Mountains cannot meet, but men can meet.
—Yiddish Proverb
Mount Sinai and Mount Calvary
For Christians, differing theological assumptions affect how they view the main ideas of modern Judaism. One student commented on a statement I (Fuller) made in class about God’s mysterious nature by saying: “He believed God makes mistakes. I found that statement rather off-putting. The two ideas do not fit together.”30 The sum of my one-hour lecture was boiled down into the notion that I saw God rife with flaws, citing the decision to destroy the world during the flood, and later Sodom and Gomorrah. I have no way of knowing how that student came to that conclusion.
For some, Judaism and Christianity are two sides of the same coin. One student wrote: “When I went to the temples of other religions, I felt like I would be sinning if I went there. Here [at the synagogue], it was a bizarre feeling of connection that I cannot describe. Their God was my God, our God.”31 Another student explained: “Even though the temple felt like a library, and the scriptures that they read from is the Old Testament, but still, they see God the same way that we do.”32 This willingness to focus on common ground provides a sturdy starting point for further respectful Jewish-Christian interactions.
The notion that God is something of a schizophrenic combination of Old Testament justice and New Testament grace has been a common refrain that is often heard in contentious Jewish-Christian debates. For two millennia, Jews and Christians have battled over this contested ground while invariably concluding that followers of both faiths worshipped the same God (in contrast to Wotan, Vishnu, and others). Furthermore, no one can deny that Christianity springs from its parent religion, (pre-rabbinic or biblical) Judaism, a fact that implies a clear interrelationship. Theological tensions between these religions have been frequent, but Christians have consistently agreed with Judaism that there is only one God.
In the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire, the proctor of an elite English school muses that Jews are different from Christians because they worship a “different god from a different mountaintop.” The “God of Mount Sinai” is a vindictive God who hides from individuals while the compassionate “God of Mount Calvary” extends mercy and love. This assumption advances the notion that, even if Christians and Jews worship the same God, the Jewish worship of God is somehow deficient. The God of biblical Judaism, according to this narrative, is a forbidding judge while Jesus is a loving intermediary standing between the wrath of a volatile God and the wretched sinfulness of humanity. Christianity, it is claimed, offers the promise of an intimate relationship with a merciful, loving God while the Jewish path of ritual and formalism offers no such promise. The God of Mount Sinai demands fidelity to the strict law of Moses while the God of Mount Calvary can offer a free pass for eternal forgiveness through Jesus.
This “Two-Mountain Theology” held by some Christians as they define “the Jew” is rooted in negative assumptions about the ultimately spiritual bankruptcy of Judaism. The harsh “Old Testament” ethics of Mount Sinai are caricatured by the stern commands of YHWH and contrasted with the inclusive and embracing love of God in Christ. For some, the demanding God revealed on Mount Sinai is portrayed as a vindictive judge—a celestial terrorist—who calls for individuals to be stoned to death for being gay or for disobeying their parents. One student at Messiah College wrote, “In the past I have advocated for capital punishment and many other Old Testament style beliefs. I now question the legitimacy of this to a New Testament Christian who is taught mercy and commanded to turn the other cheek.”33 This student has driven a wedge between the Old Testament God, who demands harsh justice, and the New Testament Christ, who is forgiving. This view of a volatile and unpredictable God offers one way to explain the relation between the Old and New covenants while also leading conservative Christians to view Judaism as an incomplete, insufficient pathway to eternal life.
Jewish and Atheist?
Students have found it hard to grasp that there are some Jews who deny the existence of God and yet remain as members in good standing within the larger faith tradition. One student pondered “the idea that a Jew could be an atheist and still be Jewish was a little perplexing.”34 For most conservative Christians, such a concept is unfathomable because faith is seen as connected to correct doctrine and a commonly agreed upon litany of theological assertions. At the same time, the fact that an individual can be both Jewish and atheist is an insight that can help some Christians appreciate that being Jewish is very different from their own views when it comes to the need to affirm specific doctrines. (The question of how the “death of God” movement relates to Judaism is beyond the scope of this book. Indeed, this movement, rooted in Christian scholarship, is based on the ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.)35
Students are sometimes confused at the large number of “secular Jews” (hilonim [חלונים]) they encounter in our shared North American cultural landscape. “Secular Jews” refers to individuals who identify themselves as Jewish (and are accepted by other Jews) but may never set foot in a synagogue. Some “secular Jews” either openly question God or claim that, after the Holocaust, they are—implicitly or overtly—atheists. These same individuals may also be active in Jewish organizations without being “religious.” To further complicate issues for those who are looking for simplistic characterizations, there are some synagogues that describe themselves as “humanistic