After my recent post "A Rabbi Named Jesus," I had the pleasure of e-mailing back and forth with fellow blogger Doug, AKA Unkosher Jesus. In spite of his unorthodox moniker, Doug turns out to be a really cool guy. Here are some things you may not know about Unkosher Jesus:-He's a Catholic guy who married a Jewish gal
-He's into interfaith
-He's into Obama
-He's an excellent writer
-He's a new father (mazal tov!)
-He's kinda like the Catholic version of me, except better researched and cooler-headed.
Doug thinks about Jesus the Jew a lot - and how can he not? Jesus is a big part of Doug, but as an interfaith partner, Judaism is now part of his life as well. Anyways, Doug liked my Jesus post and asked me permission to link to it in a response post on his blog. His post was very gracious and will hopefully be the start of a nice interfaith "diablog" between our two websites.
In Doug's response, he describes how he had trouble talking openly about Jesus with a group of interfaith couples at his JCC. Along the same lines, it hasn't always been easy for him to talk about Jesus with his spouse. I am disappointed in this, if not overly surprised. For whatever reason - and we can discuss these reasons in the comments - many Jews have a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything Jesus-related. This is very unfortunate. As Doug so eloquently puts it,
it is a source of sadness and frustration for me that Jesus serves as a confounding rather than a unifying figure for Jews and Christians.
But all is apparently not lost. After all, Doug and I have arrived at similar ideas about Jesus the Jew, despite coming from theological traditions that are diametrically opposed. I maintain, as I did in the original post, that we Jews have much to learn from Jesus the Rabbi. As I have much to learn from Doug! I'll post a little more about this later, but for now I'd like to encourage you to check out his blog entries yourself and enjoy yourself a little interfaith.
FOR FURTHER REFERENCE
Chrismukkah.com
Arthur Blecher, the Unorthodox Rabbi
Doug on "What kind of Catholic am I?"
Doug on Pope Benedict's diss to interfaith dialogue
Phil Sumpter's OT Theology blog
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2 comments:
Having been raised in a (very mildly) Christian home and having studied Christianity both before and after becoming a Jew, I think I may know a little about this subject.
Basically, the story is that many gentiles (me included) who heard about Torah were very impressed. Some converted and became Jews, like me. But that's really hard. Some accepted the Noahide commandments. That's easier, but embarrassing. It means admitting that Jews are really superior but it's just too hard for you to become one. A lot of gentiles had another idea - why not claim that God cancelled the Torah and gave a new, easier one along the lines of the Noahide laws?? That became a very hot idea and that's where Christianity and Islam come from. Not too honest, not too believable, but who cares, just have faith.
If you pare away everything that was most likely added in by his coterie and that of later comers, then most everything Jesus said was not far off from that written of the schools of Shammai and especially Hillel. It's not far off from basic foundational chasidism. The problem is what happened afterward.
Given the human ability to hold on to hate and anger for generations, I won't hold my breath on any interfaith dialogue really getting going. Too many Jews were killed by Christians for anyone to get past it easily.
More than that, Christianity is entirely based on the idea of the messiah already having come, and normative rabbinic Judaism the idea that the messiah hasn't come yet. That alone will keep the two sides at bay from each other, but for those Christians who believe in a transcendental concept of messiahship, or don't believe Jesus was or are agnostic on it but above all else believe G-d is one and only and preeminent beyond all else, Judaism has a lot to offer.
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