Why Jews Don't Proselytize

European Judaism, 2013

Judaism has long been a religion of particularity and universalism. The prophets of ancient Israel propounded universal messages of civilising influence for all Peoples and Nations. However emphasis on the particularity within Judaism has been prevalent in the modern era leaving it open to criticising voices who accuse religions in general of delusion and danger. How must Judaism and its relationship with other faiths become again a force for repair, for justice and for conscience in this fractured world? How can we get our particularistic religious faiths to be reflective of a world working towards a universal hope for the future?

Religion, State and Society, 1995

What is the Significance of the Jews for Christians?* ALEKSANDR KYRLEZHEV What does Christianity mean to a Christian? It is the path to salvation. This is the religious answer. And an ancient Christian maxim states that there is no salvation outside the Church. If the complete self-revelation of God and the exclusive path of salvation which ensues from it can only be discovered within the Church, then what could be beyond its walls if not a religious twilight, thickening into a hostile and impassable darkness? 'The gods of the pagans are demons', and the God of Moses and the prophets is the very same 'Christian' God, the Word, even though He has not yet 'declared Himself' in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. So the Jews faced clear alternatives: either to become Christian or to be apostates from their own, Jewish, God, who made himself known in Jesus. In the Jewish-Christian age there was no alternative. However, in the course of time, the Jewish-Christian community disappeared without trace. The arrival of Greek Christianity presented the Jews with another choice with regard to the Church: either to remain Jews, or to accept Christianity and thus become apostates from their own Jewish faith. The Pharisee Paul, who became an apostle to the Gentiles, formulated the basic understanding of the place of the Jews (and not only of the Jews) within the Church: 'there is no Greek, no Jew ... but Christ is in all' (Colossians 3:11). Any particular culture is of this earth, but the Kingdom of God comes 'from above', and constitutes a call to overcome everything that is 'only human'. On the boundary between the Jewish-Christian and Greek epochs in the history of the Church, Paul proclaimed harmony: in the highest synthesis all diversions and this-worldly distinctions are overcome, be they distinctions of race, gender, social status or cultural form. In the light of this kind of attitude to the Kingdom of God the Christian attitude towards Jews seems to be quite clear: there are Jews who are apostles of God and His Christ and there are Jews who are apostates and enemies of Christ. (In recent times we have become well acquainted with fully 'hellenised' Jewish Christians, even among church leaders.) It is here, it would seem, that the roots of religious antisemitism among Christians are to be found. It is not Jewish 'flesh and blood' that they are opposed to, but 'the dark powers of this age', among whom, 'objectively', all non-Christians and anti-Christians are to be found. There is an internal logic in this. If social antisemitism is opposed to the 'flesh', then religious, or 'spiritual' antisemitism, opposed to the 'spirit', is no less a force. Behind the Jews' 'normal human exterior' Christians discern a spirit of opposition to God and hence prepare themselves for 'spiritual *This lecture was written in 1993 and published in Yevreiskaya gazeta, no. 1, 1994.

Translation: Romans 11 1 Le, gw ou= n( mh. av pw, sato o` qeo. j to. n lao. n auv tou/ È mh. ge, noito\ kai. ga. r ev gw. VIsrahli, thj eiv mi, ( ev k spe, rmatoj VAbraa, m( fulh/ j Beniami, nÅ Now I say, "Did God reject His people? May it never be! For also I am an Israelite, from the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." 2 ouv k av pw, sato o` qeo. j to. n lao. n auv tou/ o] n proe, gnwÅ h' ouv k oi; date ev n VHli, a| ti, le, gei h` grafh, ( wj ev ntugca, nei tw/ | qew/ | kata. tou/ VIsrah, lÈ God did not reject his people who he knew beforehand. Or do you not know in the story about Elijah? What does the Scripture say, as he intercedes to God against Israel? ev n VHli, a|instrumental ἐνsee BDF pp.117-118. 3 ku, rie( tou. j profh, taj sou av pe, kteinan( ta. qusiasth, ria, sou kate, skayan( kav gw. upelei, fqhn mo, noj kai. zhtou/ sin th. n yuch, n mouÅ "Lord, they killed your prophets, destroyed your altar and I was left alone and they are seeking my soul." 4 av lla. ti, le, gei auv tw/ | o` crhmatismo, jÈ kate, lipon ev mautw/ | eptakiscili, ouj a; ndraj( oi[ tinej ouv k e; kamyan go, nu th/ | Ba, alÅ

New Blackfriars, 1988

This is an excerpt from a draft version of my book A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World (Apocryphile Press, 2023). In this chapter, I argue that Christian antipathy towards Jews and Judaism began with general Jewish indifference to Jesus, which may be why the Jesus Movement turned to preaching to the Gentiles. This created two new problems, however: Gentiles saw little reason to believe in Jesus if the Jews, his own people, did not; and Jews objected to the use of their synagogues for missionary work, as this could get them in trouble with the Romans. Christians developed four specific responses to this "Jewish problem" which they then used against other opposition: unjustified universalism, denial of reality, a persecution complex, and demonization.

Die politische Aufgabe von Religion

Israel as a Jewish State-Religious and Secular Dimensions The Challenges of Jewish Secularization The rise of modern Zionism during the second half of the nineteenth century is essentially connected with the major processes that marked European Jewish life during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The most notable of these are the Enlightenment and its Jewish version and counterpart, the haskalah 1 ; the process of secularization and its intellectual, political and cultural implications 2 ; the struggle for the emancipation and integration of Jews in the societies in which they lived; the emergence of national consciousness and national movements in Europe; and the steady growth of modern racial anti-Semitism. All these phenomena exerted a long-term influence on the Jewish community in general, and on Israeli Jewish society in particular. Indeed, to this day they continue to help shape Jewish identities and to determine the role of religion within these identities. Beginning our discussion with an examination of the relationship between Zionism and the haskalah, it is important to note the difference between the type of haskalah seen in the German-speaking countries in the eighteenth century, on the one hand, and that which developed in the nineteenth century in Eastern Europe, and particularly in Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. German haskalah, prior to the French Revolution, was heavily influenced by the philosophical, political, and ideological discourse of the Enlightenment. Like its nineteenth-century successors, it strived to imbue Jewish existence with a new modern quality consistent with rationalistic humanistic ideals, while providing a framework for adjusting Jewish life in order to promote the integration of the Jews in European societies. Such integration necessarily involved an essential change in the role played in the lives of individual Jews by Jewish identity and religion. Rather than shaping the entire orientation and self-perception of Jews, these elements were now just one of the

Has Religion Preserved the Jews Official history asserts that the Jewish people have existed continuously from the time of Abraham to the present day, thanks to religion, which is believed to have preserved them. However, this categorical assertion is more mythical than historical, and like all national narratives, it sometimes diverges from historical reality. In fact, Judaism has not only preserved Israel—it has also profoundly transformed it. It is essential to remember that Judaism, as we know it today, did not exist in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In antiquity, religions in the modern sense of the term did not exist; rather, there were rituals involving blood sacrifices and offerings presented to deities on altars within temples. These deities were perceived as beings with human-like characteristics. The temple was considered the dwelling place of Yahweh, and sacrifices, along with offerings, were meant to nourish him. Thus, Yahweh was seen as an entity capable of experiencing human emotions such as anger, jealousy, and compassion, as well as attributes such as benevolence, forgiveness, and punishment. It is difficult to imagine a temple from that period without divine statues or imposing altars. The model of the Temple of Jerusalem displayed at the Israel Museum can therefore be misleading. During the Roman era, the temple was far from being a serene place of worship. It more closely resembled a vast, noisy stable filled with sheep and cattle—a veritable slaughterhouse where animals bellowed before being sacrificed. The scent of grilled meat mingled with the fumes of incense, while streams of blood flowed through drainage channels into the Kidron Valley. The house of Yahweh in ancient Judea was thus far removed from the image of a spiritual sanctuary dedicated to an abstract deity.

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 2002

JesusÕ words to the chief priests and elders of the people in Matthew 21:43, ÒTherefore I say to you, the kingdom of God 1 will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it,Ó 2 and similar NT texts 3 have led millions of Christians over the past two millennia to despise and even hate Jews. 4 While anti-Semitism 5 and racism in any form have no place in Christianity, the fear of anti-Semitism must not guide the interpreter in his exegesis of the NT. The text must be allowed to speak on its own terms without predetermined restrictions.