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Has Jewish Christian dialogue really begun?
Bishop Richard Harries
If we are tempted to be comfortable about Jewish- Christian dialogue, the views of the distinguished American Jewish scholar, Jacob Neusner, come as a salutary shock. For Neusner believes that much of what passes for dialogue is simply a sham, what he calls "juxtaposed monologues" and that a true encounter has not yet begun. Neusner has set out this harsh thesis in a number of his many publications, most recently in Telling Tales (Westminster/ John Knox Press, London, 1993).
Neusner argues first of all that the Judaism with which Christianity has been in dialogue is for the most part an invention of Christianity itself for its own purposes. In particular Christianity has invented a legalistic Judaism, a religion of the letter rather than the spirit, and this has been done in large measure to serve Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda. Protestant polemic against Judaism helped reinforce the attack on what was conceived of as a legalistic Roman Catholicism.
Whilst we may have gone beyond this in the modern dialogue, we suffer, according to Neusner, from a fault that is hardly less serious. We are unwilling to face the fundamental differences between the two religions. We look for as much common ground as possible, seek premature rapprochements and gloss over the way the two religions are in many respects alien and incompatible.
For example a number of Jews today wish to affirm Jesus the human being as a good Jew. Christians nod appreciatively. Yet the fact is that historically the Church has preached Jesus as the incarnate Son of God. So, "Either Judaism addresses Jesus Christ God incarnate (or equivalently critical formulations of Christian theology) or it fails to address Christianity at all."
From the Christian side, in order to make a place for Judaism within Christian theology, a number of Christians these days put forward the idea of two covenants. But Judaism claims to be the true Israel and historically has simply ignored Christianity, treating it theologically as an insignificant perversion.
Neusner argues that for any real dialogue to take place we have to face up to these differences and not to avert our gaze from them.
Martin Buber's Attitude
Martin Buber wrote that he lived not far from the city of Worms and that he walked about the Cathedral "with consumate joy, gazing at it." In contrast the Jewish cemetery consisted of crooked, cracked, shapeless, random stones. Yet: "I have stood there, have been united with the dust and through it with the Patriarchs. That is a memory of the transaction with God which is given to all Jews. From this the perfection of the Christian House of God cannot separate me; there is nothing that can separate me from the sacred history of Israel."
Neusner is critical of this positive attitude towards Christianity. He too has walked about Worms admiring the architecture of the cathedrals. But he could not forget how the Christians of Worms turned their backs on the Jewish community when in 1934 it celebrated its 900th anniversary, or how the townspeople stood idly by and watched the mediaeval Rashi Synagogue burn down in November 1938.
"I walked round the massive, ponderous church buildings with a sense of anything but "consumate joy". In such moments, the conception of a dual covenant appears more implausible than merely heretical." (p.103)
Neusner believes that genuine and honest meeting with the other can only begin when "the two religions will recognise the simple fact: they really are totally alien to one another." (p.104). And he is honest about his own feelings in the matter. "While some of my best friends are Christians, seeing matters as a whole, confessedly, I do find it difficult to love Christianity." (p.97)
The Basis of Genuine Dialogue
What then does Neusner suggest should be the basis of the genuine dialogue he recommends? First, it should involve the feelings as well as the intellect. It is not simply a matter of finding beliefs in common but experiencing that in the other religion which moves us. True dialogue moves us to empathise with the other, rather than unnecessarily persuading us to assent to its doctrines. This can happen, thinks Neusner, by finding resources within ones own religious tradition which as it were form a point of entry into the other, or provide an analogy for understanding some aspect of the other's beliefs.
One example he gives is of a Jewish attempt to enter into the Roman Catholic devotion to Mary and her special role as an intercessor before God. He looks at the Rabbinic reading of the Book of Lamentations, in the work Lamentations Rabbah. This concerns God contemplating destroying the Temple and sending the Israelites into exile in Babylon. Abraham pleads with God not to do this, so do Isaac, Jacob and Moses, all to no avail. Then "Rachel, our mother, leapt to the fray" and pointed out to God that she had waited for Jacob for seven years and that after those seven years when the time came for her wedding, her sister took her place in bed. But having compassion for her sister, Rachel crawled under the bed on which Jacob was lying with her sister and "I made all the replies so that he would not discern the voice of my sister. I paid my sister only kindness, and I was not jealous of her, and I did not allow her to be ashamed, and I am a mere mortal, dust and ashes... But you are the King, living and enduring and merciful. How come then that you are jealous of idolatry which is nothing, and so have sent my children into exile"... Forthwith the mercy of the Holy One, blessed be he, welled up, and he said: "For Rachel I am going to bring the Israelites back to their land." This story, and it is stories above all that Neusner thinks are important in helping us to feel with another religion, enables him to grasp something of the place of Mary in Roman Catholic faith.
Neusner develops a similar theme in relation to the Christian doctrine that God has become a human being. Working from the belief that God has made man in his own image, he sees in the Biblical picture of God divine feeling, divine pathos, divine passion which, he thinks, make it possible for a Jew to understand how Christians can believe that God has come to share the attributes of a human being.
From the other side, he believes that Christians can start from their understanding of Christ and the Body of Christ to enter into what Jews mean by Israel, so that when the suffering servant passage in Isaiah 53 is quoted Christians will come to understand that "there is scarcely a Jew in the world who reads these words without understanding, beyond all doubt, that when Isaiah spoke he told us about the Holocaust." (p.146)
In the Light of Experience
I believe that much of what Neusner says needs saying. But in my experience those engaged in responsible dialogue have always taken seriously the differences between the two religions as well as the large area of common ground. For example, the document affirmed by the 1988 Anglican Lambeth Conference, Jews, Muslims and Christians: the Way of Dialogue, said clearly that dialogue involved three things, understanding, affirmation and sharing. This sharing was a sharing of differences. It was quite explicitly stated that genuine dialogue means bringing to the encounter our most deeply held convictions even when they are very different from those of the partner in the dialogue. Dialogue does not mean obliterating differences as a precondition. On the contrary it means bringing those differences into a relationship of mutual respect and trust.
With Neusner's emphasis upon the affections as well as the intellect, I think we would all be in sympathy. In order to even begin to understand something of Judaism there must be aspects of it which move me. But I have two questions here.
The first is a fundamental one which is perhaps unanswerable. How do we ever know whether we have truly understood another person's point of view or really begun to feel something of what they feel? This point came home to me particularly strongly in his interesting explication of Rachel and the parallel he saw in her to Mary. For Mary in Christian devotion is meek and submissive: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word." We picture her kneeling with a serene gentleness as in a Siennese painting. Her role as an intercessor is derived solely from this total capacity to be responsive to the divine purpose for her; it is this that makes her and keeps her close to God. The picture of Rachel in the Lamentations Rabba is an arresting one, from which Christians have much to learn. The tradition in Judaism of people being willing to argue with God, of being bold enough to bring their own moral standards into the dialogue and to hold God to them, as Rachel does, is a crucial moral insight. Christianity, with its taken for granted assumption of unquestioning obedience needs to take this on board. Nevertheless I have to say that if Rachel is Neusner's understanding of Mary, it is not the understanding of Mary that prevails in Christian consciousness. He has understood something, he has been moved by something important, but I doubt whether it takes him very far into the Christian heart.
The Challenge of Dialogue
This leads on to my second point. In the Lambeth document already referred to, in the section on understanding, we stressed that understanding meant allowing another religion to define themselves in their own terms. It means putting aside our own stereotypes and trying to see with their eyes. Now of course we can initially only do that within the terms of our own tradition. But I suspect it means going even further than Neusner suggests. When someone sets out what Judaism means to them, I can sometimes begin to feel the spiritual excitement, and appeal and strength of this in its own terms. I do not think I need to stay entirely within Christian categories in order to do this. The categories are I suspect more to do with the general religious understanding, informed of course by my own Christian perspective, but not totally constricted by it.
In reading Jonathan Sacks, (Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue U.K.), I can feel something of the force of a renewed traditionalism. In reading Jonathan Romain, (a rabbi of The Reform Synagogues of Great Britain), I can feel something of the appeal of a Judaism which develops and seeks to respond to contemporary challenges in a creative way. Both have something persuasive about them. And here, I think, we come near to the heart of the challenge of any religious dialogue. Truly to understand is already to be half persuaded. One's mind and heart have gone out and seen the world through the eyes of the other. It is a dangerous and vulnerable position to be in, which is why we do not like it. The Jewish person tells his or her story and for a moment we see life like that. The Christian tells his or her story and the same applies. It is dangerous because, if we are half persuaded, we could be fully persuaded and then where would we be. Genuine dialogue involves living, as Professor Donald Macinon has written in another context, on the borderlands. It means feeling the incursions from both sides. Because it is an exposed position in which to be, we prefer on the whole to keep at a distance.
Jacob Neusner also underestimates, I believe, the importance of mapping out the common ground. If we are honestly to face our differences, this can only be done in a way that does not lead to a breakdown in relationships, if before that we have found the ground on which we both stand. This is hardly difficult in relation to Judaism and Christianity, despite the fact that both have developed in their different ways. No doubt Neusner is right in saying that some of our attempts to find common ground are premature or facile. They certainly are if this is all that is involved in dialogue. But that common ground is an essential, wonderful and exciting aspect of the relationship
between Jews and Christians and nothing to be ashamed of.
Genuine dialogue involves understanding, trying to see the partner in their terms rather than simply ours; allowing ourselves to be pulled into their view of the world not just intellectually, but as Neusner rightly suggests, with our heart as well. It involves affirmation, celebrating those areas of faith and practice that we have in common. And it involves sharing, bringing into the dialogue our most deeply held convictions even if they are potentially hurtful to the other. Yet here, without in any way underestimating or glossing over the differences, we are right, under God, to look for development which might make the differences themselves look different.
One of the most successful examples of dialogue in recent years has been that between an international commission of Anglican and Roman Catholic theologians, ARCIC. The degree of agreement at the end took the participants by surprise. This agreement was not reached by trying to negotiate away doctrines or compromise on beliefs. It was arrived at by working on old problems with new methods. The issues which split the Christian Church at the time of Reformation, such as the nature of authority, the meaning of the Eucharist and so on all began to look different when Anglicans and Roman Catholics, sharing common methods of historical and Biblical scholarship, discovered a new convergence in the way that they looked at things.
The task in relation to Judaism and Christianity is of course a great deal more difficult. But we should not rule out in advance that as we look again at our history, both the history we share as peoples of God and the history we have lived apart in tragic antagonism (antagonism especially from the Christian side) we can also discover a strange convergence of the spirit.
Richard Harries is Anglican Bishop of Oxford and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the British Council of Christians and Jews. His latest book is entitled Is there a Gospel for the Rich? This article first appeared in Common Ground 1993 No.3 and is reprinted here with kind permission.
