Can Jews and Christians Truly Reconsile?

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP2PNez7rhko10jfJN1OP0Jv1yQnnzfUOEnKZM7cSby7cn9fokVt7N7cQvi1ttMyb_A6qY68Lunud81D7dh_L8-KQ8WKKBFc1hZaJ4zZl1eHHshUPUgfj-PL3z5kX6afjNqXfajRWO2ahV/s0/jews+vs+christian.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; clear: none; color: #f36109; display: inline; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0em 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" border="0" class="lazy-yard" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP2PNez7rhko10jfJN1OP0Jv1yQnnzfUOEnKZM7cSby7cn9fokVt7N7cQvi1ttMyb_A6qY68Lunud81D7dh_L8-KQ8WKKBFc1hZaJ4zZl1eHHshUPUgfj-PL3z5kX6afjNqXfajRWO2ahV/s0/jews+vs+christian.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; transition: opacity 0.35s ease 0s, transform 0.35s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" /></a><br style="background-color: white; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px;" /><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: x-large; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://kristusdankristen.blogspot.com/2016/03/kami-mengutuk-kekristenan-3kali-sehari.html" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #1e7915; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">"We Curse Christianity Three Times a Day"</a></b></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: x-large; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Can Jews and Christians Truly Reconsile?</b></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The 1965 Vatican Council, and subsequent attempts by the Church to make peace with Judaism, did not win over Orthodox Jews who believed that their reading of the Scriptures was correct - not Christian reading. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">A new book discusses this uncomfortable relationship</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">After Esau hated Jacob for years, the brothers met. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Esau rushed to Jacob, hugged him, fell on his neck, kissed him, both of them weeping. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Thrilling reconciliation. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">But the Jewish sages, according to Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 78, were not attracted to this reconciliation. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">They placed dots above the Hebrew word vayeshakehu ("he kissed her," Genesis 33: 4), signifying abolition. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">But erasure was not an obvious choice - it was, after all, a word in the Torah - so they performed "sham" abolition. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">They claim that Esau's kiss was a hoax, and that his intention was not to kiss (nishek) him but to bite (nashakh) - a nice play on words.</span></span></i></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Then, why are they crying? </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Because a miracle happened and Jacob's neck hardened and prevented the bite from being damaged; </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">one cried for his neck while the other cried for his teeth. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Funny? </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Of course not. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">For the sages of the rabbinical period, Esau was a metonym for Rome and later for Christianity. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The possibility that Rome would reconcile with the descendants of Jacob, the Jews, had never occurred to them.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">But it happened in Rome, in 1965. The Second Vatican Council published "Nostra aetate," a document in which the Catholic Church declares neglect of its anti-Jewish heritage and its desire to make peace with Judaism.</span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">An enlightening and important new book by historian Karma Ben Johanan, "Reconciliation and Its Dissatisfaction: Unresolved Tensions in Judeo-Christian Relations," examines the reciprocal conceptions of Catholicism and Orthodox Jewry in an era of reconciliation. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The first part is devoted to the enthusiasm of the Christians in approaching the Jewish people, as well as to the internal debates that arose in the Church after the reconciliation. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">In the second part, the book discusses the cold response of Orthodox Judaism, including the suspicion raised by the desire of Christians to turn a new leaf, and the concerns of the rabbis at the possibility of excessive closeness.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The captivating book by Ben Johanan, a Jewish-Christian relations and theology scholar currently teaching at Berlin's Humboldt University, is based on library research and personal interviews with some of its protagonists. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">It is written with scientific momentum and enriches readers with essential information to help us understand ourselves and others. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Authors should be congratulated on their good writing, fresh style, and fluent and convincing phrasing.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">As noted, early in the book, Ben Johanan described the intense efforts of Catholic theologians to understand the meaning of the Holocaust and the Church's anti-Jewish heritage. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">On the one hand, there is a feeling of guilt and an acceptance of responsibility; </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">on the other hand, fear of a collapse of the theological infrastructure that has crystallized for nearly 2,000 years. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The Declaration of the Second Vatican Council concludes a chapter in the history of Christianity and opens a new one. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The decisions taken, however, raised new questions, which remain unresolved today.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The declaration involved the withdrawal of two fundamental postulates regarding the Jewish people: guilt at the crucifixion of Jesus and the claim that they were no longer the so-called elect. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The third idea, the aspiration to see their conversion in the End Times, gives in to the hope that in the future all people will be united in belief in one God, a formula that has a familiar biblical twist. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Two issues remain open: Jewish exile and the creation of the State of Israel.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><ul style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.5; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.3; list-style: none; margin: 5px 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-what-fuels-evangelical-christians-love-hate-relationship-with-jews-1.9023555" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;">What Promotes Christian </span></a><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-what-fuels-evangelical-christians-love-hate-relationship-with-jews-1.9023555" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;">Evangelical </span></a>Love-Hate Relationships With Jews</span></li><li style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.3; list-style: none; margin: 5px 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-why-the-netanyahus-are-embracing-christian-europe-1.8840596" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;">Why Netanyahus Embraced 'Christian Europe'</span></a></li><li style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.3; list-style: none; margin: 5px 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-are-anti-jewish-extremists-hijacking-u-s-catholicism-1.5730727" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;">Are American Catholics Attacked by Extremist Nostalgia for Anti-Jewish Teaching?</span></a></li><li style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.3; list-style: none; margin: 5px 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-why-jesus-was-a-hebrew-speaker-1.5250513" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black;">Why Jesus Was Really a Hebrew Speaker</span></a></li></ul></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">After the Jews were liberated from Jesus' murder, and after it had been determined that they would continue to be loved by God, questions arose about why they were punished by exile and what it means to re-establish the Jewish state. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">If the Jews are still loved, what is the validity of the dogma of the ancient Church which states that "there is no salvation outside the Church"? </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Are Jews exempt from this rule?</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The author points to the rise of conservative trends after the Second Vatican Council, not only as a natural response to the reformists' victories in the body, but also against the backdrop of the 1968 student revolts in Western Europe and the United States. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">, which raises concerns about the erosion of belief that will lead believers to abandon their faith.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="dewaplokisMultiRelated" style="background: none; border: 0px; color: #fb540a; display: flex; flex-wrap: nowrap; justify-content: space-between; margin: 0px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="icon" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The book vividly describes the readiness of the Church to face the challenges of modernity, to look in the mirror and carry out a self-examination without fear of shaking the foundations that stand. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">It is not easy for a 2,000 year old religion to retract the dogma that billions of people command to follow. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">It is no small matter to criticize respectable individuals who are canonized, on canonical books taught from generation to generation. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">A religion, in essence, finds it difficult to examine itself critically, because in doing so its aspirations for metaphysical truth are lost. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">A pope who sits on Peter's throne does not wish to claim that all his predecessors were wrong.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirHhioWhTSbJz57Cq1PspS21RyxEjwnyziwte-f2kdpn_AFjPcr5wKIuP58oWlA_o1dAwLnizIO37_7BzF6pym4HIw1qj4gn5xG2DLQ_ElAXkoofLkWXd7OlKmO_uuNWZ3CJ3W2JBbmXTH/s0/paus+pius.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; clear: none; color: #1e7915; display: block; float: none; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" border="0" class="lazy-yard" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirHhioWhTSbJz57Cq1PspS21RyxEjwnyziwte-f2kdpn_AFjPcr5wKIuP58oWlA_o1dAwLnizIO37_7BzF6pym4HIw1qj4gn5xG2DLQ_ElAXkoofLkWXd7OlKmO_uuNWZ3CJ3W2JBbmXTH/s0/paus+pius.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; transition: opacity 0.35s ease 0s, transform 0.35s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" /></a></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><i><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Pope Paul VI during the Second Vatican Council. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">[Photo: Peter Geymayer]</span></i></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Ben Johanan describes the courage, sincerity and determination of the supporters of reform in the Church, who face the doubts and fears of conservatives. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The most important point of his book is the vivid description of Pope John Paul II's visit to Israel in March 2000. The prayers he offered at the Western Wall, his speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and his request for forgiveness from the Jewish people. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">ignited a deep shift in the relationship between Jews and Christians. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">His symbolic movement created a new kind of dialogue, based on human and diplomatic friendship that pushed doctrinal arguments to the point of view of a handful of experts.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: large; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The 'idolatry' problem</b></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">In the second part, this book presents the internal discourse of Orthodox Jews on Christianity. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The author deliberately chooses Orthodoxy, of all options, as a counterweight to the Catholic Church because of its hegemonic position in Israel and its important role in defining Jewish identity, although it is doubtful this choice will be favored by liberal American Jews. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Ultimately, Ben Johanan concluded that, while Christian discourse was aimed at peace, Orthodox Jewish discourse responded to Christianity with increasing hostility, which preceded the Second Vatican Council and deepened thereafter.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">One example is the halakhic discussion of whether Christianity includes the avoda zara - Hebrew for "idolatry." </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">During the Middle Ages, there were differences of opinion on this issue. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Some admit that Christians believe in the divine source of the Torah and their religious intentions are sincere. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">However, in the eyes of most rabbinical judges deciding on halakha matters, belief in the divinity of Jesus and the Holy Trinity was considered evidence of the multiplicity of gods, hence idolatry. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The closer relationship between Jews and Christians in the modern era may have resulted in a softening of expectations for Christianity, but such as Yosef Salmon, a history professor, and Prof. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Aviad Hacohen, a law scholar has shown, </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Modern Jewish orthodoxy continues to view Christianity as idolatry. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Indeed, according to Ben Johanan,</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">An increasingly negative attitude towards Christianity is also seen in efforts to restore the expression of Jewish literature that contradicts Christianity and to reveal new truths that were hidden and censored since the invention of printing, for fear of incurring Christian wrath. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Among censors in the past, some genuinely wanted to become enlightened Jews, as the Israeli historian Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin has pointed out. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Normalization and political freedom eliminated fear of Christianity and served to compensate for the inferiority felt by Jews over the years.</span></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Trirong;">It is not easy for a 2,000 year old religion to retract the dogma that billions of people command to follow.</span></b></blockquote><span style="font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px;">Another question that the halakhic literature considers is whether, now that the Jews have come to power, the State of Israel should destroy the churches under its rule, or whether this act should be avoided simply for fear of angering the "goyim," such as Rabbi Yehuda Gershuni (disciple of the Rabbi. Abraham Isaac Kook) and Rabbi Menachem Kasher are defended.</span></div></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">A more extreme approach is also seen in the realm of music. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">In the 19th century, Rabbi Moshe Hazan praised Christian music effectively, while Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg (died 2006) expressed surprise at his approach. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">I must note that it is not only religious chants that disturb the Orthodox. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">On two occasions I have encountered hostile responses to Schiller's chant "Ode to Joy" ("Everyone becomes brothers") in Beethoven's Ninth, because it is considered "Christian music."</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">One of the important innovations of this book is its discussion of the religious meaning of Jewish history in the school of thought of Rabbi Yehuda Ashkenazi (nicknamed "Manitou") and the rabbis of his circle. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">They were mostly educated in France and immigrated to Israel after the Six Day War, approaching Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, a key institution of the national religious movement, founded by Rabbi Kook in Jerusalem. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Ashkenazi is among the few figures in Orthodox Judaism who are relatively familiar with Christianity. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">He stated that for 2,000 years Christianity claimed that the Jews did not understand their own scriptures, that they were no longer the Israel of choice and that they were punished with exile for crucifying God's child. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">This accusation threatens the identity of the Jews.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">According to Ashkenazi, things turned around after the founding of Israel. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Today, Christianity is suffering from loss of identity. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">It was not the Jewish eyes covered by the veil that prevented them from understanding the Old Testament; </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">it's a blind Christian who doesn't understand the New Testament. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty proves that the Jews were right in their prolonged dispute with Christianity. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The realization of the prophetic return to Zion proves that the Jewish interpretation of the Bible, not the Christian one, is correct. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Instead of Jews serving as "witnesses of faith" to the justification of Christianity, Ashkenazi said, Christians now serve as astonished witnesses to the rise of the Jewish people.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Thus a new interpretation of the creation of the State of Israel developed. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Not just a "national home" as others have, but a religious event meant to deny the Christian faith. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Everything went awry, "and the time has come to reverse this method," wrote Manitou.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4KeQJzJI85ozo1SAFFNCxMWeRIWR9LoU2EaUcQpxt0T0_7pIkf4KuUGKUYSZLwp5ax8FWgO5s13W_tmg_kYsXtXIe_stAvX7SPyEE0B9xkE4o1mEzkrzbNlAZEdT5Wb1-Ox4h0Dr19gM/s0/rabi+koko.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; clear: none; color: #1e7915; display: block; float: none; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" border="0" class="lazy-yard" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4KeQJzJI85ozo1SAFFNCxMWeRIWR9LoU2EaUcQpxt0T0_7pIkf4KuUGKUYSZLwp5ax8FWgO5s13W_tmg_kYsXtXIe_stAvX7SPyEE0B9xkE4o1mEzkrzbNlAZEdT5Wb1-Ox4h0Dr19gM/s0/rabi+koko.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; transition: opacity 0.35s ease 0s, transform 0.35s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" /></a></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><i>Rabbi Kook</i></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">One of the many virtues of Ben Johanan's book is his in-depth observation of the conceptual mosaic of the two religions, and how the idea of ​​a new religion develops amid the unbroken preservation of the coherence and inner balance of the totality of religious thought. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">In contrast to their frozen imagery, the two religions move and shift endlessly with full awareness of themselves, their historical circumstances and the ideas milling around them.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="dewaplokisMultiRelated" style="background: none; border: 0px; color: #fb540a; display: flex; flex-wrap: nowrap; justify-content: space-between; margin: 0px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="icon" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: large; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">'Biblical program'</span></b></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Many reflections have come to my mind while reading this book, and I would like to present three here. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The first is the apparent and surprising similarity between the interpretation of history put forward by the "French", and that of the Church Fathers. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Indeed, Augustinian doctrine seems to be enjoying a revival at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Almost at the same time the Catholic world is retreating from the old theology which saw in history the realization of the victory of the Church over Judaism - that same theology, in its opposite form, gained new life among the adherents of Jewish Zionist messianism. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The turning point in Christendom occurred in 1965; </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">in the Jewish community in 1967. According to Oury Cherki, one of the rabbis of the circle, </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The Six Day War is to be held with a higher regard than the War of Independence. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">It is a "biblical event in every sense of the word." </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Now it is the turn of the Jews to look at history as realizing Judaism's triumph over the Church.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Unfortunately, as the Church moved forward and called for interfaith and fraternal conciliation, the Jewish Orthodox circle revived old controversies and claimed victory. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Rabbi Cherki even expects Christians to believe in Jews in the place of Jesus, because "Jews are divine"! </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Manitou wrote, "Gradually Christians discovered that Jews do not need to be Christians but Christians need to be Judai."</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Granted, it may be pleasing to believe that the enemy is wrong, but is contemporary Judaism destined to repeat mistakes made by Christianity in its dishonorable past? </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Rather than aspiring to convert Christians to Jews and win over religious disputes, it would be better for Judaism to reconcile and respect the religions that human civilization has created.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>While Christian discourse aims at conciliation, Orthodox Jewish discourse responds to Christianity with growing hostility, which preceded the Second Vatican Council and deepened thereafter.</blockquote></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">This unconscious link to Christian thought patterns is also seen in the homeless and therefore universal Jewish conception of the Diaspora. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Whereas in the eyes of the philosopher George Steiner and Satmar Rebbe this is the ideal Jew, according to the doctrine of Abraham Isaac Kook, Diaspora Jews appear almost like a Christian. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The practical disconnect from political life made him an isolated, abstract being, just as Christianity prefers to abstain from material life, biblical commandments and sexuality, and become a religion of spirituality itself.</span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">In doing so, new material - sacred territories - was added to the classic Zionist "Diaspora negation". </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The slogan adopted by Rabbi Kook's disciples, "Land of Israel, the people of Israel, the Torah of Israel," replaces the slogan of the 18th century Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto), "The Holy One, Praise Him, the Torah and Israel are one." </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">God was removed, his place was taken over by the Land of Israel, and the Torah was sent down to the third place.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The religious-messianic approach of these supporters also gave a new dimension to the old dispute between Christianity and Judaism about the prophecies of redemption and comfort uttered by the Hebrew prophets. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Christianity views it as a prophecy that was fulfilled at the coming of Jesus and in the Christianization of the Roman Empire. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Jewish thought in the Middle Ages saw it as a promise of a future to come. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Now the future has come true.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Yet one might wonder: If the prophetic destruction of the First Temple succeeded in predicting the destruction of Jerusalem that would occur close to their time, and if the consolation prophecies were able to predict events that would occur 2,500 years later - why didn't any prophet predict the destruction of the Second Temple? </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">And what about the old exile of the Jews, which lasted 2,000, not 70, years, or the Shoah, the most terrible catastrophe to ever befall the Jewish people - why wasn't it foretold by prophets peering into the distant future? </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Any unbiased reader of comfort prophecy understands that it refers to a return to Zion after the only event of destruction in 586 BC known to the prophets. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">But faith and naivety are often intertwined.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The second reflection evoked by the book relates to his almost exclusive work with the rabbis. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">But hostility to Christianity was also found among Orthodox intellectuals. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">I will note here as a striking example of the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the "high priest" of the liberal left in Israel. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The book “I Wanted to Ask You, Professor Leibowitz” (Hebrew) contains a letter that the professor wrote to David Flusser, who was a professor of early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism, during the period of Eichmann's trial (in Jerusalem in 1961).</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYf1ZF9AChzQek_KfqfRGvXbmGOWWyPQ7AZPSvlFJr7sf_EH5XyrYgLRVc5OSMaxMpqx7E6GKgRTFtocx2-Wj6MAIbSRV3kgGgMo6APlsQbIjxq-zoTAJfT3S9VEK43rcLlOfHhlSWwvXm/s2048/nyetanyahu.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; clear: none; color: #1e7915; display: block; float: none; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" border="0" class="lazy-yard" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1315" height="auto" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYf1ZF9AChzQek_KfqfRGvXbmGOWWyPQ7AZPSvlFJr7sf_EH5XyrYgLRVc5OSMaxMpqx7E6GKgRTFtocx2-Wj6MAIbSRV3kgGgMo6APlsQbIjxq-zoTAJfT3S9VEK43rcLlOfHhlSWwvXm/s600/nyetanyahu.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; transition: opacity 0.35s ease 0s, transform 0.35s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" width="100%" /></a></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><i>Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz [Photo: Alex Levac]</i></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Flusser has expressed satisfaction that Eichmann is unwilling to take oath on a copy of the New Testament in court. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">"Eichmann separated himself from his Christian God and thus served Christianity," wrote Flusser. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">He added his hope that it "will be a historic change for my Christian brothers to clear their religious consciences and will allow the Church to be closer to our common Father in heaven."</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Leibowitz was furious at Flusser's efforts "to purify the [sheretz] pest of Christianity for a number of reasons." </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">In his view, it is the hatred of Judaism and Judaism that gave birth to Christianity, and "finds perfect expression in the sinful folio [in Hebrew avon, sinful, plus gelion, folio - wordplay on" Evangelion "] and the letters- apostasy though. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">"</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Leibowitz uses harsh language against Christianity, refraining from calling Paul the Evangelist by name and calling him a heretic "by the way," in contrast to his conversion narrative of deep conviction and after Jesus was revealed to him. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Christianity is an "abomination of destruction," a paganism that fabricates the forged symbols of Judaism. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">"We condemn Christianity three times every day," wrote Leibowitz.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="dewaplokisMultiRelated" style="background: none; border: 0px; color: #fb540a; display: flex; flex-wrap: nowrap; justify-content: space-between; margin: 0px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="icon" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">He did not change his mind after the Second Vatican Council, but instead held fast to his view that Christianity is "paganism". </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">In a 1987 letter to an unnamed correspondent, he wrote: "Your words make me suspect that you are an apostate, and I do not want to have discussions with apostates." </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Meshumad, the Hebrew term, is a derogatory idiom for a converted Jew. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Leibowitz, for example, called Heinrich Heine "the most despicable and abominable figure in Jewish history." </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">In a 1975 letter he called Meshumad "hated by the people, covenant breakers, blasphemers, blasphemers and the curse of God."</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">While dozens of theological students, clergy and monks, Catholics and Protestants, flock to Jerusalem each year to study Judaism there, one cannot even imagine Israeli schools teaching the New Testament as additional background for understanding the Talmud.</span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">At the end of a class at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2000, where I was quoting passages from the New Testament, a student approached me and asked if I would quote more quotes in future classes. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">I told him I would give him two answers. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">First one: yes. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Second: In all 2,700 pages of the Babylonian Talmud, there is only one quote from a Gentile book, namely from the New Testament (Babylonian Talmud Tractate Shabbat 116a-b). </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">What is allowed for the Talmud is also permissible for a talmid (disciple). </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">He never appeared in my class again.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The final comment refers to the nature of "Judaism" with which the Church seeks reconciliation. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">A reader of Ben Johanan's book has the impression that almost every step taken by Christian theologians refers to Judaism as the "Old Testament" religion, which predates Christianity. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">This shows that the dialogue between the two religions is still in its infancy, since Judaism is not a religion in the Bible but the religion of the Talmud, rabbinical literature, kabbala and prayer. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Christian theology is still in dialogue with itself - not yet with the Judaism that has its parallels.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Against this background, pioneering academic research on both sides stands out. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Over the last generation, Jewish and Christian scholars in academia have shown great interest in parallel developments in the two religions even after their paths split. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The Hebrew University has established a center for the study of Christianity, and with symbolic parallelism, Cardinal Bea's Center for the Study of Judaism has been established at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Dozens of books and hundreds of articles published over the past decades have been devoted to discussing the intimate and complex relationship between Judaism and Christianity throughout history. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Ben Johanan's Karma book itself is an important milestone in this academic opening - which in my opinion is a direct result of the Second Vatican Council.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Thanks to the empathy the author shows for the subject, the final product is not only an enlightening research study but also an intellectual, cultural, and political challenge. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">It is an important book for Jews, separately, and for Christians, separately, and also for anyone for whom the Judeo-Christian story is an important element in defining their identity.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">I will close with an excerpt from the book's epilogue: "The challenge to the establishment of the State of Israel against Judaism is similar to that posed by the Christianization of the empire to Christianity." </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">For me, the author also hopes that the results will be different. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">The book proves that academics have the ability to bring people closer together and bring peace to the world.</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">“Reconciliation and Its Dissatisfaction: Unresolved Tensions in Judeo-Christian Relations,” by Karma Ben Johanan. </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Tel Aviv University Press (Hebrew), 460 pages, 98 shekels</span></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">[ </span><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/.premium.MAGAZINE-we-curse-christianity-three-times-a-day-can-jews-and-christians-truly-reconcile-1.9072566" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #1e7915; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Israel Jacob Yuval</a><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"> | </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Published on 14.08.2020]</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="border-top: 1px solid rgb(136, 136, 136); text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8BmkSJfYCCelYeOQHW8ZY4RzgAmMicZ4p5ND3S3otaAIPeu5Bho6mmN4tk61w-o4xPzPnUEPC2LdF4sl3h0bW5n2JOo9bQ2XJ5t5lwUD2NAC4xX0pxpl8lzJmlXXvqFt61CfU908Nuk/s73/israel+yuval+yacob.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="73" data-original-width="60" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8BmkSJfYCCelYeOQHW8ZY4RzgAmMicZ4p5ND3S3otaAIPeu5Bho6mmN4tk61w-o4xPzPnUEPC2LdF4sl3h0bW5n2JOo9bQ2XJ5t5lwUD2NAC4xX0pxpl8lzJmlXXvqFt61CfU908Nuk/s0/israel+yuval+yacob.jpg" /></a><div style="text-align: justify; font-size: small; line-height: 1.2em;">Professor <a href="https://huji.academia.edu/Yuval" target="_blank">Israel Jacob Yuval</a> is founder and academic director of the Mandel Scholion Research Center, and heads the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Advanced Studies in Humanities at Hebrew University. His book "Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jewish and Christians" (Magnes Press, 2000; in Hebrew) won the 2002 Bialik Prize in Jewish Studies and Literature.</div></div>

Can Jews and Christians Truly Reconsile?

"We Curse Christianity Three Times a Day" Can Jews and Christians Truly Reconsile? The 1965 Vatican Council, and subsequent attemp...

Can Jews and Christians Truly Reconsile?

"We Curse Christianity Three Times a Day" Can Jews and Christians Truly Reconsile? The 1965 Vatican Council, and subsequent attemp...

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Do Jews believe in the Holy Spirit like Christians do?

<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8K9KdtK8DGNFSnvX3mG7rx00MVqf0a3rAhYcJUbmIBdSPnps9FsnS7py2NaeZ0qdE0BB6tvgp7CBPFvxt9xw7zwC3H52Y7BKAbos6p_neWIX8j_WTzM4AcSOn87Ml4dnlZQ99wEiXYF8/s0/one+god.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 0em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8K9KdtK8DGNFSnvX3mG7rx00MVqf0a3rAhYcJUbmIBdSPnps9FsnS7py2NaeZ0qdE0BB6tvgp7CBPFvxt9xw7zwC3H52Y7BKAbos6p_neWIX8j_WTzM4AcSOn87Ml4dnlZQ99wEiXYF8/s0/one+god.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: PT Sans Narrow;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">When this question was asked to the Jews through </span></span><a href="https://www.quora.com/" style="font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px;" target="_blank">QUORA</a><span style="font-family: PT Sans Narrow;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">, there were at least 15 other respondents (almost all of them are Jews) besides the ones whose responds is quoted below, firmly refused to believe in the HOLY SPIRIT according to the way Christians believe in it as being part of their Triune God.</span></span><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">As shown on each respond which you can see </span><a href="https://www.quora.com/Do-Jews-believe-in-the-Holy-Spirit-like-Christians-do/answer/David-Mescheloff" target="_blank">here</a><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">, Jews' rejection is generally based on their understanding or concept of the Holy Spirit as referred to in the </span><b style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tanakh</b><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">, the Hebrew Bible. Way too different from Christianity </span><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">doctrine that forces the Holy Spirit to become God!</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></div><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">This means that in general the Jews consider Christians to have </span><b style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">misunderstood </b><b style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the true existence of the Holy Spirit</b><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"> as referred to in the Tanakh.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: initial;">Check out one of the answers below:  </span></div></span></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://www.quora.com/Do-Jews-believe-in-the-Holy-Spirit-like-Christians-do#MoreAnswers" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; clear: none; color: #1e7915; float: none; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.17s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><img border="0" class="lazy-yard" data-original-height="1544" data-original-width="704" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYwrekoj2pTtJxet2RAwtI3qqxJaBvfDxJooX3jrP-N0F5PUGgAIRgFFPj-k4PAAZczWhRlyTwuTSrRRxgSfbGVE_LAsq9-QbsmS_LsqHxpvvNFSqQYzWb7AnKw6pxoj3gAplhzTCl_0xv/s1600/apakah+yahudi+percaya+pada+roh+kudus.png" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; transition: opacity 0.35s ease 0s, transform 0.35s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline;" /></a></div><div style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: initial;">From this explanation, of course it is odd if Christians who rule the books of the Jews namely the Torah (5 books of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible) and the Zabur (Psalm) are part of the Christian scriptures - which in this case they consider as "outdated books", and therefore they named them <a href="https://gusmendemanswering.blogspot.com/2016/02/old-testament.html" target="_blank">Old Testament</a> - happily interpreting the HOLY SPIRIT as part of the Triune God, while the Jews, who still cling tightly to these books never considered it that way.</span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">Furthermore,  Jews who still adhere to the Torah have never been acquainted with the concept of Triune God which all the way is contrary to the concept of Monotheism that they strongly believed in!</span><br /><div style="font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;"><blockquote>In other words, the doctrine of the Triune God in Christianity actually does not have a clear source of grounding, but only the fabrications of its founders that forced the entry of Pagan beliefs into the pure teachings of Jesus Christ, which is actually Monotheism.</blockquote></div><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: inherit;">So, don't be surprised if the Christian faith always collides hardly when you try to compare it with the Jewish faith, especially with the faith of Muslims who, like Jews, do not know the doctrine of the Trinity either!</span><blockquote style="font-family: "PT Sans Narrow"; font-size: 18px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Because of its "oddities" that deviate far from the teachings of all previous prophets - including the teachings of Jesus Christ himself - as well as the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, then in Javanese language, this Christian faith can be interpreted as "nyeleneh", or eccentric in terms of being created in such a way as to be completely strange!</div></blockquote><div style="font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: PT Sans Narrow;">That is why Christians are always <b>confused</b>, then <b>panicked</b> and seldom <b>hysterical</b> whenever their faith are pushed by questions related directly to the postulates in a bundle of several books which they believed as a holy book, such as above!<br /><br /> GM</span></div></div></div>

Do Jews believe in the Holy Spirit like Christians do?

When this question was asked to the Jews through QUORA , there were at least 15 other respondents (almost all of them are Jews) besides the ...

Do Jews believe in the Holy Spirit like Christians do?

When this question was asked to the Jews through QUORA , there were at least 15 other respondents (almost all of them are Jews) besides the ...

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We Curse Christianity Three Times A Day

<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ7itcuX1dJ6E2kj_SB1qBoQatJMcRJeYoRx7qjqF4QdqkjLC7nV8dbUdJ3ANrI5MzBClEg22KuJjgXl2noC287OtONEgMEU0k5mYhkDefNroU75YBJCcHhtxMZOhs2_0FSIBHSEUae7c/s0/birkat+ha+minim.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 0em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ7itcuX1dJ6E2kj_SB1qBoQatJMcRJeYoRx7qjqF4QdqkjLC7nV8dbUdJ3ANrI5MzBClEg22KuJjgXl2noC287OtONEgMEU0k5mYhkDefNroU75YBJCcHhtxMZOhs2_0FSIBHSEUae7c/s0/birkat+ha+minim.jpg" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Most Christians do not know that like Muslims who pray 5 times a day, Jews also pray, but 3 times a day. The way of their prayers are also similar to each others.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Because of common principles of worship, Jewish rabbis permit Jews to worship in any mosque scattered across the globe. While on the contrary, they forbid their people from worshiping in any church in the whole world!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trirong; font-size: medium;"><b>Why?</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Because according to the Jewish faith, churches are places where gentiles, or goyim, worship idols. Meanwhile, idolatry - in any form - is curse for every singe foundation of Jewish monotheistic theology.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>Naturally, these facts are more than just enough proof that by all means, there is no way for any Christians to claim an "intimate " relationship with Jews by equating the God taught in Christianity is the same god as in the Jewish faith.</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-family: Trirong; font-size: large;">Then, what about mosques?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to their Rabbis, mosques are places where Muslims worship the one and only True God, namely <b>Allah</b>, the same God - known by the Jews as <b>Eloah</b> - or other names and designations that refer to the only True God they also worship.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Therefore, a mosque is a place where both Muslims and Jews can carry out their prayers together without the need to fuss over the differences being taught by each of their prophet whom they follow as role models.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Interesting, isn't it?</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But did you know what else the majority of Christians do not know about Jews prayer?</div><div style="text-align: justify;">One thing that is very important for them to know, and realize of course, is what the Jews know as Birkat ha Minim .</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/birkat-ha-minim" target="_blank">Birkat ha Minim</a> is a special part of  Jewish prayer where they earnestly pray so that Christianity - along with all the attributes that come with it - be condemned by Eloah!</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yes! Jews curse Christianity 3 times a day!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Trirong; font-size: medium;">Why do Jews "hate" Christianity so much?</span></b></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;">There are tons of background reasons, but to make it short, try to understand these.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><span style="font-family: Trirong; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>1. From Historical perspective</b></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;">The early Christian fathers had stolen Jewish holy books then  made them part of the Christian book, but were not treated and respected as they should be. They even labeled these holy books as <a href="https://gusmendemanswering.blogspot.com/2016/02/old-testament.html" target="_blank">Old Testament</a> as they were considered them as outdated books!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These stolen holy books were only used as the row material to ease them composing various "new verses" into their own holy book to back up theories about Jesus Christ divinity and made them <a href="https://gusmendemanswering.blogspot.com/2015/12/table-of-old-testament-quotes-in-new_12.html" target="_blank">as if are in accordance with the prophecies of the previous prophets</a>, while in fact, until this very moment the Jews still hold fast to their holy books and never considered them as outdated books. Therefore Jews never agreed with any theories and claims of Christianity which are made by modifying verses from the Jews holy books in order to justify their early Christian Patriarchs doctrines.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Trirong; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>2. From Theological perspective</b></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;">The Jews could not and would never accept the blasphemy committed by Christianity against Jews God, the one and only True God, who they perfectly believed is not affiliated and unlawful to be associated with anything, but described by Christians as divinity who had a son named Jesus Christ, and also juxtaposed with one of the Angels in a form of a fellow gods or triune god whom they call the holy Trinity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another worse thing is, Christians claimed are worshipping the same god as the God of the Jews, even though it was very clear that all descriptions of God in Christianity teachings are completely different from the God worshiped by the Jews.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thus, Christians should have realized that attributing anything in the Christian faith to the beliefs and faith of the Jews is obviously a pointless claim of nothing!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The God of Christianity is not the same God of the Jews and Muslims who is believed by both with perfect faith that He is the only true God, the Creator, <span style="font-family: Trirong;"><b>absolutely free from all properties of matter, and that there can be no (physical) comparison to Him whatsoever!</b></span> Therefore, according to Jews and Muslims <b style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trirong;">the God whom Christians worship is not the true God!</span></b></div><div></div></blockquote><div><span style="text-align: justify;">It seems that both Jews and Muslims agree on this point.</span></div><div><span style="text-align: justify;">Learn more about this issue on Jewish Rabbi perspective <a href="https://gusmendemanswering.blogspot.com/2017/02/similarities-between-islam-and-judaism.html">here</a>. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trirong;"><b>GM | Old Notes</b></span></div>

We Curse Christianity Three Times A Day

Most Christians do not know that like Muslims who pray 5 times a day, Jews also pray, but 3 times a day. The way of their prayers are also s...

We Curse Christianity Three Times A Day

Most Christians do not know that like Muslims who pray 5 times a day, Jews also pray, but 3 times a day. The way of their prayers are also s...

Read more »

Do Jews really curse Christians?

<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA2U7cMc4ak32IxEyQ6yiL4VFZHRB7FwlqTGUCwo1g-jhe9u0ia-YDldIQH3emisa3pOqboF560DWKZL5ARaIGc_fv4P_noNO4sfpwntLiJTARBgZcrtDUwbVdQtzmhyphenhyphenyDWesd4_Dz0Os/s0/tallit-siddur-isolated-jewish-prayer.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 0em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA2U7cMc4ak32IxEyQ6yiL4VFZHRB7FwlqTGUCwo1g-jhe9u0ia-YDldIQH3emisa3pOqboF560DWKZL5ARaIGc_fv4P_noNO4sfpwntLiJTARBgZcrtDUwbVdQtzmhyphenhyphenyDWesd4_Dz0Os/s0/tallit-siddur-isolated-jewish-prayer.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The patristic authority Jerome (342-420) complained bitterly, in his commentary to Isaiah,about the Jews’ condemnation of notsrim (believers in Jesus, “the Nazarite”), in the benediction of the daily Amidah known as Birkat ha-Minim: “The Jews, after having been invited by the Lord to do penitence up to the present day persevere in blasphemy and three times a day in all their synagogues they anathemize the Christian name.”</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">His complaint echoes even harsher early Christian polemics, such as that of the Church Father Epiphanius (315-403): "Not only do Jewish people have a hatred of their enemies; they even stand up at dawn, at midday, and toward evening, three times a day when they recite their prayers in the synagogue, and curse and anathemize them. Three times a day they say, 'God curse the Nazoreans.' For they harbor an extra grudge against them . . . because, despite their Jewishness, they preach that Jesus is the Christ, the opposite of those who are still Jews, for they have not accepted Jesus."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As Ruth Langer's masterful new book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cursing-Christians-History-Birkat-HaMinim/dp/0199783179" target="_blank">Cursing the Christians?</a> amply documents, the frequency and vehemence of the Church’s condemnations of the prayer ebbed and flowed over centuries, tending to escalate during eras of heightened religious tensions—notably throughout the period of anti-Jewish theological disputations in 13th-century Spain and France. In that context, we find one of the nastiest assaults on the Jewish liturgy leveled by the disputant and apostate, Nicholas Donin, who writes of Birkat ha-Minim that;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>"Three times every day in a prayer they consider more important than others, the Jews curse the clergy of the Church, the kings, and all other people. This prayer is in the Talmud and must be recited with feet together and one should not speak of anything else nor interrupt it even if a serpent is wrapped around one’s ankle. This [prayer] men and women recite in a whisper. The priest then recites it twice in a loud voice and all respond 'Amen' to every such curse."</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-family: Trirong; font-size: large;">A chilling image. But is Birkat ha-Minim really about Christians at all?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rabbinic understandings of the prayer's meaning and purpose were never unanimous, and its text was highly unstable for centuries. Sometimes, the prayer was changed as the result of Christian censorship, other times as the result of Jewish apologetics. Still other changes were occasioned by sensitivities to Jews coerced into apostasy. Correspondingly, opinions about the identity of those condemned by its maledictions fluctuated significantly in different times and places. In Christian Northern Europe, especially in the High Middle Ages, there was widespread consent among the rabbis that Birkat ha-Minim was indeed formulated with Christians in mind, and was still to be directed against them. In Italy and Muslim lands, the matter was far more muddled.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it was particularly during times of persecution of Judaism by the Roman Catholic Church that many rabbinical authorities apologetically reversed this understanding, denying that the entreaty for the downfall of Israel’s enemies had anything to do with Christians. Among the dozens of interpretations that Langer analyzes, the most surprising is that of Rabbi Jacob Emden of Hamburg, one of the leading talmudic scholars of the 18th century. Not only does Emden rule out any connection between Birkat ha-Minim and Christianity; he goes so far as to proclaim that its curses are directed at any “meshumad” (apostate)—Jew, Christian, or Muslim—who converts from spite, rather than sincere conviction. Amazingly, Emden includes Christian converts to Judaism in the category of the meshumadim and minim condemned by the prayer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Unsurprisingly, given Emden’s lifelong persecution of suspected sectarians, Emden insisted that the term minim, expunged by Church censorship in the mid-16th century, be reinstated, and that worshippers intend Sabbateans (believers in the false messiah Shabtai Tzvi), rather than Gentiles, while intoning its curses.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All such denials that Gentile Christians were the intended objects of the prayer notwithstanding, Christians (“notsrim” in Hebrew) are explicitly mentioned by name in many of its early variants. But while notsrim became an undifferentiated term in later Hebrew usage, during Christianity’s early centuries, as Epiphanius makes clear, the word probably referred solely to Jewish believers in Jesus’s ministry—and not to his Greek Gentile followers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So as the question mark punctuating the title of Langer's erudite study suggests, resolving such matters is far from simple. Indeed, Langer reveals a host of uncertainties regarding just about every aspect of this blessing. On the most basic level, it is unclear when the prayer was composed and by whom. Nor can we know with any certainty its original formulation, on account of numerous medieval variants, and the half millennium following the redaction of the Talmud from which no manuscripts are extant.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Still, among the most surprising of Langer’s revelations is the malleability of this malediction’s intended “victims,” thanks to its many versions which refer, variously, to "apostates, sectarians, heretics, Nazareans, Thine enemies, the enemies of Thy people, the evil Empire, the insolent government,” and—most insipidly and commonly ever since the prayer underwent Church censorship—the “malshinim,” Jewish talebearers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Langer questions whether it is indeed the case, as the Talmud recounts, that the first-century Sages instituted this appeal to God to destroy the Jewish followers of Jesus. The answer to this foundational question depends on the resolution of thorny historical and theological issues. Langer does a fastidious job untangling, if not always resolving, the many controversies that have arisen among both theologians and scholars, Jewish and Christian, in connection with the genesis and purpose of Birkat ha-Minim. In addition to her remarkable detective work on the textual history of the prayer, in which minim and notsrim were often replaced with alternate terms such as meshumadim and malshinim, Langer offers fine analyses of all the relevant Hebrew terms which at one time or another were introduced into the execration—all of which carry multiple meanings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ironically enough, the Church Fathers who railed against this prayer were in essential agreement with the talmudic rabbis about its origins—if not entirely about its precise objects. Patristic writers commonly cited John 9:20, which recounts how the parents of a blind boy miraculously cured by Jesus refused to admit to the Pharisees any knowledge of a miracle "because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if any one should confess him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue." The alleged means by which the Jews effected the banishment of believers in Jesus from the synagogue was the institution of a prayer cursing them. The Talmud's account of the prayer's etiology places it barely a generation later, when the sage of Yavneh, Gamliel II, established it in response to the proliferation of sectarians following the Temple's destruction, in 70 C.E.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Modern scholars, while not uncritically accepting the talmudic account, have tended to concur with the early dating of Birkat ha-Minim suggested by both Christian and Jewish ecclesiasts—a dating consonant with the anti-Judaism of the Church Fathers. But following the approach of the most recent revisionist talmudic scholarship (the work of Daniel Boyarin in particular), and based on a deft and thorough review of the earliest reliable sources testifying to its existence, Langer disproves the long-accepted arguments for the prayer’s antiquity, instead estimating its origins in late 4th-century Roman-ruled Palestine.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Langer’s concluding chapter on the fate of Birkat ha-Minim in the modern period is of particular interest, shedding much light on shifting attitudes among modernizing Jews to the faith of their Christian neighbors. Birkat ha-Minim proved particularly repugnant to a universalist Reform movement, which had no place for a prayer calling upon God to “bring low, break, and destroy” the Gentiles. The earliest Reform liturgies in Germany transformed the prayer from an ad hominem curse of wicked adherents of other faiths into an abstract entreaty to eliminate wickedness from the world. But even this didn’t last long, and Reform congregations, Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El first among them, began to expunge Birkat ha-Minim altogether from the liturgy. This is but the last of many instances cited by Langer demonstrating the degree to which a single paragraph from the Jewish liturgy might serve as a barometer of Jewish feeling toward its "daughter-religion" (to borrow a favored euphemism of Pope John Paul II).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Langer concludes her study with a provocative rumination on the Jewish outrage provoked by the current pontiff’s restoration of the Latin Mass, with its various derogations of Jewish faith. As she wryly observes, there was at least some measure of inconsistency, if not hypocrisy, in this anger, given similar Jewish appeals for the conversion of the “nations of the world” to belief in the God of Israel, most strikingly in the Aleynu prayer. Then again, there is absolutely no reference to notsrim, and almost none to meshumadim, in contemporary versions of Birkat ha-Minim. While a few prayer books, mostly those used by Hasidim, re-instated the word minim, almost all current normative versions of the blessing—including those found in strictly Orthodox prayer books, such as the <a href="http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/640/features/artscroll-inc/">ArtScroll</a> siddur—refer only to the malshinim. Thus, in a final irony, Jews today have preserved the variant that resulted from Church censorship.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the irony is a fortuitous one. In Sacks’ edition of the 2009 <a href="http://www.jidaily.com/SSMbw">Koren Siddur</a>, he offers what may be the most ingenious interpretation of all, one that eliminates any challenge posed to ecumenical harmony by Birkat ha-Minim:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>The text of this paragraph underwent several changes during the centuries. Its original object was the sectarianism that split the Jewish world during the late Second Temple period. There were Jews in the Hellenistic age who turned against their own people. Faith (emunah) in Judaism involves the idea of loyalty—to a people and its heritage. This prayer is a protest against disloyalty.</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While Sacks’ interpretation is problematic as history, he is wise to reiterate that the dominant current usage of malshinim refers solely to Jewish betrayers of their own. But Sacks does one better. Like a modern-day Balaam, he doesn’t just nullify a curse—he transforms it into a blessing. What was once a prayer for the destruction of one’s enemies becomes an entreaty for Jewish unity and fidelity to God.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><br /> <div style="border-top: 1px solid rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: small; text-align: justify;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuUyQevZL6Az-rNtyCwz-QOcayQvFcBGgcnMtQ85nhGk0TDbDFwozwI63SXJ3S_t6px-y7nxhqIH13T2oaf84Ao8OVqPCL73GsHPr_Zn59lMPc5VrlpuWQm2noEwcm4TRqYNH-w_6s0VM/s63/alan+Nadler.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="63" data-original-width="50" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuUyQevZL6Az-rNtyCwz-QOcayQvFcBGgcnMtQ85nhGk0TDbDFwozwI63SXJ3S_t6px-y7nxhqIH13T2oaf84Ao8OVqPCL73GsHPr_Zn59lMPc5VrlpuWQm2noEwcm4TRqYNH-w_6s0VM/s0/alan+Nadler.jpg" /></a><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Nadler" target="_blank">Allan Nadler </a></b>is a professor of religious studies and the director of the program in Jewish studies at Drew University. He is currently on sabbatical in Montreal, serving as Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at McGill University and Interim Rabbi of Congregation Beth El.</i></div>

Do Jews really curse Christians?

The patristic authority Jerome (342-420) complained bitterly, in his commentary to Isaiah,about the Jews’ condemnation of notsrim (believers...

Do Jews really curse Christians?

The patristic authority Jerome (342-420) complained bitterly, in his commentary to Isaiah,about the Jews’ condemnation of notsrim (believers...

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