A Christian theologian who happens to be my father emails me:
You would have become (or could be) a great lawyer. I am sure you have won many arguments over the years. You should be prepared for the following arguments:
The Jews were often delivered from their captors and returned from their captivities but never after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The Jews had a line of prophets for probably over one thousand years but none since the death of Jesus of Nazareth. If the rejection of the word of God spoken through Jeremiah and the ancient prophets brought on Israel the terrible calamity of Jerusalem’s overthrow and the seventy years of captivity, what must have been the crime, the sin, which has spread its blight over the Jewish nation for nearly 2000 years and made them weary wanders in an unfriendly world? Why have many Jews, most Jews, despised and hated the only Jew who ever kept the law of Moses without flaw or fault? Why have most Jews felt at variance with the people who have done much more, a thousandfold more, to disseminate the law of Moses among the nations of earth than ever has been done by the Jewish people?
It is true that Jews have been wronged and robbed by people bearing the name of Christians but these killers were not true followers of him who went about doing good. True followers of Jesus have never been persecutors, only those who in their hatred fooled themselves that they were Christians.
There are about 12 points made by Jews from the OT to prove that the Messiah could not have yet come. Christians apply all these to the second advent.
There is no need to reply, especially since I probably would not find time to reply to your reply. But somewhere along the line of life you will have to answer publicly these questions.
You have been given many gifts by God. You are a splendid writer. You have shown much much courage in dealing with manifold adversities. I have wondered if you have missed the one source of help that could do most for you.
It is a moral universe and earnest folks like you and me must pay for our sins.
I don’t need to be prepared for any arguments by anyone who wants me to change my religion. To practice Judaism is to know a self-evidently superior way of life, particularly when I’ve had bountiful experience of living as a Christian.
Jews have rarely felt a moral or intellectual challenge from Christianity. One who leads a Jewish life usually finds it superior to the alternatives (and among the least appealing alternatives for Jews is Christianity, it’s laughable to believe that a man was God). By any statistical measure of the good life, such as the strength of the family, charity, health, success, education, wealth, Jews lead the way.
Second, only a fool argues matters of faith. Where has a lifetime of such arguments gotten you, dear theologian?
On to the points in this email:
* “The Jews were often delivered from their captors and returned from their captivities but never after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.” Hundreds of thousands of Jews were not delivered from their captors before Jesus. They were slaughtered, starved and tortured to death. The Jewish people as a whole survived their captivities before Jesus? Yes, and after Jesus too. In the past 70 years, the Jews have returned to Zion, where about half of all Jews now live.
A majority of Jews have lived in the diaspora (until now) since the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE, more than 500 years before Jesus. So this challenge makes no sense.
And since when has delivery from captivity proven whether or not you are loved by God? To claim such a thing is to spit on the memory of the hundreds of millions of innocent people, Jews and non-Jews, down through the ages who were tortured and murdered.
* “The Jews had a line of prophets for probably over one thousand years but none since the death of Jesus of Nazareth.”
The designation of who and who is not a prophet is a matter of faith and is a ridiculous thing to argue over. According to the traditional Jewish perspective, prophecy ended hundreds of years before Jesus was born. So what?
The last Jewish prophet, according to the Jewish tradition, was Malachai, who scholars place in the fifth century BCE, more than 400 years before the birth of Jesus.
I am out of line with the Jewish tradition here (which holds that the prophets connected with God through the Holy Spirit, and that this type of prophecy ended with Malachai), but I don’t see much difference between the spiritual power of the prophets and the spiritual power of the great rabbis over the past two thousand years. I’m not sure Malachai was any more in touch with God than Rabbi Hillel or Rabbi Akiva or the Rambam. These last three thinkers each have a thousand times more influence on the way Jews lead their lives than Malachai or any of the prophets.
* “If the rejection of the word of God spoken through Jeremiah and the ancient prophets brought on Israel the terrible calamity of Jerusalem’s overthrow and the seventy years of captivity, what must have been the crime, the sin, which has spread its blight over the Jewish nation for nearly 2000 years and made them weary wanders in an unfriendly world?”
Christians have been tortured, murdered and chased out of the Middle East over the past 50 years by Muslims. What must have been their crime? Who did they reject? Or were they simply not as powerful and not as murderous as their Muslim neighbors?
To attribute the Holocaust, the pogroms, the Crusades and the murder of millions of Jews by non-Jews, often Christians, to Jewish rejection of Jesus is to charge the Jewish people eternally with deicide, and it is this type of thinking propounded by many of the most influential Christian intellectuals such as Martin Luther that led directly to Dachau. You propound a line of thought that leads to genocide. Congratulations! Jesus must be so proud.
Millions of murders of Jews by non-Jews happened before Jesus and after Jesus. Since when does the mass slaughter of innocents prove theological rectitude? Only when you’re a Christian, I guess.
That the Jews sought to find meaning in their suffering by engaging in moral introspection is a beautiful thing, even though it is twisted as a sword to attack Jews by Christians such as yourself.
* “Why have many Jews, most Jews, despised and hated the only Jew who ever kept the law of Moses without flaw or fault?”
To the extent that Jews despise Jesus, it is due to the mass slaughters carried out in his name. It is also due to Jewish hatred of idolatry. To believe that a man is God is idolatry.
Historically, we have no idea if anyone perfectly kept the law of Moses (because we don’t videotape people 24/7 before or after their bar mitzvah, the age of accountability), and it doesn’t matter. It has no significance for how a Jew should lead his life.
* “Why have most Jews felt at variance with the people who have done much more, a thousandfold more, to disseminate the law of Moses among the nations of earth than ever has been done by the Jewish people?”
Jews have their own laws and culture to observe and hence we must be at variance to varying degrees with everyone outside the fold, including non-observant Jews. We have felt particularly at variance with Christians when Christians imposed their religion by force and tortured and murdered those who did not accept their theology. Once Christians stopped doing this, once they stopped discriminating against us (and it is only in the last 70 years for instance, that Jews have been allowed to become professors of English literature, for instance, and to enter the Christian world’s finest universities according to their merits), we felt less hatred for them.
* “There are about 12 points made by Jews from the OT to prove that the Messiah could not have yet come. Christians apply all these to the second advent.”
I assume that’s comforting for Christians but there is nothing in the Hebrew Bible about the Messiah needing two trips to get the job done. Jesus fulfilled none of the Messianic prophecies ergo Jews have no interest in claims made for him.
* “It is true that Jews have been wronged and robbed by people bearing the name of Christians but these killers were not true followers of him who went about doing good. True followers of Jesus have never been persecutors, only those who in their hatred fooled themselves that they were Christians.”
Any argument you can’t lose you can’t win. If Christians who do evil aren’t true Christians, then you never have to face yourself, do you? Luckily, this way of thinking lost its dominance in Christian life after the Holocaust. You cling to the primitive pre-Holocaust Christian views of Jews that is largely dying out in the Christian world after Christians saw what their preaching, as embodied by you, contributed to the Holocaust.
Yes, we will all pay for our sins, and the payment will be irrespective of our theological beliefs. According to our deeds will we be judged. I want what I deserve, nothing more and nothing less.
