I should not be a Jew. Born a Jew, tempted to become a Christian, I should be an ethical humanist or a Unitarian/Universalist. Jews who hate being Jewish often want to be U/U because they want to be neither Jew nor Christian. It is one thing to hate oneself for being a Jew, quite another to join those who have long hated Jews.
But I am a Jew and gratified to be one, though not of the conventional sort. The three traditional pillars of Judaism—God, Torah, and Israel (the people, not, thank God, the state)—are not mine. I am an agnostic; have never learned Hebrew, studied Torah, or been Bar Mitzvahed; and, not knowing the language or the rituals, I am ill at ease in a temple and belong to none. Yet I am a strong believer in Judaism or my version of it. So this account of my birthright faith, the youthful temptation of Christianity, my mid-life resistance to it, and my return to a self-reformulated Judaism is less about personal growth than theological evolution, or the former as a result of the latter.
My quip resolves the obvious contradiction between thanking God and declaring myself an agnostic: I do not believe in God, but He believes in me. I am fine with that asymmetric relationship. Still, I deprecate His concern for me; He should have more important things to worry about. As for “He,” I was raised to imagine God as an old, white, male, sort of like me, though He is shown with more hair than I have. I now understand that “She” is a young, black, woman. If I could change that ingrained childhood image, I would go with the latter, especially if She has nice dreadlocks.
The only outward evidence that I am Jewish is my circumcision. Though I could, I do not try to pass. I am fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and blond-haired, or was—probably a throw-back to my German ancestry. I do not wear a yellow star on my shirt or jacket pocket which says “Jude” and do not meet people or begin conversations by declaring my faith. If the topic is religion, I declare myself if doing so is appropriate. Even then, some people have thought that I jested; assured otherwise, they give me that making-it-all-right riff: you-don’t-look-like-a-Jew or you-don’t-act-like-a-Jew.
My parents were Jewish; my mother traced her descent through the Cohens back who knows how far. They contributed money, time, or effort to charities and social service organizations, some Jewish, some not. As the famous Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver’s Temple retreated from reform Judaism in response to Hitler and American antisemitism in the 30s and 40s, they joined others in breaking away after the war to found a classical reform temple so purified of Jewish practices that the Sunday school taught no Hebrew and the temple Bar or Bat Mitzvahed no one. I was confirmed, however—a stamp of a more or less good Jewish upbringing.
My early experience of Judaism was a paltry affair. Sunday school taught me little. My family attended temple for Rosh Hashanah (New Year’s Day) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), had a casual Passover Seder with family relatives, and, for the eight nights of Chanukah, lit candles, sang “Rock of Ages,” and gave gifts. (We also had a Christmas tree, exchanged presents, and threw a big party.) During my high school years, I wanted to quit the temple, but my mother advised me to wait until I had graduated from college, and I did so. At the end of my senior year, I met with the rabbi; explained that, as a philosophy major, I had given the matter much thought; and said that I wished to sever my ties to the temple. He responded by accusing me of wanting to pass—an accusation which I denied and resented. Although he attended some parties in my parents’ home, I said no more than civility required; he expected nothing more from me, for my parents had told him that he had made an irrevocable mistake by impugning my integrity. Still, he never apologized.
During my college years, on the basis of my major, a comparative religion course, and much outside reading and thinking, I almost self-converted to Christianity. I wanted something morally superior to the eye-for-an-eye principle of revenge, which I believed to be Jewish. Then, while writing my master’s thesis at home, I was tempted by a high-school classmate, a twelve-on-a-scale-of-ten, drop-dead, beauty. Our relationship was poetic, not Platonic; we discussed marriage. My response to what she told me her Baptist parents expected, namely, that I say that I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, ended it all. I told her that I did not think of myself as philosophically or religiously Jewish but did think of myself as culturally and socially Jewish, and that I could not say such a thing in making wedding vows. She pleaded that I would only have to say it, not believe it, but I said that the truth of my views and the falsity of my vows would cause no end of trouble for everyone. That was that until we met again at our 30th reunion.
I must have been in the marrying mood. A year later, after I had gone into the Army as an officer and a gentleman, my father’s elder first cousin and his wife fixed me up with my father’s younger first cousin’s daughter. Her mother was Episcopalian, her father Jewish—and there, in the family tree, lurked the serpent. To work in his intended profession in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, her father had to pass, and her mother helped. The sad fact is that children of Jewish parents who pass often feel dirty or guilty; unawares, they often become antisemitic. My fiancée unhesitatingly agreed that we would raise our children as Jews. But when it came time for us to join a temple and our children to begin Sunday school, my wife realized her inner antisemitism and passive-aggressively eroded her pre-marital promise. We struggled; our son accepted Bar Mitzvah, our daughter refused Bat Mitzvah, both children were confirmed. Soon thereafter, we divorced.
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This story is the context of the origins of my reaffirmation of Judaism. No hypocrite, I; when we sent our children to Sunday school, I knew that, knowing little about Judaism, I needed to know more. I enrolled in introductory classes at a Jewish community center and learned much. I read books. Instruction and reading added to my knowledge of Judaism and helped me to draw out and develop knowledge absorbed unconsciously in childhood and adolescence. (Many Christians absorb Christianity in the same way.) I thought much, soul-searched, and came to admire Judaism.
In the process, I had to unlearn many errors about Judaism which I had absorbed unconsciously from the prevailing Christian culture. For example, I unlearned that the “eye-for-an-eye” principle, or lex talionis, is, as Christians think, a law of revenge; and learned that it is, as Jews believe, a law of just compensation, something quite different and quite civilized. I probably have come to know more about Christianity than most Christians know about it. I certainly have come to know more about Judaism than most Christians know about it or, because of what they are taught about Judaism, think that they know about it.
The difference between what I know and what Christians know about these two religions is Christian privilege. It allows them to assume the superiority of Christianity, to think little enough about Christianity and less about Judaism, and believe what they have been taught, and remain unaware that they are ill-informed about their faith and misinformed about mine. When I lead non-competitive, non-judgmental discussions comparing Christianity and Judaism or addressing antisemitism, I work remedially. Participants appreciate my efforts, claim to have learned much, but do not shake the canards of early Christian instruction. Here, I am not obliged to religious neutrality or instructional balance, only to honest exposition. I criticize some common Christian beliefs which Christians seldom question but which I questioned in returning to Judaism. These criticisms may help Christians to realize that their religion is not self-evidently superior to other religions and not immune to scrutiny and skepticism. I hope that they encourage a modicum of respect for Judaism from a Jewish perspective.
To prevent misperceptions of my stance on Christianity, I must state that, however critical I am of it and some conduct which derives from its doctrines and rituals, I am not “anti.” Many members of my families—original, extended, and marital—are Christians; I love those who love me, tolerate those tainted by antisemitism. I admire Christianity for its inspiration of great art: literature, music, paintings, sculptures, and churches. If I could have any one work of Christian art, it would be El Greco’s “Crucifixion.” Each time I see it, I am moved, not to belief, but to what I think that a believer feels. Christianity tells a beguiling story about Jesus’ birth, dubious ones about his life, and a troublesome one about his death. It is strong on aesthetics, weak on ethics. Years ago, bookstores carried a book entitled Christian Ethics; a jest in earnest, it is just blank pages!
I do not admire its proselytizing efforts. When Christian missionaries have visited my home, I politely inform them that I am committed to my faith. If they persist, I properly tell them that they give offense in presuming that their religion, whatever it is, is better than mine, unknown to them. If they still persist, I pointedly identify my faith and indicate that their further attempt to proselytize me would be antisemitic. In fact, any attempt to proselytize Jews—Jews for Jesus is an obscenity—is antisemitic.
Christian antisemitism, the most repulsive feature of Christianity, is an anomaly. No other successor religion repudiates and reviles its predecessor—Islam from Christianity, Buddhism from Hinduism—and relies on loathing it and its followers to support its own faith and followers. The anomaly is not accidental. Roots matter. Judaism traces its origins to Abraham’s second son, Isaac; Islam, to his first son, Ishmael; Christianity, to Abraham only indirectly by long, convoluted, inconsistent genealogies through Judaism.
Resentment also matters. Antisemitism arises early in Christianity and grew as the earliest followers of Jesus realized that most Jews were not following him, but pagans were. Paul attacked Jewish law; Gospel writers attacked it and Jews; such attacks have continued to this day. When not censored or sanitized, the history of Christianity and Judaism is one of prejudice, persecution, plunder, pillage, torture, forced conversion, murder, exile, or extermination. For example, The Oxford History of Christianity (1990) says little about Christian origins in Judaism and nothing about antisemitism later. A corrective is William Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate (1993), a book which bookstores hid in their Judaica sections from Christians. I find little appeal in a religion the followers of which mistreated, and still mistreat, Jews while preaching that their god is a loving one and enjoins people to love neighbors and enemies alike.
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Christianity has always offered me as a Jew a medley of mysterious, misinformed, or mistaken positions which it cannot explain, does not correct, and expects to be taken on faith. Accepting them requires a leap of faith, but I could not leap after I looked.
The most basic consideration of all, God, creates a major theological divide between Christianity and Judaism. Both claim to be monotheistic, but only one is. Judaism posits one God, indivisible, without distinct or separable constituent components; the Jewish God is a simplex. Christianity posits one God of three persons: Father, Son (aka Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit—a complex. Language tells me that simplexes and complexes are not the same. Explanations of the Trinity are little more than metaphor-mongering and word-spinning. Most Christians, trained up to this belief, shrug off this mystery and do not worry themselves. But I believe what is clear, not confused.
Close behind as a theological divide is Jesus. Unlike some Jews, I have no problem with Jesus or Jesus Christ and do not associate his name with Jewish suffering or death. Indeed, eager to learn more about him, I joined the Jesus Seminar in the mid-90s and did learn more about him. But I also learned that its academic members knew less about Judaism than they thought. Paula Fredriksen’s Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews is a better account of Jesus as a Jew, perhaps because Fredriksen was a Catholic before she became a Jew and liberated herself from the influences of her upbringing.
Even so, I still do not think that I know who or what the man was or any way to know him, despite—truly, because of—his representations in the Gospels. The problems of knowing Jesus seem insurmountable. The Gospels, suspect because of uncertainties of transmission and the influences of parochial doctrine, comprise little reliable evidence. Their different inclusions, exclusions, inconsistencies, and improbabilities contribute to their unreliability as biography or history. They fail to provide a consistent, credible account of what Jesus said or did which made him so special, the messiah, even the Son of God. On the contrary, he was not the kind of messiah whom most Jews had expected: a political, military, and religious leader like David, to whom Matthew and Luke link him by different genealogies. Neither his work as miracle worker, exorcist, healer, or teacher; nor his words as a prophet of an impending apocalypse were unique. If a prophet, he was no better than others and not a very good one; he predicted that it and the kingdom of God were soon to come. But Christians are still waiting for them and making excuses for the delay. Some even want to use Jews by getting them to gather as a prompt to The Rapture. Jews no longer look for a messiah, but rather a messianic age; I look for more of the same of what we already have unless we make our own apocalypse by nuclear warfare or climate change.
The Gospels present an unreliable account of Jesus’ life and an implausible account of his death in their story of Passion Week. Although I distrust the Synoptic Gospels, I still use them to imagine Jesus: I see him as a charismatic cult leader with a message aligned with the fashionable apocalypticism of his day. His success, though limited, led him to take himself a little too seriously. He came to Jerusalem as he often had and expected to leave it as he often had. Only this time, he somehow overdid it during a holiday when the city, swollen with an influx of worshippers, was on edge. Roman occupiers arrested, tried, convicted, and crucified him, as it had dealt with other Jews, including itinerant Jewish prophets, for being inconvenient or troublesome.
One episode is so unlikely that I regard it as a pagan come-on: the offering (later, the Eucharist) at the Passover Seder or Last Supper. When Jesus symbolically represented bread as his body and wine as his blood, he evoked a pagan ritual without precedent in Judaism. It defies belief that Jesus, a Jew having a Jewish meal with his Jewish apostles, could have even symbolically enacted god-eating, or theophagy, and had their approval. Yet the idea made sense to Gospel writers pitching their appeals to pagans with a story which made Jesus one of them. The pagan legacy of this ritual has less than no appeal to Christians today. A conservative Catholic website banned me for life for noting this point in reply to a commenter who had called all non-Catholic Christian denominations pagan. Of course, neither cannibalism nor god-eating, literal or symbolic, appeals to me.
A historical note: This prejudice against paganism is misplaced, at least in explaining the spread and success of Christianity. The Synoptic Gospels promoted Christianity by rendering Jesus as a demigod joining the godhead. A structural parallel between the lives of Jesus and Dionysius, who was popular in the eastern Mediterranean area, not least in Tarsus, a center of his cult and Paul’s birthplace, is clear. Dionysius’s parents were the highest god Zeus and woman Semele; Dionysius lived a life which got him into trouble with authorities; was tried, convicted, executed, and resurrected to the pantheon of gods; there, served as an intermediary to his followers on earth. Moreover, despite a shared belief in resurrection, incorporation into or junction with the godhead was a pagan, not a Jewish, idea. Intriguing is the omission of the birth story from Mark but its occurrence in Matthew and Luke, as if their invention meant to complete the structural parallel. The result is that the structural similarities of Dionysius’s and Jesus’ life stories promoted the success of Christianity. They made Jesus a familiar, accessible, acceptable figure to pagans. Although the doctrine of the Trinity came later, its components in the Christian godhead existed from the beginning; this complex served two audiences: one God for Jews; three gods for pagans. Christianity may be an ethical backsliding in its abandonment of the law, but its emphasis on love for others was a distinct contribution to paganism, which lacked any such virtue, and to civilization.
The story of Passion Week is equally offensive in blaming Jews for killing Jesus. Whatever role, if any, a few Jews may have played in his crucifixion, the great majority of Jews then had, and all Jews since have had, nothing to do with his death. Christians have abused an entire group for the possible involvement of a few individuals—excessive revenge which the Jewish principle of lex talionis, or just compensation, repudiates. Any claim today that the Jews killed Christ is vindictive antisemitism armed for murder.
Jesus’ crucifixion marks another divide between Christianity and Judaism, one on a person’s accountability for conduct. Christianity posits that Jesus sacrificed himself in an act of universal atonement for each person’s sins. This belief implies that everyone is born a sinner, lives a life of sin, and may be absolved of sin only by God’s grace. My objections to this core Christian belief are theological, practical, and moral. To the idea that sin is a condition of being, not a contingency of conduct, thus accountable for being a sinner without having done anything sinful. To the idea that a person cannot hold himself responsible for his conduct and, if he sins, cannot redeem himself by making amends or accepting punishment. To the concept of vicarious atonement, by which someone makes sacrifices to redeem another. To the notion of .salvation, conditioned but not certained, by a belief, necessary but not sufficient, in Jesus as savior. Salvation on these terms diminishes the first and second persons of the Trinity. God and the Son of God require a person’s love and belief, yet may not return his love and save him even if that person fulfills His need. Truly loving persons do not bargain for love.
Historically, this Christian belief has been a dangerous, even a deadly, one to Jews. Christians make it dangerous by presuming that they have the right to judge others according to the Christian idea of sin and to punish Jews as sinners. Either to punish or to save Jews from what Christians view as their incorrigibly unrepentant, sinful souls, they make it deadly by hounding Jews to death’s doorstep and across the threshold.
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My major objection to Christianity, however, is not its antisemitism but its rejection of Jewish law, one prompt to antisemitism. It begins with Jesus, who reportedly said, “Think not that I have come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am come not to destroy, but to fulfil....one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt 5:17-18). In all other places, he debates, defies, or undermines it. His injunctions—“resist not evil” (Matt 5:39), “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt 7:1), and “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17)—contradict the core Jewish obligation to live righteously, which requires judging what is evil and opposing it. They relieve Christians of social responsibility; they substitute charity of effects, for reform of causes. Christianity made peace with the state; Judaism never has—which explains why Jews are over-represented in reform movements, like civil rights in matters of race, gender, and religion.
Jesus reduces the law to two paramount commandments. When asked, “which is the great commandment in the law,” Jesus answers, “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt 22:36-40; also Mark 12:28-31 and Luke 10:27). His first commandment quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 but substitutes “mind” for “might.” His second is the Golden Rule, which, far from being distinctively Christian, is nearly universal. The earliest Jewish and the Christian version of the Golden Rule in its positive form justifies intervention for better or worse in others’ lives. For better, it justifies helping others in distress: hungry, sick, injured, infirm, ill-clothed, homeless, and the like. For worse, it justifies hindering others in their life choices: contraception, abortion, marriage, alcohol, drugs, smoking, music, clothing, and hairstyles, etc. I prefer the later Jewish version articulated by Rabbi Hillel (d. 10 C.E.), an aged contemporary of Jesus, do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you, for three reasons: it respects others, rules out infringements of their freedom, and rejects coercion. Yet this version implies empathy for others which obliges assistance to people in distress.
The rejection of Jewish law is prominent in Paul, whose account of law is an allegory of two figures: the law, which defines a sin, and Sin, which causes one to violate the law.
Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. (Romans, 7:7-9)
Paul means that knowing a law against a sin empowers Sin to make a person commit that sin and that, without that law, Sin would lack the means of empowerment. That is, you would not speed if there were no speed limit, but you would if there were. Or, as Mark Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi, “for we were little Christian children and early learned the value of forbidden fruit.” Yet, even if Paul’s argument were plausible for the two commandments on coveting, it would be variably implausible for killing, adultery, stealing, and false witness. People may be tempted to commit these acts, but knowing the laws against them is rarely a temptation to commit them.
Yet, with respect to Jewish law, Christianity is inconsistent. Many Christians claim to reject it, notably the codification of 613 laws widely accepted by Jews, and to replace it with love, but they respect the Ten Commandments. However, Paul’s argument rejects all Jewish law, possibly excepting the first four commandments, which constitute a loose construction of Jesus’ commandment to love God.
What Christianity lacks, Judaism has. Admittedly, some of its laws are outdated, unexceptional, or repetitious; others remain applicable or adaptable to circumstances and conditions today. Yet, without having read them, lay Christians dismiss them as too numerous or too onerous. Having read them, Pope Frances declared them “dead” if they do not lead to Christ. His position, which disregards Vatican II pieties, is evidence that most Christians are religiously incapable of respecting Jewish law, Judaism, and Jews. Although traditional Christianity gives Christians many reasons for hating Jews, the root of this evil is Judaism itself, with its core demand to live righteously by God’s law.
The reason for such traditional Christian responses to Jewish law arises in the earliest Christian writings. Paul opposes law (bad) versus love (good). The Gospels denigrate Jewish law not only by stories of the Pharisees’ sinister efforts to trap Jesus in violations of law, but also by their Passion Week accounts of Jesus’ trial, a legal setting. Implied in their dubious accounts is that his trial under Jewish law led to Jesus’ crucifixion. Thus, the foundations of antisemitism and the canard about Jews as Christ-killers, respectively, Jewish law and Jesus’ post-trial crucifixion, are integral to the most important doctrinal and narrative books of the New Testament. By virtue of denominational doctrine, early religious education, or church services, most Christians are unavoidably more or less antisemitic. The British witticism on antisemitism is almost apt here: antisemitism is hating Jews more than is necessary.
Christian repudiation of Jewish law is one thing; discomfort at or downright hatred of Jews for their continuing allegiance to their God and their law, and their refusal to follow Jesus is another. This insecurity implies that Christians find their faith in a resurrected Jesus, his intercessionary assistance in life, and his promise of immortality after this life, all without reference to Judaism and Jews, insufficient. It makes Christians addicted to Judaism. They believe that rejecting Judaism or reviling Jews—or worse—props up them or their faith—despite the irony of disobeying Jesus’ instruction to love one’s enemies. If they cannot take comfort in their faith, they cannot expect others to seek it there.
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My return to Judaism I attribute to Jewish law, not the 613 laws, but the idea of law. Judaism was the first of two—Islam is the second—of the world’s major religions to make law essential to it. Judaism promotes the paramount idea of law, and advocates for fair or just laws as an imperative means to make civilization possible, a civilizing influence in society, and, by their internalization, a self-discipline for the moral character of civilized people. The opposite of Judaism is pagan religion, with its lack of a code of conduct.
One attractive aspect of the law is its independence from the vagaries of human passions and impulses. Jesus’ injunction “Love your enemies” (Matt 5:44) may be a vain one if one does not. Then one often treats the enemy badly, even hatefully. (Jesus introduces this injunction with a lie: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’” [Matt 5:43; no text supports the second phrase].) Decades ago, the media showed the faces of Baptists in Little Rock and Catholics in South Boston filled with anger at and hatred of blacks integrating their schools. Recently, the media showed alt-right marchers protesting the removal of Confederate statues in Charlottesville and promoting a white Christian ideology of racial and religious bigotry. By contrast, Jews do not have to love their enemies; they have only—not to minimize this challenge—to treat them respectfully and equally under the law. I like the law and the laws because they are of the head and define duties which a body can perform.
Another attractive aspect of the law is its reasonableness in all senses of the word. Jews are known as “The People of the Book,” which traditionally meant The Holy Scriptures (not its Christian translation The Old Testament, which loses much, gains much, like rendering “maiden” as “virgin”). Over centuries of changing circumstances, the “book” has become a metaphor for education generally. Jewish parents once rejoiced to have a son who was a Torah scholar; today, not so much, but something else. To wit, a Jewish definition of the beginning of life is the day when a child graduates from law or medical school. The tradition of the “book” continues in typically Jewish respect for learning and argument. I value both.
One exclusively Jewish story brings law and learning together. With the Archangel Michael at his right hand, God and the most learned rabbi of the day are debating the meaning of a Torah law. Back and forth it goes. Finally, God delivers His last and best argument. The rabbi ponders it and then replies. He demolishes God’s argument and asserts his last and best. God concedes defeat, turns to Michael, and, beaming with pride, says, “That’s my boy!” No such story exists in all of Christian literature or lore; only Jews can have such a story. Why? Christians cannot argue with God because they have no contract with God. Jews can and do because their contract with Him gives them, though junior parties, standing to debate its terms. Accordingly, unlike Christians, who kneel when they pray, Jews never kneel but stand to pray.
In conclusion, I became my kind of Jew for two principal reasons typical of Judaism: ethics and education. I can think of no better religious practice than living and striving to live according to standards of righteousness and rationality, with due regard for facts, logic, and judgment seasoned by experience, empathy, reflection, and compassion.
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