Recently in Interfaith Relations Category

Rabbi Stern’s recent comments on Pope Benedict and the direction in which he is taking the Catholic Church gives good cause for alarm. On the one hand, the Pope is certainly well within his rights (and role) to assert that Catholic doctrine is the sole truth and all those outside of the Church will suffer eternal damnation. On the other hand, this is almost surely not a helpful point to bring out when one also claims to be seeking greater interfaith understanding.

I certainly understand that in interfaith dialogue everyone is entitled to their theological convictions, as we discussed on this blog a few weeks ago, and no one should enter dialogue seeking to prove someone else is wrong. But I see real problems with the “fundamentalist relativism” Rabbi Stern describes. Fundamentalism is based on assuming your truth alone is complete and correct, without allowing the possibility for questioning and discovery. There is a great difference between saying, "I believe Jesus is the one and only path to salvation" and "Jesus is the one and only path to salvation." The former informs the listener while the latter seeks to make a claim upon him.

Pope Benedict has once again taken steps to roll back the strides made by Vatican II regarding interfaith dialogue. On July 11, seemingly out of nowhere he decided to tell the world that the only true Church is the Catholic Church. His comments have roiled Protestants and other Christian groups that for years have been building ecumenical brodges with the Church.

But even more problematic is the Pope's decision to reintroduce the Latin Mass with prayers beseeching God to convert the Jews. The problem with the Pope's comments and action is not that they lack a basis, but why now, with all the strife between peoples of faith, does he find it so important to degrade other religions and faiths?

Just a few weeks ago I wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Jewish Week warning against the increasingly disturbing staments being issued by the Pope and others with regard to the interfaith dialogue. Here are a few of my arguments:

In the past few years there have emerged some very new and trailblazing studies on Jesus and his relationship to Judaism. Pope Bendict in his newly published book, "Jesus of Nazareth", spent 18 pages addressing Jewish scholar Jacob Nuesner’s opposition to Jesus’ teachings and his interpretation of the Jewish tradition. The Pope’s words, like Neusner’s are written in the most respectful and thoughtful manner. Rabbi Waxman in his post goes further than Neusner arguing why Jews don’t need Jesus. The problem however, with Rabbi Waxman’s post is that he forgets just how much Jews in the first century did need Jesus. Yes, Neusner is correct that Jesus’ answer was wrong, but the rabbinic critique of Temple-based Judaism and Jesus’ critique of Judaism are both very similar and show how Judaism did, in some ways, need Jesus.

There are some things Jews can believe about Jesus. We can believe that he was a Jewish man who lived during the first century CE. He was well versed in the ways of the Pharisees, who he often quotes. (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a paraphrase of a statement by the Pharisaic elder Hillel.) He preached a unique message of economic justice, faith, and acceptance during a time of great social upheaval in Palestine under increasingly oppressive Roman rule. He was killed by the Romans as a Jew, crucified like many other Jews of his time.

We can also believe that if Jesus were alive at the time, he would have condemned much of what has been done in his name, from the Crusades to the Inquisition to the pogroms of Eastern Europe, etc., etc.

There are other things Jews cannot believe about Jesus.

My freshman year of college, I was accosted by a classmate who lived across the hall in our dorm, a born-again Christian whose fervor and certainty I found both compelling and disturbing. Learning that I was Jewish, she immediately expressed her admiration for Jews as "God’s chosen people." She asked questions about Jewish belief and practice but the one question that she couldn’t get her mind around, the one she kept returning to was, "But you don’t believe in Jesus, right? So according to your religion, how are you saved?"

I, too, had difficulty wrapping my head around that question–it’s such a fundamentally un-Jewish question. My classmate was taking Christian categories and simply trying to find the analogous terms or concepts in Judaism. But of course it doesn’t work that way. Just as languages each have their own flavors and nuances and words that can’t be readily translated into other languages, a religious tradition is a rich system of symbol and meaning with its own integrity. There is no "Jewish" translation of the word, or, more importantly, of the concept of a "savior" like Jesus.