Jewish-Christian Relations Research Articles

Fulfillment, Salvation, and Mission: The Neo-Conservative Catholic Theology of Jewish–Christian Relations after Nostra Aetate

The neo-conservative Catholic movement, led by prominent figures like Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak, played a significant role in shaping Jewish–Christian relations in the United States following the Second Vatican Council. This article analyzes their theological understanding of Jews and Judaism, which combined an adoption of the Council’s conciliatory rhetoric with a relatively narrow interpretation of its teachings. By examining their views on key concepts such as “fulfillment”, salvation, and mission, the article highlights the complexities and tensions within the neo-conservative Catholic approach to interfaith dialogue and its relation to their broader goal of promoting religion in the American public sphere.

Alexander the Macedonian's Image in the Jewish Temple: A Medievaval Tale of Jewish–Non-Jewish Encounter

Abstract: Narratives about Alexander the Macedonian's life were extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages all over Europe and beyond. Crossing cultural boundaries, they were also adopted and adapted for a Jewish readership. In the latter context, the episode about the king's visit to Jerusalem served as a topos of interreligious encounter between the Jews and their non-Jewish rulers. It was first told by Flavius Josephus in the first century as a tale that sets idolatry in contrast with monotheism. Among other episodes, the text reports a dramatic encounter with the Jewish high priest. In medieval versions, Alexander suggests that the high priest erect a golden statue of himself in the sanctuary to honor God. The paper offers an in-depth analysis of this latter motif in different versions of the narrative against the background of medieval Jewish-Christian relations. Abstract: Narratives about Alexander the Macedonian's life were extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages all over Europe and beyond. Crossing cultural boundaries, they were also adopted and adapted for a Jewish readership. In the latter context, the episode about the king's visit to Jerusalem served as a topos of interreligious encounter between the Jews and their non-Jewish rulers. It was first told by Flavius Josephus in the first century as a tale that sets idolatry in contrast with monotheism. Among other episodes, the text reports a dramatic encounter with the Jewish high priest. In medieval versions Alexander suggests that the high priest erect a golden statue of himself in the sanctuary to honor God. The paper offers an in-depth analysis of this latter motif in different versions of the narrative against the background of medieval Jewish-Christian relations.

Jacob's Younger Brother Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II by Karma Ben-Johanan (review)

Jacob's Younger Brother Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II by Karma Ben-Johanan (review)

The fight against Jewish proselytism under Theodosius the Great by the example of the sermons of John Chrysostom and Egyptian papyri

The article is dedicated to the research of the new stage in history of Jewish-Christian relations in Roman Empire started in the second half of the 4th century. In this period, the influence of Jewish religious tradition on mass consciousness of Christians in the Middle East intensified again. The process was reflected in John Chrysostoms’ sermons «Agains the Jews» as well as in works of Church historians. However, besides literary sources, the evidences of popularity of Judaism among Gentiles and Christians in the age of Late Antiquity can be found in vast papyri material uncovered in Egypt. The current work traces the ties between these different types of historical sources, which permit to shed a new light on the topic of proselytism and Jewish-Christian conflicts.

Empire, Mission, and Messianism: Franz Rosenzweig’s Understanding of the Relation between Judaism and Christianity

Abstract This study contributes to contemporary discussions about the entanglement, cross-fertilization, and co-implicatedness of religion and empire by adding a voice from the still underexamined field of Jewish thought. It claims that the European imperial project is inherent to the vision of Judaism, Jewish-Christian relations, and global redemption offered in Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, and that its proper conceptual background is the fin de siècle Protestant discourse offering justifications for empire by wedding territorial expansion, mission, and messianism. By examining the appropriate passages from The Star in light of his early wartime geopolitical writings, it demonstrates that Christian proselytization is essential to Rosenzweig’s vision of redemption and that his contribution to the religious discourse justifying empire resides in his conceptualization of the Jews, subtracted from history and politics, as not targets of mission but as prefiguring the empire-like, borderless, and redeemed existence toward which the Christians, always on “the way,” strive. It concludes by calling for an 'imperial turn' in the study of modern Jewish thought.

What can we learn from Bonhoeffer concerning the churches facing Palestinian suffering?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essay on “The Church and the Jewish Question” (1933) inspired already two ecumenical processes. The first one was the decision of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in 1977 declaring apartheid a status confessionis, the second was the call of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) to engage in a processus confessionis “regarding economic injustice and ecological destruction” (1997). This led the LWF (2003), the WARC (2004) and also the World Council of Churches (WCC in 2013) to formally reject imperial neoliberal capitalism. Now it inspires the church actions against the state of Israel, depriving the Palestinians of their civil and political rights and the justification of this by misusing the Bible in (Christian) Zionism. This amounts to apartheid according to all relevant human rights organizations and the UN. There are important consequences for Christian-Jewish relations in Germany and the West today. After Western antisemitism and the horrific genocide by German Nazis against the Jewish people it was extremely necessary to overcome this past by intensive Christian-Jewish dialogue. However this has become a deal to silence critique of Israel’s constant violations of international law and human rights, as pointed out by the Jewish liberation theologian Marc Ellis. In order to overcome this a theology of land respectful of human rights is needed. Churches are being called to a process of study and discernment leading to action. A special responsibility lies with the churches in Germany and the USA because their governments must link their cooperation with the State of Israel to international law and human rights.

Sewing Mothers: Re-envisioning Jewish-Christian Relations in Sholem Asch’s “On a Carnival Night”

Abstract A close examination of early twentieth-century literature written in Hebrew and Yiddish reveals that many of its first representations of Christianity put a central emphasis on Mary. This fact has been overlooked in previous scholarship fixated on the role of Jesus. Our article aims to fill this lacuna by focusing on Mary’s appearance in a short, controversial story published in 1909 by Sholem Asch. Through a close reading of Mary’s encounter with the matriarch Rachel, we define Asch’s ‘maternal model,’ an alternative paradigm for Jewish-Christian relations. We argue that the marginalization of Mary from the scholarly conversation is not a slipup. Rather, it is part of a gendered scheme that prioritized Jesus over his mother and narratives of persecution and victimhood over care and obligation. We show how Asch’s artfully constructed fictional formation offers a political position founded on empathy and interconnectivity.

Peter von der Osten-Sacken (1940–2022)

Prof. Dr Peter von der Osten-Sacken is one of the important post-Shoah German theologians who gave many impulses for new paradigms of Christian-Jewish relations in Germany. With his theological work he laid the foundation of a fundamental critique and the redefinition of a Protestant theology in the face of Judaism.

Editorial

The major part of this issue is the end result of a conversation that began two years ago with Dr Beniamino Fortis. I had contacted him with a view to the possibility of publishing papers from a conference on the Venice Ghetto. When it was clear that they were no longer available, he raised the idea of organising papers based on his own research area at the Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg related to modern Jewish philosophy and aesthetics, as well as in the field of Jewish-Christian relations at the Seminar für Katholische Theologie der Freien Universität Berlin under the direction of Professor Rainer Kampling. Since both of these areas are firmly within the remit of the journal, I was happy to invite him to edit a collection of papers which reaches its final form here as ‘Relation in Judaism – Judaism in Relation’. He introduces it as well as contributing his own article, ‘Idolatry and Relation: Martin Buber's View’. I would like to express my gratitude for the work he has undertaken in conceiving, inviting and editing the collection.

‘The True Physicians Here are the Padres’: British Christian Army Chaplains and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen

Abstract When a senior medical officer summarised the work of army chaplains in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, he said: ‘The true physicians here are the padres, and they are doing more good to the patients than anyone else’. Chaplains, however, have been largely absent from the extensive scholarship on Belsen. Similarly, widespread interest in post-Holocaust Christian–Jewish relations has ignored the accounts of those Christians who encountered the aftermath of the Holocaust in the liberation of the camps. This article shows that chaplains fulfilled a unique role at Belsen, providing pastoral care which encouraged survivors as they shared their stories. This process of listening was the first encounter of British Christian ministers with the realities of the Holocaust as experienced by its survivors. As a consequence, they differ from most contemporary British narratives of Belsen in their appreciation of the Jewishness of the experience: they largely recognised survivors as Jews and sought to understand the specific nature of Jewish suffering. Finally, this article shows that chaplains recorded their experiences and displayed a sensitive approach to survivor testimony, ensuring not only that a wider audience learned the truth of the liberation of Belsen, but that those accounts were defined by the experiences of the Jewish survivors themselves. The article concludes that the experience of Christian chaplaincy in the liberation of Belsen uncovers a singular example of Christian–Jewish encounter in the aftermath of the Holocaust, one in which Christian ministers demonstrated a profound care for survivors, their identities and their stories.

The Merits of ‘Moral Ecumenism’: Secularism, Suspicion and Jewish-Christian Relations in Twentieth-Century Britain

This article uses the history of Jewish-Christian relations in twentieth-century Britain to shed light on the theological and political changes which have shaped inter-faith dialogue, and explore religious responses to the perceived acceleration of secularism. In so doing it questions the centrality of antisemitism and the Holocaust as the key drivers of change in Jewish-Christian relations and highlights the importance of broader shifts in religious belief, and a growing perception of ‘common ground’ between faiths. While Jewish-Christian relations in Britain are now frequently presented as a model of inter-faith cooperation, this article argues that longstanding theological and political challenges have continued to problematise this role-model status.

Nicaea and Christian–Jewish Relations

AbstractIt is widely recognized that the Council of Nicaea marks a watershed in relations between Christians and Jews – both specifically the Ecumenical Council itself and also more generally the decades around and following 325. It was at this time that the separation between Christians and Jews, and between Christianity and Judaism, can be said to have reached a definitively final form, the conclusion of the long, drawn‐out process referred to as the “parting of the ways.” Despite periods of co‐existence and mutual enrichment, the history of Christian–Jewish relations has too often been marked by toxicity and tragedy. Christians have not only distinguished themselves from Jewish peoplebut have treated them with disparagement, exclusion, and, at times, persecution; moreover, Christian anti‐Judaism prepared the ground for a still more deadly secular antisemitism. Against this background, this article approaches the question of how to mark the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea in terms of its significance for Christian–Jewish relations in our own time.

Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II by Karma Ben-Johanan

Reviewed by: Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II by Karma Ben-Johanan Michael Skaggs Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after Vatican II. By Karma Ben-Johanan. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2022. 352pp. $35.00. Among the more vivid anecdotes recalled by historians of Catholic-Jewish relations is the 1959 Good Friday liturgy celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, as relayed by Michael Phayer in The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965. When the prescribed prayer for the conversion of “the perfidious Jews” [perfidis Judaeis] was chanted, the pope halted the liturgy. He told the deacon to say the prayer again, without perfidis. Six years later, an ecumenical council proclaimed joyfully—specifically in regard to Jews—that “the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and ‘serve him shoulder to shoulder’” (Nostra Aetate, 4). From one perspective, and as often reported in the secular media, the promulgation of Nostra Aetate heralded the end of Catholic-Jewish enmity. Yet accepting this neat bookend to centuries of antisemitism, argues Karma Ben-Johanan, requires overlooking an intricately nuanced development of thought among both Catholic and Jewish thinkers before the council and since. In Jacob’s Younger Brother, Ben-Johanan explores “the relation to the Other as a key component in the consolidation of religious identities in the second half of the twentieth century” (2). The book is not a narrative history of Christian-Jewish dialogue. Instead, Ben-Johanan focuses closely on internal dialogue within each tradition, about the other. Significantly, Ben-Johanan has not offered an uplifting story of ever-approaching unity: “this book is about the problems of rapprochement and not about its successes” (4). Finally, she restricts her well-argued analysis to the thinking and writing of the intellectual elite of each tradition, acknowledging that what she calls “unresolvable tensions” between the two are “confined to specific realms of writing and thinking, to the doctrinal and halakhic cores of the respective traditions” (8). My own work and that of others has demonstrated the [End Page 83] remarkably fraternal relations that have characterized Catholic-Jewish collaboration on several concrete, societal problems. While the book’s main contribution reveals the deeply problematic relationship between Catholicism and Judaism after Vatican II, which ostensibly put an end to the difficulties between Catholics and Jews, Ben-Johanan necessarily guides the reader through the histories of Catholic and Jewish thought. The book is helpfully divided into two main parts, “Judaism in Catholic Theology” and “Christianity in Orthodox Jewish Thought.” Ben-Johanan brilliantly synthesizes centuries of debate within Catholicism and Judaism while maintaining an ultimate focus on thinkers and leaders closer to our own day, including Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, as well as leading rabbinical authorities such as David Rosen of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel (sometimes mistakenly perceived as something like a “Jewish Vatican”) and Eugene Korn of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation. Ben-Johanan offers a lucid narrative of Catholicism and European Judaism metaphorically switching places: while the Catholic Church’s landmark statement on Jews in Nostra Aetate in 1965 appeared as the church’s influence on state power waned, the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 meant Judaism now held an amount of sovereign authority not seen for millennia. Pretensions to fraternity could be lowered in intra-Jewish (particularly intra-Orthodox) discussions of Christianity. In this way, Ben-Johanan argues, public, Orthodox rejections of Catholic-Jewish dialogue became possible precisely because of modern conceptions of religious liberty that the church itself had come to advance. An extreme example is Zvi Yehudah Kook’s full embrace of the charge of “deicide” that had been leveled at Jews for centuries: rather than ascribing the crucifixion of Jesus to the Romans, Kook cited Maimonides: “If it was a rabbinical court, then it was a rabbinical court! A Jewish court . . . not an instance of the gentiles” (203). Ben-Johanan describes Kook’s writing as a thoroughly modern stance for a Jew to take precisely because it rejects the need to placate a majority Christian society. Perhaps the single notable...

Matthew’s Gospel and Jewish–Christian Relations

Matthew’s Gospel is a minefield for Jewish–Christian relations, and the issues raised for preachers involve wider questions about reading and interpreting troubling scriptural passages. The article first examines the Gospel in its first century context (reading it historically), and then explores the interpretation of Matthew in today’s contexts (reading it theologically). In both halves, it focusses on two specific topics: the depiction of Pharisees, and the so-called ‘blood curse’ of Matthew 27:25. It argues that Matthew’s vilification of the Pharisees is based on their unresponsiveness to the message about Jesus, their refusal to recognise him as the torah interpreter par excellence. This raises the question of how we ought to speak of those with whom we disagree. The reappraisal of Christian language about the Pharisees requires more than setting the historical record straight. It involves giving them theological weight, such as taking the Pharisaic habit of questioning, probing, and debating as a positive example. In 27:25, Matthew ties together the significance of Jesus’ death and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem with the offer of forgiveness available in Christ, but at the expense of the Jewish people. Rather than trying to rehabilitate the verse, it is suggested that it be allowed to stand in judgement over us, for all the ways in which we have put words into other people’s mouths, denied their right to self-definition, and imposed our frameworks of meaning upon them. The article ends with a series of guidelines for avoiding anti-Judaism.

Who was Barabbas?: confronting an obstacle for Christian–Jewish relations in religious education

Who was Barabbas?: confronting an obstacle for Christian–Jewish relations in religious education

Coacta voluntas est voluntas: Baptism and Return in Canon Law

Abstract Throughout the early Middle Ages, the border between Christianity and Judaism was comparatively permeable, and baptized Jews, particularly those baptized under duress, frequently returned openly to Judaism. While modern scholars of Jewish-Christian relations often assume that medieval canon law always forbade this, a single norm governing converts’ re-conversion, or reversion, did not begin to emerge until the mid-twelfth century with the Decretum Gratiani. The Decretum established the preeminence of the canon that barred Jewish baptizands’ reversion and acted as a catalyst for discussions about the limits of consent and coercion, baptism and conversion. These debates provided the foundation for the mandates of the early thirteenth century that did establish the legal boundary between Jew and Christian which lasted into modernity: so long as baptizands consented, even if under duress, they were Christians and could not return to Judaism.

"Allí se puso este Libro de la Ley": breve reflexión sobre una glosa exegética al Deuteronomio 31 en la Biblia romanceada de Moshe Arragel

This study focuses on an exegetical gloss in the Old Spanish Bible of rabbi Moshe Arragel (1 st half of the 15 th century), specifically on Deuteronomy 31, and its historical significance for the intellectual history of Jewish-Christian relations in late medieval Spain. This gloss, addressed to the Christian sponsor of this Bible translation, centers on an intra-biblical reference to the Jewish canon of the Bible itself as a book, that is the Torah scroll as both written literature and a physical object of synagogal worship. We analyze in some detail Arragel’s recourse to the rabbinical Bible commentaries ad locum in order to educate his Christian addressee on the divergent views of Christians and Jews about the Scriptural canon and its material textualization.

KarmaBen‐Johanan. Jacob's Younger Brother: Christian–Jewish Relations after Vatican II. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2022. 356 pp.

The Ecumenical ReviewVolume 74, Issue 5 p. 842-844 Book Review Karma Ben-Johanan. Jacob's Younger Brother: Christian–Jewish Relations after Vatican II. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2022. 356 pp. David Maayan, Corresponding Author David Maayan maayan@bc.edu Search for more papers by this author David Maayan, Corresponding Author David Maayan maayan@bc.edu Search for more papers by this author First published: 19 January 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/erev.12750Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume74, Issue5Special Issue: Healing Wounded Memories Through Interreligious Perspective and EngagementDecember 2022Pages 842-844 RelatedInformation

Blood libels, Elite Competition and Inter-Confessional Violence: Jewish-Christian Relations in Ottoman Damascus in the first part of the 19th

Blood libels, Elite Competition and Inter-Confessional Violence: Jewish-Christian Relations in Ottoman Damascus in the first part of the 19th

A Catholic Response to John Pawlikowski on the Persistence of Antisemitism

A Catholic Response to John Pawlikowski on the Persistence of Antisemitism John Borelli (bio) The short answer to John Pawlikowski's question is: no, antisemitism has not been uprooted from Christianity. In fact, it may never be completely uprooted because Christians constitute a huge and diverse population, separated into churches of various affiliations and groupings. Only some Christians have taken an official position condemning antisemitism. There may always be subsets among Christians who claim that antisemitism is justified based on their understanding of Christian sources. Nearly all Pawlikowski's references are to Catholic sources. He is asking the question of Catholics, and the short answer is regrettably "no" and frustratingly "not yet." The massive communion of the Catholic Church includes 20 or more churches, with Latin or Roman Catholics constituting the vast majority, and uprooting antisemitism among Catholics is a more complex task than it might seem. Pawlikowski pleads for Catholics "in [a] concrete, detailed effort to finally uproot antisemitism from Christian religious identity." My reply is a resounding yes in agreement that Catholics should make a concerted effort to remove antisemitism finally from all aspects of Catholic identity. Pope Benedict XVI, speaking at the Yad Vashem Memorial on May 11, 2009, made clear that there is no room anywhere [End Page 299] within Catholicism or outside it for antisemitism and denial of the Holocaust: "May the names of these victims never perish! May their suffering never be denied, belittled or forgotten! And may all people of goodwill remain vigilant in rooting out from the heart of man anything that could lead to tragedies such as this!"1 This was a very strong statement by Pope Benedict. Earlier that year, when he granted remission of excommunication to four bishops ordained illicitly by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Pope Benedict had not realized that one of the four was a denier of the Holocaust. All four bishops, including Lefebvre, who passed away in 1991, were deniers of the teachings of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (Vatican II), including its teachings on Jews, which Pawlikowski summarized in his essay. In the Pope's haste to offer dissenting bishops an incentive to accept the full teachings of the Catholic Church, the pope and his advisors failed in the task of recognizing and uprooting the vestiges of antisemitism from the Church. To clarify that denial of the Holocaust was incompatible with Catholic teaching, Pope Benedict offered this prayer at his public audience on January 28, 2009, following that unfortunate realization: "May the Shoah be a warning for all against forgetfulness, denial or reductionism, because violence committed against one single human being is violence against all."2 There may always be antisemites among those who identify as Catholic, but such people should know that they will find no justification from current Catholic teaching for being antisemitic. Deborah E. Lipstadt, President Biden's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, has described antisemitism as "not unlike a stubborn infection."3 Lipstadt notes that the operative word is "persisting" in a definition provided by Helen Fein some years ago: "A persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collectivity manifested in individuals, as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore, and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews."4 The unfortunate fact is that antisemitism persists because it has existed in some form [End Page 300] or another for nearly two millennia among Christians and others who learned it from Christians. The Adversus Judaeos Tradition Pawlikowski has dedicated himself over a lengthy and successful career to the study of Judaism and Christian-Jewish relations. He has authored greatly needed resources for Christians and others and worked tirelessly toward the repudiation of the Adversus Judaeos (Against the Jews) tradition. This effort became a churchwide effort for Catholics in 1965 with the promulgation The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate) by an overwhelming vote of 2221 out of 2312 votes cast in the final weeks of Vatican II.5 I welcome this...