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The Law of Freedom, the Freedom of the Law

Randi Rashkover

in Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics

This chapter begins with an expanded account of Rosenzweig's phenomenology of revelation and argues that the event of revelation is the event of a divine, unconditional gift of love. As unconditional ... More

This chapter begins with an expanded account of Rosenzweig's phenomenology of revelation and argues that the event of revelation is the event of a divine, unconditional gift of love. As unconditional gift, divine love registers as divine command to receive or testify to this love. The link between love and command reflects the nature of divine law as the free affirmation of the difference between God and persons. As well, Chapter 6 analyzes the character of human freedom and in particular, what is means to say that persons are justified morally, existentially, and epistemologically in the law. Chapter 6 also offers an account of the impact of the logic of the law for understanding the meaning of religious truth and introduces a new post-polemical logic for Jewish-Christian relations.Less

Introduction

Adiel Schremer

in Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity

This chapter introduces the reader to the theme of “Jewish and Christian relations in Late Antiquity,” as treated by students of early rabbinic Judaism. It describes recent developments in scholarly ... More

This chapter introduces the reader to the theme of “Jewish and Christian relations in Late Antiquity,” as treated by students of early rabbinic Judaism. It describes recent developments in scholarly views of the relations between classical rabbinic texts and early Christian texts, and critically discusses especially the contributions of Israel J. Yuval and Daniel Boyarin to the field. It suggests that the early rabbinic reaction to Christianity should be seen as part of the rabbinic discourse of minut, which, following a theory current in sociological literature, should be understood as a discourse responding to an identity crisis and re-establishing group identity, by the ousting of some of society's member and their placement beyond the pale. The chapter concludes with explicating the book's historical approach to rabbinic texts and their interpretation.Less

Conclusion

Caroline Johnson Hodge

in If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul

This concluding chapter begins with a discussion of whether the assemblies in Paul's letters would have been understood as ethnic groups or some other sort of community. While they did speak in terms ... More

This concluding chapter begins with a discussion of whether the assemblies in Paul's letters would have been understood as ethnic groups or some other sort of community. While they did speak in terms of common ancestry, they were not concerned with future generations like other ethnic groups in the ancient world and much of Paul's language comes from the practice of psychagogy, as in schools of philosophy. Some final reflections consider the relevance of this study for Christians today, for feminist concerns, and for Jewish-Christian relations. Ethnic discourses thus serve as tools not only in Paul's mythmaking, but also in the mythmaking engaged in by interpreters.Less

The Leaping Child: Imagining the Unborn in Early Christian Literature

Catherine Playoust and Ellen Bradshaw Aitken

in Imagining the Fetus: The Unborn in Myth, Religion, and Culture

Christian literature of the first and second centuries CE contains few references to unborn children; where they are found, however, the unborn become an important rhetorical site for constructing ... More

Christian literature of the first and second centuries CE contains few references to unborn children; where they are found, however, the unborn become an important rhetorical site for constructing relationships between competing religious groups. The Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy for the unborn Jesus provides him with a rich and contended heritage that displays his destiny as well as his origin. In the Gospel of Luke, the narrative of the joyful recognition of the unborn Jesus in Mary’s womb by the unborn John the Baptist establishes not only the relationship between Jesus and John as adults but also the place of John’s disciples within the Christian movement. The second-century Protevangelium of James tells of Mary’s perception of “two peoples” in her womb, one lamenting and the other rejoicing; these “peoples” signify divergent social and religious responses to Jesus. The practices of joy and lamentation as projected onto the unborn provide a means for negotiating religious differences and shaping a genealogy of religious origins.Less

The Translator as Double Agent

in Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation

This book explores translation as a site for Jewish–Christian encounter and uses Jewish–Christian relations as a lens through which to study translation. This introductory chapter begins with the ... More

This book explores translation as a site for Jewish–Christian encounter and uses Jewish–Christian relations as a lens through which to study translation. This introductory chapter begins with the story of the author's father, Hillel Seidman, who calmed a group of Jewish refugees who arrived in Paris without proper documents. Speaking in Yiddish, Seidman assured them that they would not be mistreated; that he would keep track of where they were taken and that the Jewish community of Paris would arrange for their release as soon as possible. It is argued that beyond the content of what he was saying, Seidman's Galicianer Yiddish was itself performing his Jewish affiliations, announcing where he came from and where his sympathies could be assumed to lie. The chapter then discusses the meaning of Jewish translation. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less

Introduction

Ruth Langer

in Cursing the Christians?: A History of the Birkat HaMinim

Christian censorship of the birkat haminim destabilized a statutory Jewish prayer. Study of the history of this prayer and the polemics surrounding it provides a window onto relationships between ... More

Christian censorship of the birkat haminim destabilized a statutory Jewish prayer. Study of the history of this prayer and the polemics surrounding it provides a window onto relationships between Jews and Christians throughout their shared history. This introduction provides basic background for the reader unfamiliar with the birkat haminim and its liturgical context before moving to a discussion of relevant methodological issues in the study of Jewish liturgy and then an overview of the book as a whole and its historical sweep. While the book offers an inner-Jewish liturgical history, it also contributes to contemporary Christian-Jewish relations, offering a self-critical study of an aspect of Jewish liturgy that becomes “difficult” in light of today’s dialogue.Less

Shared Spaces: Social Interactions in the Countryside

in Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg

In Alsace during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jews had extensive contacts with their Christian neighbors, which challenges Jacob Katz's claim that Jews and Christians had no communication ... More

In Alsace during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jews had extensive contacts with their Christian neighbors, which challenges Jacob Katz's claim that Jews and Christians had no communication whatsoever. The Alsatian countryside in fact constituted a shared space, where Jews and Christians lived side by side and interacted with each other every single day. The social interactions and relationships between them were informal. In addition, Jews and Christians could enter or work in one another's homes. A look at laws and actual cases indicates that both Jewish and Christian authorities tried to limit Jewish–Christian relations. The exchanges between Jewish and Christian neighbors in the Alsatian countryside is evident in a 1563 court case involving a Jewish mother and her sons living in Hagenau. Both Christian and Jewish leaders also prohibited social and sexual relationships between Jews and Christians.Less

A New U.S.–Israeli Alliance, 1973–1979

Caitlin Carenen

in The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel

This chapter details a new approach to Israel among American Protestants. Theological assessments of traditional Protestant teachings toward Jews and Judaism reflected a new sensitivity toward ... More

This chapter details a new approach to Israel among American Protestants. Theological assessments of traditional Protestant teachings toward Jews and Judaism reflected a new sensitivity toward Jewish–Christian relations, as mainline Protestants continued to grapple with the reality of Israel and the meaning of Judaism. The societal upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, however, created a crisis for mainline Protestants. These mainline denominations lost members to evangelical Protestant churches that emphasized adherence to orthodox theology. The decline of mainstream Protestantism signaled the abandonment of the pragmatic and humanitarian advocacy for a strong U.S.–Israeli alliance. The alliance indeed grew stronger but for prophetic and eschatological reasons that were anathemas to the liberal Protestants preceding it. A new alliance would arise, more politically powerful than the one it preceded, and would alter the relationship between American Protestants, Jews, and Israel.Less

Jewish Ideas about the Papacy

Rebecca Rist

in Popes and Jews, 1095–1291

This chapter explores Jewish ideas about popes and the papacy through a range of contemporary and later sources including folktales, chronicles, responsa, and disputational literature. Jewish writers ... More

This chapter explores Jewish ideas about popes and the papacy through a range of contemporary and later sources including folktales, chronicles, responsa, and disputational literature. Jewish writers were obviously concerned to ensure the safety of their communities in western Europe and grateful for statements of papal protection. They were also highly critical of Christian beliefs about the papacy, in particular the theory of apostolic succession. Yet they fully acknowledged that popes had always played and would continue to play an important role in safeguarding their well-being and determining their future. Nevertheless, although contemporary and later Jewish writers often valued papal protection more highly than that of monarchs, emperors, or other clergy, they also knew it had its circumscribed limits. Though respectful of the papacy’s power, both spiritual and temporal, they were dismissive of the Scriptural and theological formulations on which Christian claims for apostolic authority rested.Less

Introduction

Ruth Nisse

in Jacob's Shipwreck: Diaspora, Translation, and Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval England

This book examines how Jews and Christians in medieval England articulated their theological and temporal differences through the translation, rewriting, and circulation of ancient noncanonical or ... More

This book examines how Jews and Christians in medieval England articulated their theological and temporal differences through the translation, rewriting, and circulation of ancient noncanonical or classical texts. Drawing on the themes of language, translation, and transmission, it considers how certain texts defined as “external,” “apocryphal,” or outside these two categories demonstrate the Jewish–Christian relations, and more specifically their conflict over temporality and narrative—how to interpret the past and future. The book analyzes a variety of ancient texts, including Berekhiah ha-Nakdan's translations, the Latin Joseph and Aseneth, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and a constellation of texts that establish the terms of Jewish Diaspora through competing claims to Flavius Josephus's Greek historical works and to their Jewish counterparts.Less

Adumbrations

in Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000-1250

This chapter focuses on Jewish–Christian relations in early medieval Ashkenaz. It examines the soundness of the conclusion that the massacres of the First Crusade were the predictable and inevitable ... More

This chapter focuses on Jewish–Christian relations in early medieval Ashkenaz. It examines the soundness of the conclusion that the massacres of the First Crusade were the predictable and inevitable denouement of a century and a half of accelerating hostility to European Jews and Judaism. The chapter considers both the primary and secondary sources about the incidents that have served as landmarks on the historiographical map. It offers no new data; on the contrary, the point is that the familiar, traditional sources have yet to receive careful scrutiny in the context of the adumbration thesis.Less

Comparative Theology, Comparative Wisdom, and Covenantal Logic

Randi Rashkover

in Karl Barth and Comparative Theology

Rashkover explores the encounter between Frank Clooney’s approach to comparative theology and Barth’s confessional theology with an eye to their implications for Jewish-Christian relations. Building ... More

Rashkover explores the encounter between Frank Clooney’s approach to comparative theology and Barth’s confessional theology with an eye to their implications for Jewish-Christian relations. Building on her work in Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics, she offers appreciation for Barth’s confessional approach, which in theory permits the possibility of revelatory encounter beyond the Christian community because of God’s freedom coupled with the lawful limit of that freedom. However, she argues, Barth’s critical theology needs a “covenantal repair,” a theological supplement that pays closer attention to the positive role of sanctification through the community’s living apprehension of the Word in time. This “repair” is needed not only for Christians, but for Christian-Jewish comparative exchange, so that both communities can describe how a claim about God’s revelation makes sense in divine-human conversation. She finds resources for this repair in the work of Robert Jenson, with its analysis of the “covenantal character of the Word.” She concludes that this covenantal logic of scripture “renders both Judaism and Christianity viable participants in the adventure of Clooney’s comparative learning.”Less

Cleaving to the Other Side: Conversion to Christianity

Ellen D. Haskell

in Mystical Resistance: Uncovering the Zohar's Conversations with Christianity

This chapter addresses the sense of threat that permeated Spanish Jews’ lives, explaining how the Zohar deploys its rhetoric of the Other Side’s evil powers to defame Christians and those who ... More

This chapter addresses the sense of threat that permeated Spanish Jews’ lives, explaining how the Zohar deploys its rhetoric of the Other Side’s evil powers to defame Christians and those who associate with them. Using coded words normally applied to demonic forces, such as “Other,” “Other Side,” “Other God,” and “Kingdom of Idolatry,” the Zohar condemns Christian dominion, gives advice regarding Jewish behavior under Christian oppression, and imagines a future of Jewish empowerment. This rhetoric responds to Christian missionizing, the threat of religious conversion, and the damage to Jewish communities associated with prominent converts who traumatized the Jews of Spain and France during the thirteenth century, such as Paulus Christiani. The chapter also discusses anticonversion teachings that critique Christian celibacy, which the Zohar explains as a divine strategy for Christian containment.Less

A Moses for the Idolaters: Balaam as Christ

Ellen D. Haskell

in Mystical Resistance: Uncovering the Zohar's Conversations with Christianity

This chapter is the first of two dealing with the Zohar’s reinvention of the gentile prophet Balaam to challenge Christian claims regarding Jesus’ death and ascension. It shows how the Zoharic ... More

This chapter is the first of two dealing with the Zohar’s reinvention of the gentile prophet Balaam to challenge Christian claims regarding Jesus’ death and ascension. It shows how the Zoharic authors adapted Balaam traditions from ancient and medieval Jewish sources, wherein Balaam does not represent Jesus but does highlight Jewish concerns regarding gentiles to construct a character that is neither fully Christ nor fully Balaam, but a Balaam reimagined to intersect with Christianity. It identifies two texts known in Spain during the Zohar’s composition, the medieval midrash Numbers Rabbah and the anti-Christian folk narrative Toledot Yeshu, as the Zoharic Balaam’s main sources. The theme that ties these works together is a villain who flies and falls—the perfect vehicle for critiquing Christian ascension theology. This chapter’s topic is continued in chapter 4.Less

The Ascension of Balaam: Subverting Christian Sacred Stories

Ellen D. Haskell

in Mystical Resistance: Uncovering the Zohar's Conversations with Christianity

This chapter is the second of two dealing with the Zohar’s reinvention of the gentile prophet Balaam to challenge Christian claims regarding Jesus’ death and ascension. It presents the Zohar’s ... More

This chapter is the second of two dealing with the Zohar’s reinvention of the gentile prophet Balaam to challenge Christian claims regarding Jesus’ death and ascension. It presents the Zohar’s dramatic death-of-Balaam narrative, in which the villainous prophet and magician flies into the air to escape Jewish authority. Detailed analysis of this text reveals how it critiques Christian theological traditions and ritual practices that include the relic cult, the eucharist, the Antichrist, and gospel narratives like the Stilling of the Storm. In conjunction with chapter 3, this chapter explains how the Zoharic Kabbalists developed Balaam into a character neither fully Balaam nor fully Christ, but a Balaam reimagined to intersect with Christ and Christianity.Less

Two Balancing Acts The Unlikely Cultural Mediations of Joseph Attias

Francesca Bregoli

in Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform

Attias (1672-1739) was a Livornese Jewish savant who acted as a cultural mediator in the Republic of Letters. By investigating his position at the intersection of Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, this ... More

Attias (1672-1739) was a Livornese Jewish savant who acted as a cultural mediator in the Republic of Letters. By investigating his position at the intersection of Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, this chapter explores the balancing acts required of a Jewish scholar who was predominantly active among non-Jews. Central themes are Attias's intermediary role, the intellectual relationships he forged, and his library as a site of cultural contact and controversy. In the non-Jewish cultural arena, Attias aimed to present himself neutrally, distancing his scholarly persona from conventional depictions of Jewishness. External forces continued to reinforce Attias's Jewishness, however, despite his desire to serve the wider Republic of Letters as an unmarked scholar. His individual experience anticipates the strategies followed by later Livornese Jewish lay scholars and leaders who participated in non-Jewish culture, the opportunities they could seize, and the restrictions and limitations they faced.Less

Introduction: Converts and Confessions

Ellie R. Schainker

in Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906

Thematically, the introduction first probes the role of the Russian government in managing religious diversity and toleration, and thus the relationship between mission and empire with regard to the ... More

Thematically, the introduction first probes the role of the Russian government in managing religious diversity and toleration, and thus the relationship between mission and empire with regard to the Jews. Second, it explores the day-to-day world of converts from Judaism in imperial Russia, including the social, geographic, religious, and economic links among converts, Christians, and Jews. This exploration of daily life is attuned to convert motivations and post-baptism trajectories, and perhaps more significantly, it focuses on everyday relations of trust and attraction between Jews and their neighbors in the imperial Russian borderlands. Finally, the introduction examines the challenges of constructing, transgressing, and maintaining ethno-confessional boundaries by casting the convert as a boundary-crosser who exposes and thus renders violable the borders of faith, community, and nationhood.Less