Jews Thinking about Jesus

Rabbi Melanie Aron

July 19, 2002

We have new next door neighbors with two girls around Shifrah's age. Most of the time the girls play together well, but sometimes Shifrah comes home suddenly and unexpectedly and won't give a reason. The other day in the car, she gave me a hint of the problem. It seems the girls, who belong to a very fundamentalist church, talk about Jesus a lot, and when they pretend, Jesus is one of the characters in their games. For Shifrah this was quite unnerving. Though she knows many people who are Christian, they don't usually discuss theology with her and to my knowledge no one else has tried to convince her of the importance of praying to Jesus.

It was interesting to me that Shifrah, four generations removed from any direct experience of serious Christian anti-Semitism still finds discussion of Jesus so unsettling.

In my experience many Jews are made uncomfortable by what one contemporary rabbi calls the "J" word, even those married to Christians. In our interfaith couples discussion group we've talked about the reasons behind the asymmetry of Christians feeling comfortable with Jewish worship and religious symbols, while Jews often feel distinctly uncomfortable with the rituals and symbols of Christianity.

For much of Jewish history, discussion of Jesus in the synagogue was very limited. We have no historical documentation of what Jews thought about Jesus during his lifetime, and have reason to believe he was not widely known at that time. From the time of his death through the end of the second century, reference to Jesus in Jewish writings is similarly very limited.

In the rabbinic literature, in the 3rd-6th century, as Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, references to Jesus in Jewish text increase, but they are scattered and seem not to reflect any knowledge of the historical Jesus. Some of the rabbis of the Talmud believed that Jesus was a disciple gone astray because his teacher didn't answer his questions or that Jesus had learned sorcery in Egypt.

The Talmud wasn't even clear on when exactly Jesus lived. Different sources speak about him as a contemporary of historical figures who lived at different points almost two hundred years apart. The general trend in rabbinic literature was to ascribe to Jesus five disciples and not 12 as in the Gospels, as many of the best known rabbis had five disciples. There was also confusion between Mary Jesus' mother, and Mary Magdelene.

Negative views of Jesus in the rabbinic literature relate to the rabbis belief that Jesus had declared himself divine and attempted to entice other Jews into apostasy. On those rare occasions where Jesus' trial is discussed, the rabbis introduce details consistent with Jewish law but not found in the Gospels. They assume that if it were a Jewish trial, Jewish procedure in death penalty cases would have been followed. In one text they describe someone going around the country for 40 days before Jesus' execution asking that anyone who knows something in his favor come forward, as would be Jewish court procedure in a capital case.

During the middle ages discussion of Jesus became fraught with danger for the Jewish community. Much of the material we have from that period comes from staged disputations, where there were many political considerations. Statements from earlier centuries about Jesus were potentially embarrassing for medieval Jews and winning the disputation was not necessarily good for the community.

Toldot Yeshu, a text we first know of from Christian criticism but which seemed to have circulated in the Jewish community, seems to have been aware of the gospels. It retells Jesus's life disputing many Christian claims. In this text the chaste Mary was raped by a Roman soldier. Visiting the Temple as a young man, Jesus gains access to God's mystical name and thus the power to perform wondrous acts. As the story progresses Jesus is charged with sorcery and executed. His followers, including according to this text Queen Helene, possibly a reference to Saint Helena mother of the Emperor Constantine, find his tomb empty. Rabbi Tanchuma, a figure who lived centuries after the historical Jesus, discovers that a gardener has removed his body for burial. This text became part of the folklore of European Jews, a counter-story to what Christian society often forced upon them.

It was only with the modern period that Jews gained knowledge of and interest in Jesus as a historical figure. A new understanding of Jesus as a Jew emerges, with Paul now identified as the originator of Christianity, a new religion developed after Jesus' death. Jesus' arrest and execution also come to be understood differently. Historians note that only the Romans had the power to put someone to death at that time and that Jesus was probably charged as a political subversive. The outcome of these new approaches was a rejection of earlier beliefs that Jesus had rejected the Mosaic Law, proposed a turning from the Jewish community to the Gentiles, or sanctioned the idea of the Jewish people being superceded by the Church, thus opening the door to a more sympathetic view.

The Reform rabbis of the beginning of the twentieth century often gave sermons about Jesus, stressing his Jewishness. The most famous of these was Rabbi Stephen S Wise's very well attended sermon at Carnegie Hall on December 20th 1925. Rabbi Wise's sermons and those of other Reform rabbis of the period, attempted, without being insulting to Christians, to help American Jews understand Jesus as a historical figure without embracing him as the Messiah. Often going so far as to praise Jesus as a teacher, reformer, or social activist, they did not accept him as a prophet or Son of God.

Recently there has been a movement within the Jewish community to reexamine our relationship with Christianity and thus with Jesus. One expression of that movement was the Jewish statement on Christians and Christianity Dabru Emet, released last fall. It stresses commonalities between Judaism and Christianity. Its platform headings include the following: Jews and Christians worship the same God. Jews and Christians seek authority from the same book. Christians can respect the claim of the Jewish people upon the land of Israel. Jews and Christians accept the moral principles of the Torah and must work together for justice and peace.

But this statement also recognizes that "the humanly irreconcilable differences between Jews and Christians will not be settled until God redeems the entire world." It insists that Jews could see Christianity as a faith that originated within Judaism and has significant contacts with it, but not as an extension of Judaism.

Talking about Jesus and Christianity within the synagogue will enable Jews to overcome fear and discomfort and gain the knowledge to speak to friends and neighbors honestly and in an informed manner about Jewish beliefs. This understanding will not weaken Jewish practice but will strengthen our ability to remain Jewish while being part of our diverse communities.