Judaism and Christianity: “Humanly Irreconcilable” Traditions
by Mary C. Boys
It is a bitter irony that in the same year that we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Dabru Emet, we also experienced the disruption of the social fabric due to the highly contagious virus COVID-19. Even as we revisit a document intended to contribute to the continuing advancement of relations between Jews and Christians, we are living in a time requiring us to go against the grain of our humanity. Distanced from many of those we love, our world shrunk to small pods, we struggle to accept the necessary constriction of our social interactions in the hope that such measures will ensure our safety until a vaccine permits a return to broadened circles of interaction.
A post-vaccine return to something like “normalcy,” however, challenges us: Will we then enlarge our circles of connection? Will we, in response to the increase in hate speech in recent years, act counter to the disparagement of the other and instead embrace those who are beyond the normal pattern of our interactions? Will we who have been isolated be moved to reach out to those who differ from us?
The sixth of Dabru Emet’s eight claims offers timely wisdom to us in its assertion that only God’s redeeming actions at the end of time will resolve the “humanly irreconcilable differences between Jews and Christians.” This statement rests on at least two assumptions: (1) Judaism and Christianity, while sharing a body of sacred texts and having both evolved from biblical Israel, are nonetheless profoundly different; and (2) dissimilarity is not a problem from the divine perspective. Distinction need not—and should not—lead to divisiveness. Dabru Emet implicitly invites us to “imagine a God who seeks to be known in, through, and by way of difference and multiplicity.”[1] We need the other to know the God who is “boundless plenitude” and “incomprehensible holy mystery.”[2]
Yet, for much of our history, we Christians have regarded differences with Judaism both as a demarcation of separateness and as an indication of superiority; our majority status, particularly in the Western world, fueled political power that enshrined dominance. Consequently, most Christians felt no obligation to understand ways in which the two traditions differed. History bears witness to the tragic consequences of this ignorance. Even after a great deal of theological ferment in the 20 years since Vatican II, a 1985 church document, “Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism,” confessed: “There is evident in particular a painful ignorance of the history and traditions of Judaism, of which only negative aspects and often caricature seem to form part of the stock ideas of many Christians.”
The human inclination to tribalism means that encountering difference requires self-transcendence. It is well known, for example, that care for and protection of the stranger (ger) is a prominent imperative in Tanakh/Pentateuch. The memory of having been strangers in Egypt became a basis for Israel’s care for the stranger, whom it was neither to mistreat nor oppress (Exodus 22:21; 23:9). Just as the Holiness Code instructs loving the neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18), so also it mandates loving the stranger as oneself (Leviticus 19:34). Presumably, the numerous references to loving and doing justice to the stranger are not mere repetitions but rather divine acknowledgment that covenantal living requires extending the boundaries of one’s care. Perhaps also its repetitions are testimony to the difficulty of extending attention to the stranger.
For example, the gospel accounts of Mark (7:24-30) and Matthew (15:21-28) offer a startling story of Jesus’s encounter with a “stranger,” a woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon. The woman (a Canaanite in Matthew, a Syro-Phoenician in Mark) accosts Jesus, shouting for mercy on behalf of her daughter, whom she believes is possessed by a demon. Jesus, however, believing he is sent only to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” rejects her impassioned, maternal plea in uncharacteristically harsh language: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Matthew 15:26). She ripostes: “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (Matthew 15:27). Seemingly taken aback by the woman’s bold response, Jesus replies: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish” (Matthew 15:28). The narrator adds that the daughter was “healed instantly.”
This is a shocking text for those who have never internalized the church’s claim of the full humanity of Jesus. It vividly portrays Jesus as a person initially thrown off-balance by difference. Why should we be surprised by this? Encountering difference is frequently destabilizing. The evangelists were bold enough to present Jesus as one who had to learn from difference; it didn’t come naturally.
So, too, in our time. Encounter with the religious other can initially be destabilizing, particularly because it involves meeting the “stranger.” And yet experiencing that strangeness of “humanly irreconcilable differences” opens up a new world of possibility. To enlarge our world by truly meeting the religious other is to experience God who is “boundless plenitude.”
[1] John Thatamanil, Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020), 23.
[2] Elizabeth A. Johnson, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God (New York: Continuum, 2007), 35–37.
Mary C. Boys, Ed.D., is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York. She is the author most recently of Redeeming our Sacred Story: The Death of Jesus and Relations between Jews and Christians. She is a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.