[The complete title of this book by Amy-Jill Levine is:  The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. The author is another Jewish writer who endeavors to bridge the gap, the chasm between Jews and Christians. This book is downloadable from amazon.com as an ebook, readable on the free kindle app.]

Excerpts from the INTRODUCTION:

My Christian friends had modeled for me the grace and friendship that are at the heart of the church; my parents had told me that Jesus was a Jew speaking to other Jews, and that his basic message was exactly the same as Judaism: to ‘love the Lord your God’; and to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ So I knew that, although the New Testament could be read as being anti-Jewish, it did not have to be read that way.  

Unless we Jews understand the beliefs and practices and histories of our Christian neighbors and unless Christians understand Jews and Judaism — we’ll never achieve the shalom (“peace”) that the children of Abraham (including Muslims) all claim to be seeking.  Thus I write not only as an academic who teaches New Testament in a predominantly Protestant divinity school but also as a Jew —and a member of an Orthodox synagogue —who recognizes the beauty of the Christian tradition, the harm that has been perpetrated in its name, and the several means by which its basic, important messages of justice and peace can be heard anew.  Further I am convinced that interfaith conversation is essential if we are to break down the prejudices that have kept synagogue and church in enmity, or at best tolerance, for the past two millennia.

Jews and Christians can, and must, talk to each other. Although all interfaith dialogue is educational and salutary, Jews and Christians have a number of special reasons for engaging each other.  It is sometimes said that Judaism is the mother religion and Christianity the daughter, but church and synagogue are better seen as siblings fighting over the parents’ legacy.  Who are the true children of Abraham and the heirs to the books of the Bible, the Law, and the Prophets?  Who followed the correct path and who veered off? . . . . The break between the two traditions began not at the cross or the tomb but centuries later. . . .

The point of interfaith conversation is not to convert the person across the table, but it is also not to abdicate one’s own theology for the sake of reaching agreement.  Put another way:  there is no reason for Jews and Christians to sacrifice their particular beliefs on the altar of interfaith sensitivity.

. . . . Today Jesus’s words are too familiar, too domesticated, too stripped of their initial edginess and urgency.  Only when heard through first-century Jewish ears can their original edginess and urgency be recovered.  consequently, to understand the man from Nazareth, it is necessary to understand Judaism.  More, it is necessary to see Jesus as firmly within Judaism rather than as standing apart from it, and it is essential that the picture of Judaism not be distorted through the filter of centuries of Christian stereotypes; a distorted picture of first-century Judaism inevitably leads to a distorted picture of Jesus.  Just as bad:  if we get Judaism wrong, we’ll wind up perpetuating anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic teachings, and thus the mission of the church — to spread a gospel of love rather than a gospel of hate — will be undermined.  For Christians, this concern for historical setting should have theological import as well.  If one takes the incarnation — that is, the claim that the “Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14) seriously, then one should take seriously the time when, place where, and people among whom this event occurred.

Christians obtain yet another benefit in seeing Jesus in his Jewish context, for the recognition of Jesus’s Jewishness and his speaking in a Jewish idiom can also restore faith in the New Testament.  Doing just a bit of historical investigation provides a much-needed correction to American’s Christ-saturated, albeit biblically ignorant, culture.  For example, those who prefer the fiction of The Da Vinci Code over the facts of history because the novel seems to enhance the role of women in early Christianity will find that studies of the Jewish Jesus reveal the leadership roles and economic freedoms women had at the time.  Moreover, such studies yield more options to women than the relegation of Mary Magdalene to the role of “Mrs. Jesus.”  Those who prefer the Gospel of Judas over the Gospels of Matthew,  Mark, Luke and John because they see it as eliminating anti-Jewish views from Christian origins would do well, instead, to see how Jesus fits into his Jewish context, and that includes the notice that Judas does not, in the Gospels, represent “the Jews.”

Jews too can learn much from appreciating Jesus within his Jewish context, for the New Testament texts preserve for Jews part of our own history.  The stories of Jesus tell us a great deal about Jewish life in Galilee and Judea in the first century, and the only uncontested Pharisee from whom we have extant written sources is Paul of Tarsus.  I find that the more I study Jesus, Mary Magdalene, James, Peter, and Paul in their own historical contexts, the more I come to appreciate my own Judaism:  the diversity of its teachings, the richness of its encounter with the divine, the struggles it faced in accommodating to the Roman world, I appreciate, even find inspirational, the message of the kingdom of heaven, a message that spoke of the time when all debts are forgiven and when those who have willingly give, without thought of reciprocity, to those who need; a time when we no longer ask, “Who is my neighbor?” but “Who acts as neighbor?”; a time when we prioritize serving rather than being served . . . . But as much as I admire much of the message, I do not worship the messenger.  Instead, I find Jesus reflects back to me my own tradition, but in a new key.  I also have to admit a bit of pride in thinking about him —he’s one of ours.

If on the popular level we Jews are willing not only to acknowledge but also to take pride in the Jewishness of such generally non-observant Jews as Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, the Marxes (Karl and Groucho, although Karl was baptized as a child), and Jerry Seinfeld, why not acknowledge the quite observant Jesus?  Such recognition need not entail citing the Gospels in a bar mitzvah talk or in a d’var Torah, an interpretation of the biblical reading for the week, although I have heard rabbis in Reform and Conservative synagogues cite Homer (both the Greek poet and Bart’s father), Plato, the Buddha, Muhammad, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, and even Madonna (the Kaballah besotted singer, not the mother of Jesus).  At least Jesus is Jewish with regard to family, practice, and belief.

A critically aware, historically informed study of Jesus in his Jewish context does more than provide benefits to Christians and Jews alike; it aids in preventing the anti-Semitism that tends to arise when the history is not known.  The concern to recover Jesus’s Jewishness is these days particularly urgent. . . .

After two thousand years of ignorance, the time has come for church and synagogue, Jews and Christians, to understand our intertwined histories, to see Jesus as a Jew who made sense to other Jews in a Jewish context, to learn how our two traditions came to a parting of the ways, to recognize how misunderstandings of Jesus and Judaism continue even today to foster negative stereotypes and feed hate, and to explore how the gains in interfaith relations made over the past several decades can be nurtured and expanded.

C O N T E N T S

1.  Jesus and Judaism

2.  From Jewish Sect to Gentile Church

3.  The New Testament and Anti-Judaism

4.  Stereotyping Judaism

5.  With Friends Like These . . . .

6.  Distinct Canons, Distinct Practices

7.  Quo Vadis?

8.  Epilogue

Excerpt from the Epilogue:  The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document states:  “In the past, the break between the Jewish people and the Church of Christ Jesus could sometimes, in certain times and places, give the impression of being complete.  In the light of the Scriptures, this should never have occurred.  For a complete break between church and the synagogue contradicts Sacred Scripture.”  The connections church and synagogue share, not only in the recognition of the same sacred stories, but also in the similar interpretive understandings, necessarily hold the two movements together.  If Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau, can learn to live together in peace, there is hope not only for the responsible and the prodigal; there is hope for church and synagogue as well.  And if the church and synagogue both could recognize their connection to Jesus, a Jewish prophet who spoke to Jews, perhaps we’d be in a better place for understanding.

[Aside from the metaphor of a “bridge” between Judaism and Christianity (Jesus – the Bridge between Judeo-Christian Values), Rabbi Schmuley Boteach awakens us to the symbolism of a “hyphen” that has for so long been used in the phrase “Judeo-Christian” as though the two different major religions could actually attach to one another.  For sure, it is only Christians who would coin that phrase, since founders of Christianity connected their New Testament with an “Old”, borrowing the Hebrew Scriptures and calling it and considering it “foundational”, like a ‘prequel’.  Anti-missionary Jewish websites deplore this “connection” and hardly see the “New Testament” as the continuation of their Torah faith, so it is truly surprising to read Rabbi Boteach’s conciliatory approach to a disconnect that has existed for 2 millennia now.  That is what makes this book interesting reading so, again, please include in your MUST READ, if not MUST OWN list; KOSHER JESUS is downloadable on the kindle app as an ebook from amazon.com. These are merely excerpts from the final chapter (40) of the book.  Note:  The US elections referred to in this discussion is 2010, and yet the issues are relevant and the same as in the recently concluded US presidential elections and in fact, were resolved by majority vote.]

Religious people are now grappling with an alarming state of affairs:  Americans are losing faith in the relevance of Judeo-Christian values.

Judaism is in danger.  Fifty percent of Jewish young people choose to marry outside the faith, assimilating and putting the future survival of our nation in doubt.  Israel is being delegitimized by hateful enemies the world over and is besieged by enraged enemies.  Jews would do well to capitalize on Christian overtures of goodwill so as to remain strong in the face of adversity.

Christianity, too, seems to be on the ropes in many parts of the world.  But even in the United States, there are serious challenges to Christian faith.  American Christians are a good and Godly people — of this I have no doubt.  However, the religion’s moral authority has diminished in recent years.  Over time, Christianity has lost some of its heart, emphasizing an austere morality that narrowly defines religious ethics and family values as opposition to homosexuality and abortion.  The narrowness of the American Christian approach to values and its near obsession with these twin issues —especially gay marriage — is allowing for moral decay in America, seeing it highlights these peripheral issues to the exclusion of nearly everything else.  The noble goals of Christianity are undermined every time Christian thinkers, politicians, and public figures sound in any way bigoted or come across as hypocritical.

The powerful Christian community in America finds itself at a crossroads.  The 80 million born-again Christians who had such a pronounced role in President George W. Bush’s two electoral victories lost their political muscle in the 2008 presidential election.  Bill Maher and a host of other opponents of organized religion have made a financial killing by portraying religious people as self-satisfied oafs who swallow faith uncritically and send their money to charlatan televangelists flying around in gas-guzzling G5s.

What were the buzzwords of the 2010 election?  Spending, deficits, and earmarks — all worthy subjects of discussion, but what happened to values?  The sad truth is that Evangelical Christians have become politically marginalized by clinging to homosexuality as their bogeyman.  Rather than focusing on the divorce rate, the sexualization of younger and younger teens, or the ongoing collapse of the American family, it seems Evangelical Christian pundits and politicians would prefer to have us talking about banning gays from serving in the military, and obsessing over their right to marriage and adoption.  Are Evangelical Christians really ready to lay all of our society’s ills at the feet of gays?

America has serious social problems.  Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce.  Forty million American marriages are platonic.  One out of three American women is on antidepressants.  Innumerable American men are addicted to pornography.  Our teenagers have unacceptably high rates of pregnancy and alcoholism.  However, I cannot name a single initiative that appeared on a ballot to combat any of these problems, save for Proposition 8 in California that sought to ban gay marriage.  Let me ask my Evangelical brothers and sisters:  Do gays pose the biggest challenge to the sanctity of heterosexual marriage?  Or do straight people and the 50% divorce rate constitute a much more significant threat?

During the Obama/McCain presidential campaign, I tried hard to make the possible tax-deductivity of marital counseling a campaign issue.  Studies show that when couples get proper counseling, the vast majority of these troubled marriages survive.  If counseling were declared tax-deductible, couples would have access to the crucial support they may otherwise find unaffordable.  But it’s  impossible to talk seriously about the real causes of marital breakdown, or their solutions, due to the ongoing gay marriage obsession.

The argument that stopping gay marriage is the key to saving the institution of marriage in general, and the American family in particular, is spurious.  Would anyone seriously suggest that if there were no gays in America there would no longer be a 50 percent heterosexual divorce rate?  Are we really looking to scapegoat gays for the fact that straight people can’t seem to remain in love and married?  Truth to be told, we heterosexuals need no assistance from gays in destroying the institution of marriage, having done a fine job of it ourselves, thank you very much. indeed, the only men who seem to still want to marry in America are gay! They’re the ones who are petitioning the Untied States Supreme Court for the right to marry, while straight men break out in a rash whenever their girlfriends bring up the word marriage.

The opponents of gay marriage have been saying that their opposition is all about protecting the family and the institution of marriage.  But gays marrying has nothing to do with heterosexuals divorcing, and the real crisis in the American marriage is not that people of the same sex want to get hitched but that people of the opposite sex don’t want to stay together.

My parents divorced when I was eight.  There were no gays around to blame.  It was mid-1970s America, and gays scarcely came out of the closet, let alone married.  The very thought was inconceivable.  My parents did not argue because they saw two gay women holding hands at an airport.  They did not bicker because a rainbow flag hung outside a bar in our neighborhood.  They did not decide to end their marriage because they could not agree on how the institution of marriage should be defined.  Rather, their marriage ended because it ran out of love.

Their split scarred me for life, just as it does many other children of divorce, as a famous study published in American Sociological Review demonstrates.  The study found little or no impact on children prior to divorce but significant decreases in performance in math and social skills at the time of and following the divorce, which gives the lie to the belief that children are worse off seeing parents fight than seeing them divorce.  And no, I do not believe that parents should stay together for the sake of their children.  children should not be jailers.  But less so do I believe we should fool ourselves about the effects of divorce on children.

My parents love me and did not want me to suffer.  But they could not, or chose not to, get along.  I have since devoted much of my life to keeping families together and regularly counsel marriages in crisis. In the 22 years I have done so, no straight couple has ever told me that their problems stem from gays wanting to marry.  In most cases their marital unhappiness resulted from falling out of love or losing attraction, or one of the partners had been unfaithful.  Money problems may have eaten away at the fabric of the relationship.  Parents or other family members might have intervened and caused friction.  Or the pressures of life made it impossible for the couple to spend quality time together.  But none of the problems I have counseled could be traced back to gay marriage.

The truth is that the thirty-year fight over gay marriage, largely conducted by our Evangelical brothers, has been a massive distraction for America that has prevented us from focusing on skyrocketing divorce, the growing culture of male womanizing, women feeling unreasonably old, fat, and unattractive, the fixation of husbands and wives on celebrity relationships that deprives their own marriages of oxygen, and the dumbing down of America through moronic reality TV.  My God, we can’t even talk about runaway materialism in our culture.

The Hyphen that Unites Us

For some, Christianity seems to flourish by identifying godless enemies.  God battles Lucifer.  Jesus vies against the anti-Christ.  Red-state Christians contend with hedonistic blue-state liberals, the godless barbarians at the gate. The forces of light always fight with the forces of darkness.  It is a vision that has inspired many over the years, but in the process, Christians have inadvertently made Jesus — and by extension Christianity itself — very divisive.

To salve this contentious embattled worldview, Christians would do well to pay renewed attention to Jesus, his humanity, and the values he held dear.  Embracing his proven Jewish characteristics, allying with a willing Jewish community, and adopting his passionate patriotism, respect for tradition, and vision of a redeemed world could prove to be American Christianity’s best hope.

The Christian worldview must return to the Judeo-Christian values on which our civilization was founded.  Judeo-Christian is a strange word — a hyphenated term that unites two very different religions and ways of looking at the world.

Hyphens, though unassuming, can be frightening things. They draw together unrelated concepts to bring new, unforseen chimeras into the world.  Americans have only gradually come to terms with hyphenated Americans: African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Muslim-Americans.  A hundred years ago Woodrow Wilson typified this line of thinking by saying “Any man who carries a hyphen with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this republic whenever he gets ready.”

Of course we are all Americans, equal and unhyphenated.  And the hyphen between Judaism and Christianity is no dagger and doesn’t have to be a barrier either.  It is a bridge that spans a divide — a divide that, admittedly, has been widened by millennia of mutual distrust and rampant anti-Semitism.  But for the first time in history, that divide is getting smaller.

If I can leave my readers with one ringing message after the mountain of scriptural and historical information you’ve read in this book, it is this:  The hyphen between Jewish and Christian values is Jesus himself. Both religions share him, looking to him from opposite sides of a chasm.  He can bring us closer to one another, if only we are brave enough to allow for understanding him in a new light.

At a time when the world flails in search of values, strangled by materialism, divisiveness, instability, doubt, and unrest, we must return to the basic ideals we share in common.  All of these are to be found in the life and lessons of Jesus of Nazareth, lover of Israel, rebel against Rome, Jewish hero, and the inspiration for innumerable acts of Christian charity.

In our hyphenated world, the Jewish Jesus has the power to bring disparate peoples together.  Our civilization will be all the stronger if Jews and Christians alike accept Jesus for who he really was: a driving force for liberty, democracy, and Jewish identity in a world ruled by the tyranny and brutality of Rome.  In his time, as in our time —as in Judeo-Christian civilization in years to come —the fight for redemption and independence continues.

Now, Jews and Christians can answer the clarion call for liberty and a renewal of values together, even as we remain distinct and separate faiths.  We can, for the first time, set the stage for Jews and Christians to come together to achieve Godly goals and virtuous ends through the personality of Jesus himself, even as we both understand him in completely different ways.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Finally, and most importantly,

to God Almighty, Master of heaven and earth,

He Who fills the infinite expanse of space and is the source of all blessing and life,

thank you, Lord, for loving me, nurturing me, guiding me, and preserving me.  

I could do nothing without You, Lord.  

I only hope and wish that my life’s efforts accrue to Your glory.

May the righteous and true Messiah of Israel arrive soon

and usher in an era of eternal peace, blessing, and kinship among all of God’s children.

 And while I do not believe it is Jesus,

I look forward to sharing a more perfect world

with my Christian brothers and sisters

in a world suffused with love and Joy.

—- Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Autumn 2011 Englewood, NJ

[This is from the concluding chapters of Rabbi Schmuley’s KOSHER JESUS, where he presents Jesus as “a Bridge between Religions” and specifically the 2 religions reflected in the Christian Bible: Judaism from the Old Testament, and Christiantiy from the New Testament. Here are excerpts from Chapters 38 -39. While it is surprising to discover this particular approach of this particular Rabbi toward Jesus and Christianity, it is interesting that he does see in Jesus a connection between the two major religions that trace their roots to Abraham. After all indeed, the term ‘Judeo-Christian’ has been used together as though they are kin beliefs.]

Jews and Christians have so much in common, we must unite behind our democratic values, defend the embattled State of Israel, and participate in a unified front against those who have vowed to defeat us.

Religious hatred and divisiveness plague the world.  Leaders of Christianity and Judaism can ill afford trials of one-upmanship; we are not competitors, and religion is not a zero-sum game.  Agreement between religions is not only valuable, but an outright necessity in our times.

Crucial to transforming the way Christianity and Judaism relate to one another is promulgating awareness of Jesus’ heretofore ignored Jewishness.  Christians to fully embrace my picture of Jesus [Will the Real Jesus please step forward?] and what he stood for, even as I bolster my arguments with pages from the New Testament.  Mutual respect is crucial to the kind of rapprochement I’m advocating.  Both Christians and Jews have much to learn from how devoted Jesus was to his people, from his belief in the sanctity of God’s law, and the fact that the central figure in Christianity was one of the greatest Jewish patriots.  We will find more commonalities with Jesus’ Jewishness than we ever expected.

For one thing, Christian Evangelicals have proven themselves stalwarts when it comes to foreign policy, fighting terrorists, and standing up to evil. . . and yet according to Paul and the Lucan editors, these beliefs appear to be in opposition to Jesus’ own behavior.  The Romans were a brutal occupying power, and he seems to readily submit to their torments.  The Lucan editors would have us believe Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”  Is that different from an Iraqi saying “Render unto Saddam Hussein what is Saddam’s? Or an Iranian saying, Render unto Ahmadinejad what is his?  How does this square with the modern Christian opposition to people who are no different than the Romans?

It is a revolutionary idea to balance the statements of Paul and the work of the Lucan editors with the Jewish truth about Jesus:  he never voluntarily submitted, but rather fought the Romans with his last breath.  We see this in the text of his own statements, when on the cross he lamented, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”  Is this the statement of a humble, meek, and retiring man?  Or is it a statement of defiance, a son of Israel living up to the definition of his name, “He who wrestles with God?”  The Jesus who cried out to God to stop his suffering — the Jesus who demanded of God to render justice against he Romans and not abandon him, the innocent victim — is the same man who said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  He is a man ready to fight for what’s right rather than live in humble resignation to a foreign, occupying power.

Jesus’ last words on the cross, according to Matthew, demanding of God why he was forsaken, are echoed in the mouths of Jews today when we ask “Where was God during the Holocaust?”  God promised that goodness would triumph and the righteous would win out.  So why was he being abandoned to the brutality of Rome on a cross?  It was a travesty of justice, and the Jews have forever inveighed even against God when it comes to seeming miscarriages of justice.  “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” is the challenge issued by Jesus’ father Abraham against God when the Almighty threatens to destroy the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.  How much more so when an innocent Jewish leader is being put to death by the wicked and evil Romans.  In clamoring for salvation while on the cross, even if it appears to be an indictment of God’s justice, Jesus is following in the traditional footsteps. We forever defend innocent life and call God to account for His seeming abandonment of it.

One thing is clear. In crying out as he died, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus is certainly not turning the other cheek.

Of Evangelical Christians looked deeply and clearly at the Jewish Jesus outlined in this book, they would see a leader whose ideas agree with theirs more frequently than not.  And rightly so.  In my opinion, the depiction of Jesus as a figure who is passive in the face of evil is not something that resonates.  If brutal occupiers are in our country, abusing human rights, we should fight them.  Evangelical Christians in particular (who make up an estimated 60 percent of our armed forces) can embrace and draw strength from the redefinition of the hero that Judaism and Christianity hold in common.

. . . . Christian thinkers maintain that redemption and salvation are decided by belief rather than action.  Protestant Christianity establishes that a person’s good acts are insufficient for getting into heaven. Righteous faith rather than righteous action truly saves the person.  Paul says it best: “That I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

What would Jesus really have thought of this doctrine?  He was, after all, an observant Jew, who kept all the mitzvahs and all the commandments of the Torah.  So scrupulously did he observe the law that he famously said, in the book of Matthew, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.  Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”  In incontrovertible opposition to the claims in the previous paragraph, this declares unmistakably that righteous acts save the individual, not “correct” believe or professions of faith.

Jesus’ declaration accords far more with American sensibilities than Christian doctrine.  In the United States, we judge people by their actions, not by what they believe.  The Pilgrims came to America in the 17th century precisely to escape persecution for their “wrong” beliefs.  American democracy is about doing, saying, and voting for what we believe in, transforming those beliefs into action.  Jesus, too, preached moral empowerment to draw closer to God, and the need for individual repentance rather than collective dependency on one individual sacrifice.

Finally, there is the bedrock belief that acceptance of Jesus is the only way to get to heaven — and all who fail to are damned.  This idea that we should live our lives in order to get into heaven runs counter to basic American values, as well.  John Kennedy expressed it best.  “As not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  You’re not supposed to do the right thing for a reward.  Rather, the action is invaluable in and of itself.  But for some Christians, belief in Jesus becomes the royal road to salvation, a means rather than an end.

In this country we revere those who live justly and patriotically with little or no reward.  Our military men and women offer a prime example.  Wall Street bankers, by contrast, are far less respected.  Much of what they do is perceived as geared toward personal profit.  Yet in Christianity, we have an entire theological construct that would seem to emphasize the “payoff” over the good behavior itself.

If Jesus is the sole key to salvation, what is the fate of the Jews?  Jesus, a deeply religious Jew, who fought for his people’s independence from Rome, would never agree with a belief that consigns his own people to eternal damnation.  Such an idea aligns neither with American values nor with the heroic Jesus that actually lived and died for his people.

This is not to say that Christian doctrine is wrong.  But it may prompt a Christian who studies the Jewishness of Jesus to say to him — or herself, “Okay — I believe in the primacy of faith over works.  That’s part of the essence of my religion.  However, now that I see the way Jesus actually approached this issue, I am expanding my view of the matter.  I accept the possibility that faith can be expressed through deeds.  After all, the faithfulness and goodness of non-Christians make them all the more precious to God.  Perhaps this was the lesson Jesus intended me to take form his example after all.”

Christianity and Judaism remain separate faiths.  But by finding their common ground through a discovery of the Jewish Jesus, we strengthen America’s Judeo-Christian values.  And that is, in the end, the essence of what I seek to accomplish.

[This is a MUST READ:  a Jewish perspective on the historical Jesus from the book KOSHER JESUS by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Featured here is only the Preface and Introduction; the Table of Contents at the end of this excerpt gives more information on the 40 Chapters of this book.  It is downloadable on the kindle app from amazon.com.]

Preface

This book tells what I believe to be the true story of Jesus of Nazareth.

Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household, I held great antipathy toward Jesus.  The very name reminded me of the suffering Christians laid upon Jewish communities for two thousand years: persecutions, forced conversions, expulsions, inquisitions, false accusations, degradations, economic exile, taxation, pogroms, stereotyping, ghettoization, and systematic extermination.  All this incomprehensible violence and cruelty against us — against our friends and families — committed in the name of a Jew!I

In my neighborhood we did not even mention his name.  We said “Yoshke,” a Hebrew play on his name, or some children learned to say “cheese and crust” in place of “Jesus Christ.”  In a synagogue sermon, rabbis might refer to Jesus —exceedingly rarely — by saying “the founder of Christianity.”

Fundamentally, we understood Jesus as a foreign deity, a man worshipped by people.  The Torah instructs us never to mention the names of other gods, as no other god exists except God.  We also understood Jesus to be as anti-Jewish as his followers.  Was he not the Jew who had rebelled against his people?  Was he not the one who instructed his followers to hate the Jews as he did, instigating countless cruelties against those with whom God had established an everlasting covenant?  Was he not also the man who had abrogated the Law and said that the Torah is now mostly abolished?

In truth, Jesus was not that man.  The more I studied the matter, the more i discovered Jesus had done none of these things.  The people who represented him in this way had a vested interest in doing so.  They superimposed onto Jesus their own antipathy toward Jews.  They ripped a Jewish patriot away from his people. They portrayed his teachings as being hostile to Judaism when, in fact, everything he taught stemmed from the Judaism he practiced.

I seek to correct this injustice at long last.  Just as Christians would greatly benefit from a deeper understanding of Jesus the man, Jews need to accept that they have something to learn from Jesus as well, albeit in a manner very different from the way that Christians understand him.  Nearly all his authentic lessons were restatements of classical Torah wisdom, and his ethical teachings still have the power to speak to us today.  Awareness of their truths would enrich a Jewish community that, by rejecting the fictional, anti-Semitic Jesus, has mistakenly rejected the man himself.

In these pages, based on ancient Jewish sources as well as Christian scripture, you will discover the authentic story of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus lived, taught and died as a Jew.  He defined himself and his Jewishness in much the same way as today’s Torah-observant Jews.  He conducted himself as a devout rabbi and Pharisee.  He wore a Jewish head covering, prayed in the Hebrew language, ate only kosher food, honored the Sabbath, had the mezuzah parchment on the doorposts of his home, lit a Chanukah menorah, wore the tzitzit fringes, donned tefillin daily, waved an esrog and lulav on Sukkot, ate matzo on Passover, and studied the Torah regularly.  He enjoyed the selfsame relationship with God shared by all Jews.

Though this book does not consider Jesus holier than any other human being and certainly not divine, I argue that Jews should claim him as one of our own. Through Jewish sensibilities, we can see in the Christian Bible one of our rabbis, Jesus, ever our brother.  As Jews, we should celebrate the family bond we have with Jesus.  We also have a bond with Christianity, even as our faiths differ considerably in many aspects.  Ultimately, this book aims to initiate a wider celebration of both bonds and differences, for each delivers distinctive joy.

Introduction:  Who was Jesus of Nazareth?

The genesis of this book is a simple question:  Who was Jesus of Nazareth?

We all think  we know who he was — the inspiration for the world’s most successful religion.  The deliverer of faith, love, spiritual inspiration, and religious commitment to billions of people the world over for two millennia.  Christians see him as the son of God, both wholly human and wholly divine, whose example, compassion, and self-sacrifice are a bulwark for the faithful worldwide.

But is that the whole story?

This question has dominated my twenty years of in-depth study of the New Testament and Christianity.  The answers I have found have been sharpened by challenges, years of discussion, and debate (many available on YouTube and on my website) with leading Christian scholars all around the world.  My opinions on Jesus have been profoundly shaped by the writings of Hyam Macoby and his compelling insights into the historical Jesus.  This book would not have been possible without Mr. Macoby’s work, which serves as a pivotal foundation and central pillar for what follows here.  More than any other works of scholarship, Macoby’s books get to the very heart of the historical Jesus, and I am profoundly indebted to him for his life-long research.  His insights, more than anyone else’s, have illuminated for me the real truth of the Jewish Jesus, and I strongly encourage the reader to dip directly into his texts, as even this book is an insufficient substitute.

For all the undeniable good Christianity has done, even its most passionate adherents would admit it has also been directly and indirectly responsible for a great deal of suffering.  Until the modern era, Christian history is rife with physical violence and discrimination.  Awful acts of hatred and intolerance were committed in Jesus’ name.  And for far too long, the received picture of Jesus has obscured a simple and powerful truth: Jesus would never stand as an enemy against his own people, nor would he tolerate his followers doing so.

From the very beginning, as Christianity branched away from Judaism to develop its own identity, Jesus was intentionally shorn of his Jewishness like Samson deprived of his strength.  Christians obfuscated the idea of Jesus the Jew, preferring to see him as an innovator who at once transcended Judaism and brought it to a conclusion.  This deception deeply alienated Jesus from the Jewish people and led to considerable torment and distress.

This is not to suggest that the chilly relationship between Christians and Jews have long avoided any connection to Jesus.  Over the centuries, as he was slowly turned into a deity and violence perpetrated in his name against the Jews increased, they came to see him as a source of unrelenting persecution, the supreme example of heresy.  They wanted no association with the patron saint of zealots who demeaned, attacked, and murdered them, and taught sacrilege in his name.

But times are changing. Christianity has opened its heart to the Jews.

The Catholic Church is today a great friend to the Jewish people.  In May 2010,, as a guest of the Vatican, I met Pope Benedict: his warmth and regard for me as a rabbi were immediately in evidence.  Evangelical Christians are among the most stalwart supporters of the State of Israel.  Not only that, of the 3-45 million tourists who visited the Jewish homeland in 2010, 69 percent were Christians.  I am personally in awe of the stalwart and unwavering support offered to the State of Israel by evangelical Christians, and I have thanked them time and again in their churches and in op-eds.

Christians are beginning to take a long-overdue look back on the common origins of our religious outlook with modern eyes and see how we get to where we are.

Now, perhaps it’s time and equally imperative that Jews recognize a long-obscured and essential truth:  Rabbi Jesus was a Jew and should be counted among our nation.  The heroic Jewish patriot you will encounter in these pages should not be severed from the people he loved and the people he died defending.

Supplanting Judaism

Unlike many other religions that came into being independently, Christianity entered the world claiming to fulfill Judaic prophesy.  Competition with Judaism was built into Christianity from its inception, priming early Christians to harbor immediate hostility toward Jews despite, or perhaps because of, their religious commonalities.

Some early Christian fathers felt the need to directly discredit Jews and Judaism.  To them the very idea of “righteous” Jews or “just” Judaism contradicted the Christian premise outright.  How could Jews be just, they thought, when they’re practicing the wrong religion! Replacement theology, the deeply anti-Semitic belief that God discarded the Jews when they rejected Jesus and replaced them instead with Christians, has prevailed throughout Christendom for generations.

Until the deeply anti-Semitic Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) directly addressed the subject centuries later, early Church leaders held that Judaism would never survive.  Even the powerful Roman Empire couldn’t resist the Christian juggernaut eventually capitulating and adopting Christianity as state religion.  It wasn’t a stretch for Christians to surmise that all remaining Jews would eventually convert, wiping out the ancient religion.  But against all odds, Judaism survived and flourished.

As the years went by the Jews failed to disappear.  Christians grew anxious for an explanation.  St. Augustine of Hippo provided it.  The third most important figure in Christian theology after Jesus and Paul, Augustine argued that the Jews were actually part of God’s master plan.  For their rejection of Jesus, the Jews were eternally cursed, their ongoing existence and failure to accept Jesus seen as a proof of his messiahship, instead of its refutation.  The Jews were destined to live on, depressed and miserable symbols of God’s displeasure and the final triumph of Christianity over Judaism.

Insulting as this view was, it was something of an improvement.  Many of Augustine’s predecessors had advocated policies of forced conversion.  Resistance led to expulsion from the community and harrowing executions.  Relatively speaking, Augustine’s position somewhat benefited Judaism since, even as he denigrated Jews, he at least argued Christians should not slaughter them.

Long after the violence and viciousness of this period ceased, enmity seethed under the surface.  Jesus became the primary vehicle of controversy and disagreement between religions.  Jews refused to study him, his teachings tainted by his role as the wellspring of anti-Jewish activities and hatred.  Conversely, Christians ignored Jesus’ Jewishness because they saw Judaism as a despised and obsolete religion.  Traces of these attitudes continue to hold sway, even into today’s era of heightened awareness and reconciliation.

Progress

Over the past few decades, the two faiths have become closer allies, and Jews and Christians increasingly see one another as spiritual kin.  this new era of brotherhood was forged in the horrors of the past hundred years, and results from outreach by both the Catholic and Evangelical Christian communities.

Three courageous popes emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century and showed themselves to be heroic friends of the Jewish people.  John XXIII, the greatest of all popes; John Paul II, a magnificent friend of the Jewish community and of all humanity; and Benedict XVI, the modern theological father of rapprochement with the Jews, who gets far too little credit for the enormous efforts at reconciliation he has made.

Pope John XXIII was responsible for calling the Second Vatican Council, which in the early 1960s changed the course of Christian doctrine.  Just one of many forward-looking changes that resulted was the renunciation of the Jews as deicides, or killers of God, a theological relic of the vitriolic anti-Semitism that once haunted mainstream Christianity.  John XXIII also had worked actively to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust.  When he invited Jewish groups to the Vatican, he would dismount from his papal throne and say humbly to them, “I am your brother Joseph.” This is an unparalleled demonstration of humility and greatness that beggars belief.

John Paul II was a leader of extraordinary humanity and humility in his own right.  He will always be remembered for opening Christian hearts to Jews, continuing the work that John XXIII began, and changing the tenor of Jewish-Christian relations.  John Paul was the first pope in history to visit a synagogue, in this case the beautiful one in Rome.

Benedict XVI has also proven himself a great friend of the Jewish people.  While he’s received his share of criticism for the Church’s mishandling of the pedophile priest scandal, it must not be forgotten that he did more as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to extend the Church’s hand in friendship to other peoples and faiths than nearly anyone who preceded him.  As of this writing, Benedict has visited three synagogues in the six years of his papacy.

Theologians did their part to warm relations as well.  In the 1960s and ’70s, Krister Stendahl, among others, initiated a sea-change in Jewish-Christian friendship by reevaluating the mandate for Christians to convert Jews.  Examining Paul’s letters to the Romans, Stendahl found “an affirmation of a God-willed coexistence between Judaism and Christianity in which the missionary urge to convert Israel is held in check.”  He argued the Church had ignored this fact, permitting the relationship between gentiles and Jews to become all too focused on conversion instead of cooperation.  This was a thoroughgoing reversal of established Christian doctrine.  As its ramifications percolated through seminaries, world events further advanced Christian respect for Judaism.

The 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the massed forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan gave American Christians a bona fide opening to embrace the miraculous nature of the modern Jewish state.  The conflict ended in a stunning Israeli victory, pushing American Evangelicals to reconsider their stance on the Jewish nation.  Their conclusion?  In 1980, as dyed-in-the-wool as Christian Evangelical as Jerry Falwell wrote in his book Listen America, “Israel still stands as shining testimonial to the faithfulness of God.”  Gone were discussions of conversion and exhortation to evangelize the Jews.  Instead, Falwell spoke of Israel in the highest terms. “There is no way that the tiny nation of Israel could have stood against the Arabs in the miraculous six-day war had it not been for the intervention of God Almighty.”

In the years since, the American Evangelical community has proven the most stalwart and reliable friend of Israel in the United States.  In spite of a flare-up of discordant ideas resulting from Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, a movie I excoriated for its historical revisionism and blatant anti-Semitism, Evangelicals remain engaged and devoted friends of Israel and the Jewish people.

Christianity has established itself as a strong and independent religion both valuable to the world and capable of tremendous good. It no longer defines itself by its opposition to Judaism.  For the most part, Christians no longer feel the same antipathy toward Jews that they had for centuries.

It is time to build on these overtures of peace and address the first and lasting point in the relationship between Christians and Jews:  their common claim on Jesus.

[There is much more to read in this book, so please get a copy; it is downloadable on your kindle app from amazon.com. The topics that are discussed are the following:  The Future of Jesus and the Jews, Enriching Christianity with a Heavy Sprinkling of Jewish Spice,

Part I: The Rabbi 

Chapter I:  The Rabbi and the Stranger

Chapter 2:  Romans and Jews

Chapter 3:  The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Zealots

Chapter 4: Jesus the Rabbi

Chapter 5:  Jewish Law

Chapter 6:  Miracles

Chapter 7:  Jesus the Healer

Chapter 8: Jesus Never Claimed to be Divine

Chapter 9: The Fantasy of the Evil Jews

Part II:  The Death of Jesus

Chapter 10:  The Crucifixion

Chapter II:  Did Judas Really Exist?

Chapter 12:  Brutal Pilate

Chapter 13:  Barabbas

Chapter 14:  A Political Death and the Trial of Jesus

Chapter 15:  Jesus’ Crimes

Chapter 16:  Paul the Pharisee?

Chapter 17:  Paul and the Original Apostles

Chapter 18:  Placating Rome

Part III:  What Christians Have to Learn from the Jewish Jesus

Chapter 19: Jesus, Lover of Israel

Chapter 20:  Jesus Against Evil

Chapter 21:  Tinkering with the Divine

Part IV: Why the Jews Cannot Accept Jesus

Chapter 22:  The World’s Most Successful Idea

Chapter 23:  Why Jews Cannot Believe in the Divinity and Messiahship of Jesus

Chapter 24:  Divinity

Chapter 25:  Judaism and Paganism

Chapter 26:  The Virgin Birth

Chapter 27:  Splitting Up Divinity

Chapter 28:  Original Sin

Chapter 29:  Salvation and Repentance

Chapter 30:  A Davidic Messiah

Chapter 31:  Jesus and the Messianic Prophecies

Chapter 32:  An Eternal Covenant

Chapter 33:  Evangelist Methods

Chapter 34:  This World and the Next

Chapter 35:  Diversity and Uniformity

Chapter 36:  Embracing Jesus as a Jew

Part V:  Restoring Judeo-Christian Values

Chapter 37:  What We Can All Learn from Jesus

Chapter 38:  Jesus as a Bridge Between Religions

Chapter 39:  Jesus and American Values

Chapter 40:  The Hyphen that Unites Us