Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

When we met last month we were speaking about Sam, born Jewish and Jane, born Christian who sit before me as an "inter-faithless couple". They are neither/nor people who propose to raise their children as both Jewish and Christian.

Why not both/and? Expose them to both like measles and chickenpox. Why fight when one can have Moses and Jesus, Messiah and Christ, the Seder and the last supper, kiddush and communion, mistletoe and menorah, Chanukkah and Christmas?

In the last analysis Christianity and Judaism, they argue, are pretty much the same thing. Two sides of the same coin.

Why fight? Instead of continuing with inter-marriage tensions, why not settle for a kind of liberal syncretism? Syncretism is a fusion of two or more different forms of belief and practices.

For syncretism settles for the least common denominator. But be wary of least common denominators. But the least common denominator of whiskey, and champagne is water. To water down two thousand years of history, theology and philosophy, two millennia for Christianity and twice that amount for Judaism to latkes and hot cross buns is shameful.

There are signs that the watery mixture is becoming hard to swallow. There's a price you pay for syncretism. Jonathan and Judith Perl who publish a periodical about popular television's Jewish images note that not until the late 1960's and early 1970's did TV begin to take notion of Chanukkah.

It may be a heightened concern for Hollywood's Jews who have achieved unusual homogenization. Los Angeles holds one of the nation's highest intermarriage rates - some say close to 70%. They and the TV characters, the writers and producers on created on screen and off are married into Gentile families. A funny thing happened on the way to syncretism - "Now that we are like everyone else who are we?" The question pops out on some of the popular television shows which feature Jewish characters. Michael Steadman spends several episodes wondering about the role of his Jewish identity in his intermarriage. Joel Fleischman of "Northern Exposure" voices a nagging concern for Jewish identity. Fleischman, isolated in an Alaskan town, brings home a Christmas tree but by the show's end he is depositing it on the lawn of a Christian friend. The script has him say, "It belongs to you. Scratch a plum pudding and there's a matzah ball underneath. I'm a Jew, that's all there is to it." On the television show "The Commish" a Jewish partner tells her young son as the family lights the menorah about raising him without a Christmas tree. "We have a beautiful tradition and we want to raise you with as little confusion as possible."

And on the first night of Chanukkah (1992) on the television program "Sisters", an intermarried couple face an outbreak of anti-semitism. The old story of Chanukkah has a contemporary resonance in the need to uphold Jewish identity and confront bigotry.

How do you talk to Sam and Jane about Judaism and Christianity? I want to avoid false equivalence. I want to avoid invidious comparison. But comparisons are invidious. There is something inherently vulgar when candidate A compares his merits with candidate B or when brand X compares its virtues with brand Y.

And it is much more difficult and much more serious when comparisons are made between cultures and religions and civilizations. Comparisons are invidious and I have seen and heard spokesmen for Christianity and for Judaism trapped into religious gerrymandering. Gerrymandering in politics is the way you carve up a territory into election districts to give one political party an electoral majority and thereby an advantage over the opposition which is given as few districts as possible. A perverse polarization ensues. All the good features are concentrated in one religion and all the bad ones in the other. If it is a Christian who is making the pitch then Christianity is new, universal, loving, compassionate, and Judaism, by contrast, is old, provincial, legalistic, narrow. I recall the minister who told me "You pray your way, I'll pray God's way."

Or if it is a Jewish spokesman that is making the presentation, Judaism is warm, open, optimistic, this-worldly, ethical contrasted to a pinched Christianity, sombre, cold, pessimistic, dogmatic, irrational.

So I do not want to fall into salesmanship. Did you ever see two different sets of grandparents compare the photographs of their grandchildren? Frightening sight to behold such degeneration.

I don't like comparisons. I rather like Judeo-Christian. Moreover, there is something to be said in favor of the Judeo-Christian hyphenation. Think, for example, of Mississippi's Governor Kirk Fordice's recent insistence on insisted on labeling American a "Christian" nation. When he is told by another governor to use the more conciliatory term "Judeo-Christian", the Governor refuses saying "The less we emphasize the Christian religion the further we fall into the abyss of poor character and chaos in the United States of America." The breaking of the Judeo-Christian hyphen is the stuff that David Duke, Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson relish. So the dilemma persists. Comparisons are invidious, each religion claiming that it and only it is chosen and that the other by implication is rejected. Chosenness creates a ludicrous sibling rivalry reflected in the Smothers brothers routine in which each insists that "Mama loved his brother best".

MY DILEMMA

On the other hand while comparisons are invidious, false equations between Judaism and Christianity are misleading. I want to make it clear to Sam and to Jane that a hyphen is not an equal sign.

In speaking to Sam and Jane I point out two things. First, my profound respect for Christians and for the cultural tradition of Christianity from Augustine and Aquinas to Paul Tillich and Wolfgang Pannenberg. Full recognition was made abundantly clear to me in my work with the Jewish Foundation For Christian Rescuers that some of the most spiritually heroic and pious people are found within the church.

Still nevertheless, Judaism and Christianity are not cut out of the same cloth. Only the ignorant or self deceiving lump the two faiths together. We have a different history, a different emphasis on ethical priority, a different understanding of human nature and of history, of the nature of sin and redemption.

It requires courage to be different = to live. The dilemma emerges around this season. Who is this figure corpulent and merry with false white whiskers who sits in Macy's store? The old chestnut story portrays a Jewish mother worrying that Sammy is going to feel left out of life, takes him to Macy's and him on the lap of Santa. And Santa laughing cordially asks Sammy what he wants for Christmas. And Sammy says "You know we don't really celebrate Christmas. We're Jewish." And Santa responds "A lang leben ouf dein kepeleh." I've always found ambivalent pathos in that humor. First, the fear that we Jews are left out of the loop and secondly the hunger for belonging that has Santa behind the false beard to be Jewish himself. You see, we're really in. Santa is Jewish and so is Jesus and so are you. Don't feel left out.

As soon as I sat down to prepare this talk about Judaism and Christianity I realized that I couldn't speak in the same manner that I would were I discussing say the comparisons of Judaism with Buddhism or Hinduism. Heschel asked what would have happened if after the destruction the Jews were rooted in China or India? If I were talking about the Indian religions, I would talk about the four noble truths, about karma, satori, nirvana, reincarnation and sati and samsara - the wheel of life. I could do it dispassionately, academically. But when I begin to speak about Christianity, something beyond academics sneaks into the intellectual philosophical discussion.

What sneaks into Christian theology is the shudder of history. And not a nice and pleasant history. Suddenly theology, dogma, doctrines are enmeshed in history of death, in anti-semitism.

For what stares me in the face is the Christian charge of "deicide", a libel that has been going on for two thousand years. It is one of the scariest views of inherited guilt. Not simply the transmission of guilt from Adam to all human beings but more specifically the guilt that is assigned to my people, the anti-Christ.

I'd like to bracket that part of the Christian myth, but it can't be skipped over. It is a major principle in classical Christianity and it has a strong bite for Jews. We come upon it in the first Gospel, in Matthew 27:24. Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator has arrested Jesus who has been given over to him by the Jewish priests. In this verse, Pontius Pilate washed his hands before the multitude of Jews saying "I am innocent of the blood of this just person. Then answered all the people and said: His blood be upon us and our children." That curse left in its wake a history of blood libel, auto de fe inquisition, expulsion and pogroms. For many, it traces a nexus between deicide and genocide, the rejection and death of God to the rejection and death of a people. Raoul Hilberg in his history of the Destruction of European Jews summed it up this way: "The Christian missionary said in effect 'You have no right to live among us as Jews.' The secular leaders who followed said 'You have no right to live among us.' The German Nazis at last declared 'You have no right to live.'" The contempt of Jews has its roots in Christian theology. This is not my saying. You may read it in Rosemary Reuther's remarkable book Faith And Fratricide or in Malcolm Hay's Crucifixion of the Jews or in the works of the greatest historian of Jewish Christian relationships, the British Anglican churchman James Parkes. Parkes wrote: "The hatred and denigration of the Jewish people have a clear and precise historical origin. They arise from Christian preaching and teaching from the time of the bitter controversies in which the two religions separated from each other...anti-semitism from the first century to the twentieth century is a Christian creation and a Christian responsibility whatever secondary causes may come into the picture." This is no theoretic matter. Many Jews can testify to the virulence of the deicide libel. I experienced it myself when I was a camp counselor at Jewish Camp Deerhead near the town of Hancock in New York and more often on the streets of Manhattan near the Yeshiva where neighborhood kids yelled "Christ killer" at us.

At Yeshiva I had a wonderful teacher by the name of Gershon Churgin, born in Eastern Europe, an intellectual who taught literature and history. One day he let slip out his cynicism. There are two kinds of Gentiles I've come across. One kind that doesn't believe that Jesus ever lived. The other kind believes that Jesus really did live but both agree that the Jews killed him. Anti-semitism is a serpent that managed to be coiled up in the Christian teaching of contempt.

And it affected Jewish self-image throughout the ages. When I was a rabbi in Oakland I recall a man by the name of Michael Fass, a simple and kind man and the least sophisticated man you've ever met. One day he came to the synagogue and took me aside and told me "You know, my neighbor just must have found out from his priest. Now he told me 'You Jews killed Jesus.'" "Well what did you say Michael?" I said to him. "So, what's it your business?" It was such an unexpected, simple answer. No discussion about Romans or the impossibility of the trial. But what was he saying? He was saying what in the world has that got to do with me? And secondly he was saying if it did happen it's a family affair.

It's a source of tremendous pain and it's been treated with all kinds of serious and humorous responses. Lenny Bruce the comedian used to say "Yes we did it and he deserved it. He didn't want to be a doctor." It was all under the rubrick of Galgen humor - gallows humor. But it's serious business: anti-semitism. It remains the dominant psychic reality of our lives, even when anti-semitism wanes. I would like to read it out of history - but I can't lie to myself or to my children or to Sam and Jane. "Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child" (Cicero).

That's why teaching Hinduism or Buddhism or Shintoism is simpler. There's no Jewish history in it. However, I would have it otherwise, deicide, the killing of God is rooted in the theological dogma of incarnation. God was in Christ. Jesus is not just a human being, not just a Hebrew prophet. In the fourth Gospel of John he says "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

To kill God incarnate is not to give hemlock to Socrates. To kill God is theological homicide. What is the punishment for killing God? That idea of divine incarnation is dogma contrary to the Jewish understanding of God's nature and human nature. In Judaism no one who walks the face of this earth is God or the son of God or the daughter of God: not Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor Moses, nor David, nor Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel or Leah. This is a crucial principle of Judaism. Throughout its history Judaism opposed the deification of human beings, that which philosophers called "apotheosis". It is not directed against Jesus. There is no Jewish Biblical figure who is not sinful "fallible", "mortal". But Jesus is Christos. It is the case, and an important one that the Jewish conception of Messiah is not at all the Christian conception of Christ, though the term "Christ" derives from the word "messiah" which means one who is anointed. Christ is the incarnate son of God, the second person of the Trinity. But in Judaism the Jewish Messiah even if he is regarded as a person is fallible, is mortal, is sinful. All of this is predicated upon a verse in the Bible that the rabbis used quite often. It comes from the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 27 verse 20. "For there is no human being, no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin." No apotheosis. Moses is a revered teacher but his sin is spelled out in the Bible and because he struck the rock he could not even enter the promised land. David the king is regarded as the progenitor of the Messiah but David is an adulterer and a murderer and the prophet Nathan accuses him as such with two words that shake the king to the very core "atah ha-ish". Coincidentally, the celebration of Chanukkah includes importantly the repudiation of apotheosis - the deification of Antiochus IV who insisted on being worshipped as Epiphanies, the manifestation of God.

Sam and Jane say it is all the same. I have not even had a chance to talk to them about the conception of original sin or vicarious atonement or the virgin birth or immaculate conception or the sacraments of the church or faith and law. For centuries Christians have taught Jewish defeat and Christian triumphantism. Notre Dame Cathedral - Synagogue - blind woman with staff. Plus the church has triumphed with the sword. This doctrine of "supersession" that Jews used to be chosen is repeated.

The other part of my dilemma is my fear that I leave you with the idea that Christianity and anti-semitism are locked in an eternal embrace. I don't want to make history dispairing. I despise that immortalization of contempt, that cynicism that is rooted in a metaphysical fatalism, a Manichean dualism that splits history into a primordial warfare between "them" and "us" - that polarization must be fought against. Moreover, I hate that what is true is that there are Christians and there always have been Christians who are in this struggle against anti-semitism. Some of the most heroic statements and acts to protect Jews are also part of Christian history. In my Seminary days I came across two of the greatest American Christian theologians Rheinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich who courageously repudiated the Church's insistence on proselytizing Jews. I have had the privilege of meeting remarkable Christian theologians in high places, Protestant and Catholics, people like Roy Eckhardt, Franklin Littel and Father John Pawlowski who fight hard to eliminate the anti-Jewish passages in the New Testament and in the liturgy and who fought during Vatican II to soften and mitigate the charge of deicide. It is not an easy task to tamper with a tradition of such age and one that is found in venerable books of liturgy. It has not been an easy task but in 1965 the Vatican declared: "True the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction then alive nor against the Jews of today." Even that passage came with a great deal of struggle. My teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel flew to the Vatican in Rome and when it was widely understood that the version of the Schema on Jews would include the necessity for converting Jews, Heschel pleaded with Pope Paul VI and called Christian conversioning missions to the Jews "spiritual fratricide". He said to Cardinal Bea "I am ready to go to Auschwitz anytime if faced with the alternative of conversion or death."

We have much in common. Judaism is the mother and Christianity is the daughter. But the daughter did not rise up and call the mother blessed. Mother and daughter are not the same. But they must be respected. You cannot respect the other without respecting yourself. You cannot appreciate the uniqueness of the other unless you appreciate the uniqueness of yourself. There can be no dialogue between I an those until there is an I. Sam must discover his Jewish "I" - wherein his tradition differs from others. It is only then that he can raise Jewish children and create a Jewish family. As in the first talk on intermarriage, the burden falls on Sam. There is a wonderfully curious, succinct statement attributed to the 19th century Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk. "If I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you - then I am I and you are you. But if I am I only because you are you, then I am not I and you are not you."

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