David Klinghoffer - Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History

Table of Contents

For Naomi

INTRODUCTION

THANK THE JEWS

One day not long ago, a pair of window washers came into my office in downtown Seattle. The older and brawnier of the two, a thoughtful guy about forty years old, noticed the Hebrew books piled around my laptop. He started a conversation. One topic led to another, and before I knew it he was giving me a scriptural proof of the virgin birth. I responded by pointing out that the verse in Isaiah he was referring to has been a matter of dispute between Jews and Christians for two millennia. He proceeded to speak of his relationship with Christ, and I spoke of knowing God through the medium of the Torah. Forty-five minutes later, the man shook my hand, looking puzzled and distraught, said, Well, God bless you, and left.

The distress of sincere Christians at the thought of Jews rejecting Jesus is understandable. After all, in their system of beliefs, the eternal fate of a persons soul hinges on the relationship he has formed with the Christian Messiah. Jewish friends of mine who, like me, work and socialize with serious Christians are often asked, however the question may be phrased, You seem like such a nice person. You know your Bible. How could it be that you dont see the need for Christ in your life? The puzzlement is heightened when the Jew in question is a political conservative, also like me, speaking with conservative or Evangelical Christians.

That Jesus was a Jew is a point often made by such Christians. What, then, accounts for the Jewish resistance to him? Wouldnt the world be a better place if Christs people accepted their own Messiah?

A few days after my conversation with the missionary window washer, Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ was released. The film aroused tremendous hostility from leaders in the American Jewish community. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the countrys most prominent Jewish group, feverishly prophesied that the film could fuel latent anti-Semitism. In an article in the Jewish-owned and -edited weekly The New Republic, a Jewish professor of religious studies, Paula Fredriksen, in all earnestness gave it not as speculation but as a certainty that when the film appeared in countries like Poland, Spain, France, and Russia, savagery would erupt: When violence breaks out, Mel Gibson will have a much higher authority than professors and bishops to answer to. The Los Angeles Weekly called Gibsons movie a gasoline-soaked rag tossed on the already roaring flames of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Tovia Singer, a radio talk-show host, warned, By the time the first nail is hammered into the cross, viewers in Germany will be passing around knife sharpeners in the theater. Israel may have to absorb a massive flight of European Jewry. Of course, none of this happeneddespite the fact that, thanks to the ADLs widely publicized attacks, many more people saw Gibsons Passion than would otherwise have done so.

What was expected to bring on this tsunami of Jew hatred, not least from the very same Evangelical Christians who are among the state of Israels most ardent supporters? The ADL specifically decried the movies depiction of Jewish complicity in Jesuss death, recalling the history of medieval Passion plays that sparked anti-Semitic furies among Christians. As the New Testament tells the story, and as Gibson does, the Jewish leadership of Jesuss time not only rejected Jesus, but conspired to hand him over to the Romans for crucifixion. Or as the marquee of Denvers Lovingway United Pentecostal Church put it the day that The Passion was released, JEWS KILLED THE LORD JESUS; SETTLED!

A neutral observer might have come away from the whole episode thinking that the main point of dispute between Jews and Christians is over whether the Jews killed Jesus. The surprising truth, however, is that Jews have long acknowledged the role played by a few prominent ancestors in the events leading to the Crucifixion. Basing himself on the Talmud (before it was censoredof which more below), the twelfth-century sage Maimonides wrote of Jesus of Nazareth, who imagined that he was the Messiah, but was put to death by the court. And again: The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him. (Maimonidess comments were themselves later censored by Jews fearful of Christian reprisals. Well see to what extent these passages can be taken as historically informative.)

What Jews in fact have disputed with Jesuss followers from the very beginning is not the circumstances of his death, but the question of his messiahship. It would not be accurate to say that the Jews who were alive in 28 CE actively and altogether rejected him. The vast majority had never heard of him. But it is also true that they did not accept whatever claim he made (or was made on his behalf) to being the promised Messiah. Later generations made a more conscious decision to reject Christian doctrinethough of course there were plenty of individual Jews who did accept that doctrine and became sincere Christians.

The disputation has been going on ever since, as I will show in this bookthe first to tell the story of this ancient debate in the form of a historical narrative. Beginning with how Judaism looked in the year immediately before Jesus initiated his ministry, we will tell the story of how Jews reacted to him as a teacher and provocateur, what role they may have played in his death, how they violently rejected the apostle Paul, how the debate about Jesus developed in the Talmudic and medieval periods, and how the disagreement continues down to the present.

In our time, a strong current of opinion in the Jewish community is reluctant to engage the questions this book considers. As the reaction to Gibsons film dramatically illustrates, this is partly from fear of revealing the things traditional Jewish sources have said about Jesus, especially about his death; partly from the misconception that Judaism discourages Jews from exposing non-Jews to the Jewish faith where it contradicts other religions; partly, Im afraid, because the leadership of the American Jewish community is not committed to the belief that their ancestral religion is even true and can be defended on rational grounds. There is a strong relativistic tendency among establishment groups like the Anti-Defamation League, which take it as a given that, as ADL national director Abraham Foxman has said, it is pure arrogance for any one religion to assume that they hold the truth. Presumably this would apply to Judaism, too. For Gibson to assert the truth of his religion was therefore wrong, as it would be wrong to assert the truth of Judaism.

The release of The Passion was a cultural watershed in several ways. It demonstrated the untruthsabout history, about Judaismthat much of the American Jewish community and many other well-meaning Americans have come to accept as dogma. According to one such untruth, Jews had nothing to do with Jesuss death. According to another, much more important for our purposes here, it is somehow un-Jewish to state unapologetically the case for Judaism as against other religions. Widespread misinformation poisons a culture. In our culture, the need to dispel the untruths has become urgent. That is why I have written this book.