Deepening the Dialogue
FREDRIKSEN, PAULA
Deepening the Dialogue Christianity in Jewish Terms Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer, editors Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000, 438...
...Thirtytwo scholars of religion come together, as Jews and as Christians, to appreciate and present their understandings of each others' traditions, in what the editors describe as the changed environment of post-Holocaust interfaith dialogue...
...What emerges is an array of diverse views, revealing as much variation within traditions as between them...
...These included the publication last fall of "A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity," acknowledging Christians' efforts, in the New York Times and other newspapers...
...in Jewish terms...
...Ten Christian responses, and another set of Jewish responses, complete each one...
...Theologians and church leaders have publicly acknowledged and regretted the preceding centuries of mistreatment and violence, and formally renounced the teachr ing of contempt for Jews—prompting reciprocal moves by Jewish scholars...
...This volume represents a continuation of that rapprochement, with what the editors describe as a "a careful second look at Christian religious belief...
...In the half-century since the Shoah, however, partly in recognition of the ways traditional Christian anti-Judaism prepared the way for Nazi genocide, "Christianity has changed dramatically," the editors assert...
...The tone of the essays is as pleasurable to experience as their substance...
...Ten Jewish scholars wrote the essays that form the chapters on key themes: God, Scripture, commandment, Israel, worship, suffering, embodiment, redemption, sin and repentance, and the image of God...
...The thoughtful reader will come away from Christianity in Jewish Terms with an enhanced appreciation of what unites Jews and Christians, and distinguishes them...
...Deepening the Dialogue Christianity in Jewish Terms Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer, editors Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000, 438 pp., hardcover S30 REVIEWED BY PAULA FREDRIKSEN This book is an intellectual feast...
...Difference stands undisguised: Individual scholars unhesitatingly call attention to particular points of principle which, in their view, will always resist translation into the terms of other's community...
...Paula Fredriksen is a historian of ancient Christianity at Boston University...
...As one of the editors, David Novak, states in his introduction to the volume, this new phase of interfaith dialogue, marked as it is by deeper understanding and a new sense of trust, can lead to "not only a new Christian understanding of Jews and Judaism, and a new Jewish understanding of Christians and Christianity, but even perhaps [to] a new Christian understanding of Christianity and a new Jewish understanding of Judaism...
...The presentation is a model of fairminded dialogue...
...Historically, Christians often characterized Judaism in derogatory terms, contrasting putative Jewish religious vices ("works," "legalism," emphasis on ritual) with supposed Christian theological virtues ("grace," "faith," emphasis on ethics), and presenting the church as God's successor to the synagogue...
...In such a context, Judaism was a religious abstraction which served as a focus of Christian identity...
...Amen, selah...
...Discussions are informed and passionate, but marked by candor and respect...
Vol. 26 • October 2001 • No. 5
