Judaism's view of Christianity and Islam is a function of its
understanding of itself. The term " Judaism" is itself
problematic in the light of traditional Jewish self-understanding. The
term implied the existence of a set of beliefs and practices which
constitute Judaism and adherence to which makes someone into a Jew. The
term "Judaism" does not translate any classical Hebrew term. The
reason for this is that the critical term in classical Jewish
self-understanding is not Judaism (though we can not avoid using the term)
but Israel and the Torah. Israel is the people that is descended from
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and that has been chosen to serve as God's people
and as a blessing to all of humanity. The Torah is the divinely revealed
teaching that explains the origins and nature of Israel and of
commandments God has addressed to his people. The Torah and Israel are
therefor closely related: the Torah as command is addressed not to all of
humanity but only to Israel and Israel is the people only because of the
covenant to which the Torah testifies. No Judaism is therefore possible
without the people of Israel. But who is the people of Israel?
The people of Israel are descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
God could have chosen a community of faith to serve as his people (which
is what he did, in the view of the Church, when he constituted it as the
New Israel). God could have chosen a group not constituted by faith but by
action: those who acted in a certain way would then have been members of
the chosen people. Or he could have not chosen any one people but all of
humanity without any invidious distinctions. But, in his sovereignty, God
did not choose any of these options. Instead, he addressed Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob and established a special relationship with them. This human
family defined in terms of descent from the patriarch became the Jewish
people. Judaism is therefore not matter of faith. A Jew who lacks faith or
who acts contrary to the commandments of the Torah is therefore a sinning
Jew. But he remains a Jew and the fact is that all Jews are, to a greater
or lesser extent, sinning Jews. Ontologically, in terms of what he is, the
Jew is a Jew because of descent from the patriarchs.
And yet, conversion to Judaism is possible. That it is possible is
not very obvious. From the point of view of simple common sense, it ought
not to be possible. One cannot convert to being someone's descendant. In
many legal systems, adoption becomes a method whereby someone who is not a
physical descendant legally becomes one. But it is worth nothing that
Jewish law does not know of adoption. If conversion to Judaism is
possible- as it is - it becomes a possibility by means of kinds of
miracle. The convert miraculously becomes seed of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. And this ought not to be interpreted too spiritually. In the
rabbinic view, a son and mother who convert may marry without violating
the biblical prohibited against incest (though it becomes rabinically
prohibited) because by converting they have been born again and are
therefore no longer mother and son. The rebirth in question can hardly be
a purely spiritual one because in a purely spiritual rebirth, as in
Christian baptism, the biological bond between the mother and son is not
severed. It is for this reason that no Christian author known to me
entertains the possibility that baptism of mother and son produces a
rebirth which cancels the incest prohibition between them. But in Jewish
conversion, something quasi-biological occurs and it is for this reason
that the possibility of conversion does not undermine Jewish
self-understanding in terms of descent from Abraham.
If the Torah is the system of God’s demands addressed to Israel,
where do other nations stand? The election of Israel imposes on this
people a special set of commands to which it, and only it, is called to
obedience. But God is not indifferent to the faith and conduct of other
people either. These in view of the rabbis, are bound by the Noachide
commandments which the rabbis infer from Gen. 9 and which exclude
idolatry, murder, theft, incest, roughly corresponding to the natural
moral law. A gentile who fulfills these commands secures for himself a
place in the world to come. Judaism therefore does not teach that only its
adherents can be “ saved” or that it is the only path to “
salvation”. Judaism is the set of demands God makes of the Jewish people
and since those demands are not easy to fulfill, and since it is possible
to obtain a place in the world to come without being a Jew, there is a
prima facie case to be made against encouraging gentiles to convert to
Judaism. And indeed that has been the general Jewish attitude toward
converts. They are not encouraged to convert but told that God does not
want all of human family to follow the same rules and that, as gentiles,
they please God most adequately by fulfilling the Noachide commandments.
Only when the potential convert persists in his search and insists on
becoming a Jew is he circumcised (if male) and required to immerse himself
in the Mikvah (ritual bath) from which, if he has committed himself to
observance of the Torah, does he emerge as a full-fledged Jew.
The Jewish view of Christianity and Islam must therefore be
understood in the context of Judaism’s understanding of itself. Because
Judaism is not seem as the right religion for every one, it is
self-evident that the other religions have a right to exist provided they
do not violate one or another of the Noachide commandments. In the case of
Islam and because of its supremely monotheistic orientation, Judaism has
had no difficulty in recognizing it as a valid expression of gentile
religiosity. In the case of Christianity the matter become more complex.
The root of difficulty is the doctrine of the Trinity. As formulated in
the Nicene Creed which speaks of the Son who was “ begotten, not made”
and “ of one essence with the father”, the question arises whether
Christianity is, in fact, a break with monotheism and therefore violation
of the Noschide prohibition against idolatry. Medieval rabbis were divided
over the answer to this question. The accepted view was that Christianity
did not constitute idolatry for gentiles. The doctrine of the Trinity
weakened but did not fatally injure the oneness of God. Nevertheless, it
was held that for a Jew to hold to the doctrine of the Trinity would
constitute idolatry. This descrepancy was to be understood in terms of a
difference in the standard of monotheism as applicable to Jewish and to
gentiles. It is the Torah which defines what sort of belief constitute
idolatry for Jews and what sort of belief constitutes idolatry for
gentiles. The Jewish standards are more stringent (as in many other
requirements) than those applicable to gentiles so that one and the same
belief can constitute idolatry for Jews and not for gentiles. And this is,
in fact, the case with regard to the Trinity.
In the case of Islam, there is no such problem with regard to
monotheism. But here another problem arises which also quite serious.
Whatever problem Judaism may have with Christianity with respect to
Trinity, there remains one extremely important bond: they both revere the
Hebrew Bible as the word of God. There are, of course, serious differences
of interpretation, most notably perhaps the Christian belief that many
passages in the Hebrew Bible refer to ("foreshadow" is the
commonly used term) the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. And there are
other ways in which traditional Christians as Nevertheless, the text of
the Hebrew Bible is accepted by Christians as divinely inspired. Muslims,
on the other hand, do not go so far. While they accept much from the
Hebrew Bible, they believe that serious distortions have crept into the
Hebrew text, distortions mainly aiming to Justify the Jewish version of
things. While in a general way Islam accepts the incidents and teachings
of the Hebrew Bible, it can not be said that there is a common Scripture
as there is with Christianity. Maimonides, in fact, attaches so much
importance to this difference that he permits Torah to be taught to
Christians but not to Muslims. Since the difference between Judaism and
Christianity is the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, teaching the
Jewish interpretation to Christians may serve to correct the Christian
misinterpretation. But with Muslims it is not a matter of a difference of
interpretation of a shared text but a rejection by Muslims of the Hebrew
Bible as transmitted in Judaism. Since they do not accept the text,
Maimonides holds that Muslims may not be taught Torah as there is little
chance of coming to any sort of agreement.
While it would be wrong to attach too much
importance to this particular ruling of Maimonides both because it is one
man's opinion and not a very central part of Maimonides' thinking at that
, it is interesting to note the symmetry of the Jewish-Christian and
Jewish-Muslims relationship. Each has one important plus and one important
minus. With Christianity there is the important advantage of the common
Scripture but there is the problem of the Trinity. With Islam, there is
the advantage of no impairment of monotheism but there is the problem of
absence of a common Scripture. It is difficult to say which relationship,
on balance, is the easier. Perhaps it should also be mentioned that the
charge of being responsible for the death of Jesus and therefore of decide
was never raised in Islam and that this also contribute to a less tense
relationship with Islam. And it is generally held that while deprivation
of the human rights of Jews was by no means unknown in the Muslim world
(at least as measured by contemporary standards), it did not generally
reach the severity that this form of human prejudice did in the Christian
world. It is not necessary to interpret Jewish existence in the Muslim
world as an uninterrupted exercise in mutual cordiality to recognize that
the virulent anti-semitism that has infected much of Christendom can not
be easily found in the Muslim sphere.
Up to this point, the Jewish evaluation of Christianity and Islam
has been discussed from the point of view of Judaism's understanding of
the Noachide commandments which is considers obligatory for gentiles and
by means of which it measures any religion or ideology adopted by
gentiles. Seen from this point of view, a gentile religion which made no
reference to Jewish sacred history could pass muster quite adequately. But
it is significant, of course, that both Christianity and Islam are not at
all obvious to God's intervention in human affairs through the history of
Israel. To a significant extent, Christianity and Islam have absorbed and
propagated concepts that first arose in Israel's religious history and
which would have remained Israel's alone were they not spread throughout
the world by Judaism's two daughter religions. These two
religions-Christianity and Islam- therefore stand in a special
relationship to Judaism and Judaism stands in a special relationship to
them. This was clearly recognized by Judaism almost from the very
inception of these two religions. It is for this reason that Maimonides,
in a well known passage, attributes an important place in God's plan of
salvation to Christianity and Islam. He writes:
But it is beyond the human mind to fathom the designs of the
Creators; for our ways are not his ways. Neither are our thoughts His
thoughts. All these matters relating to Jesus of Nazareth and the
Ishmaelite (Mohammed) who came after him, only served to clear the way for
king Messiah, to prepare the whole world to worship God with one accord,
as it is written "For then will I turn to the peoples a pure
language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him
with one consent". Thus the messianic hope, the Torah, and the
commandments have become familiar topics- topics of conversation ( among
the inhabitants) of the far isles and many peoples, uncircumcised of heart
and flesh." (The code of Maimonides, The Book of Judges, tr. Abraham
M. Hershman, Yale University Press, 1949, p. XXIII).
Through Judaism and Islam, messianic thinking has entered into the
consciousness of people who would otherwise have had no understanding
whatsoever of this profoundly Jewish expectation. Since it is clear
to Maimonides that the redemption that awaits Israel at the end of time
will be accompanied by the redemption of the rest of humanity, the spread
of messianism in its Christian and Muslim forms is an integral part of the
movement of history according to God's plan.
If Judaism does not adopt a missionary stance toward Christians and
Muslims, it does not do so because it does not believe it to be God’s
will that all of humanity become Jewish. Is has often been overlooked that
this does not rule out a Noachide mission to gentiles. Because all of
humanity is obligated to live up to the demands of the Noachide covenant
which follows the Flood as reported in Genesis, it would seem obvious that
it is Israel’s task, as the people to whom the Torah was entrusted, to
propagate knowledge of this covenant among the people. Furthermore,
Israel’s own election is an end in itself but has as its goal the
blessing of all humanity. Only when man’s disobedience seemed to
frustrate God’s original plan did he decide to concentrate his pedagogy
on one of the human families apparently hoping that if he succeeds with
this one group, its example will serve to educate the rest of humanity to
live in accordance with God’s will. And if Israel has also proven less
than fully equal to the task demanded of it, its failures have interfered
with the redemption of all humanity and not only its own redemption.
To charge Israel with an exclusionary, even racist, theology, is
therefore a profound distortion of Israel’s faith. That God elected a
human family of the flesh was his sovereign prerogative. In spite of the
hereditary nature of this election, conversion to Judaism is possible for
all those who sincerely desire it. The very fact it is possible, even if
not encouraged, emphasizes the complex and not completely hereditary
nature of this election. And above all, by accepting its election, Israel
commits itself to a more difficult life of obedience than is required of
any other people. It is true that in spite of all the suffering that has
accrued to Israel because of its election, Israel has developed a certain
pride because of its election and its service. Doubtless, at time this has
exceeded the bounds of the permissible. But what could be expected of a
people that has kept the faith in spite of superhuman obstacles and
because of it brought a large segment of humanity under the wings of
divine presence?
The demand of the hour is a drawing together of all those whose
lives are led under the judgment of the God of Abraham. For the children
of Abraham to learn to recognize the presence of the patriarch in the
adherents of the other Abrahamic faiths is the demand of the teacher of
Beer-Sheva. We ought not to reject that demand.
