Thursday, November 29, 2018
FEARS AND HISTORICAL STUDIES
The following is my letter to the editor of New York Times Book Review, for November 18. I was responding to a review of five recent books on the search for Jewish identity:
I
like the fact that Gal Beckerman included her own search for Jewish meaning in
her review of 5 books on the current state of Judaism (Nov. 18), but there is
something odd about using the Pittsburgh shooting to frame the discussion. I
think she knows that, as she says there is “something sad about identity
flaring just in these moments of defensiveness and grief.” In any search for
identity, sometimes what is omitted can be telling. The one thing Jews do not
like to discuss at all is Christian antisemitism and their fear of Christians. For
one thing, they are afraid that such talk will only make antisemitism worse. I
have heard many people speak about Pittsburgh and no one brings up Christian
racism against Jews, in particular what is its source. I had a similar
experience many years ago, at a large gathering of Jews discussing
antisemitism, and not once did anyone bring up Christianity, much less how it
affects Jewish identity.
Beckerman
poses Amos Oz’s question: “Does our past belong to us, or we to it?” There is
one part of our past that we have entirely given up to Christianity, and that
is first century Jewish culture. The popular understanding (both among
Christians and Jews) of this part of Jewish history is that Jewish leaders were
corrupt, totally in service to the Romans (Josephus gives the lie to this, but
religious Jews avoid Josephus like poison), and thus were easily hoodwinked
into persecuting Jesus (the Gospels do not support this as much as people
think). Most Christians think ancient Jewish culture was too ethnic, too
tribal, too ritualistic, too legalistic, too obsessed with purity. Jewish
scholars have done a poor job combating this. They rightly deny all these
things, and Christians will nod their heads and say they understand, but among
themselves, when they tell the story of Jesus, Christians are convinced that Jesus
opposed a Judaism that was too tribal, too legalistic, and all the rest. That
popular story holds sway and the result is that most Jews are ashamed of their
ancient past, not to mention that the persistent belief that some Jews helped
to kill Jesus adds to the shame.
Jews
do not like talking about any of this, out of fear that any discoveries about
how Jewish Jesus was will only make Christians feel threatened and make them more
racist towards Jews. So Christians continue to own ancient Jewish history and
Jews go on believing that their ancestors were the equivalent of jungle
bunnies. I am not saying that a truer understanding of how great ancient Jewish
culture was is the cure-all for what ails Judaism today, but to quote an old
Jewish joke, it wouldn’t hurt.
That's the end of the letter, which I realize won't get printed. Fears are the hardest thing to talk about, especially the ones that get suppressed. We just hope they will go away without our talking about them. They won't, and that's the dilemma.
© 2018 Leon Zitzer
