Strangers and Neighbors

by Maria Poggi Johnson

  There are many Christians, I know, who would find it sad or scandalous (or worse) that I do not talk about the gospel with my Jewish friends, who would say that in failing to proclaim to them the message about Christ, I show myself to be a friend neither to them nor to him. There is an interesting argument to be had there, for sure. But I am not going to have it here, nor am I going to attempt to justify my own practice, except to say more or less what I say to my children: that both the history and the theology of relations between Jews and Christians are complicated and often painful, and that the best thing we can do for now is just be good friends and let God take care of everybody and fix the bad stuff, because he’s the only one who understands how. That may sound dreadfully lazy—especially coming from a theologian, whose job it is to think about these things. I have read and reread Romans, where Paul wrestles with these questions, and every time I hear him saying something different. And now the story is two thousand years longer and a whole lot more complicated, and even to the extent that I can and should try to follow Paul in wrestling with the great cosmic story of God and Christ and the Jews, the relationship between God and Christ and our Jewish friends is, I think, not something I ought to be meddling in. We try to live our lives as faithful Christians: to walk in the light of Christ. What, if anything, our neighbors make of it is their business and God’s, not ours.

  It would be discourteous, and possibly hurtful, of me to disregard our neighbors’ desire not be drawn into religious debate. It would also be, I feel, ungrateful. And I have a lot for which to be grateful. By coming, through great trial, to know the one God and to worship him alone by receiving the Torah, by obeying the laws he gave them, the Jews prepared for God the place where he would dwell among us, where he would become flesh, and where he would enter our world to seek and find those who did not know him. The Jews gave Christ to the world. And, as I have come to understand over the last six years, they continue to give Christ to the world. It seems to me quite impossible that the Church should live its life, baptize, and break bread, and that believers should be filled with the Spirit, in a world in which there were no Jews keeping kosher, welcoming Shabbos, and learning Torah. I don’t understand it, but there it is. There could be no Church in a world that had utterly forgotten the Torah.

  This is not just a historical or theological statement, but a personal one. My neighbors have given me Christ in myriad ways. My briskly modern and pragmatic approach to daily life has been challenged by seeing how food and time and clothing and everything are commandeered in my neighbors’ lives by the command to be holy. I believe, with Paul and the Church, that God saves us in Christ by faith, but I have come to see that there is something salvific about the Law too. The liturgical life of the Church is enriched when it is lived shoulder-to-shoulder with the Jewish year. Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, dawns with new meaning when it follows the sacred hush of Shabbos. The drama of the Eucharist is deepened by the counterpoint of the Seder. Even Christmas has added poignancy from coming in the wake of Hanukkah; the powers of darkness have not overcome the Jews, and they will not overcome the light of the star over the stable. My relation to the Bible has been transformed, and my understanding of it has been deepened by a glimpse, however distant, into the lives of the people who wrote it. The Old Testament is more exciting now that I see the Torah lived all around me, and the New Testament is more dramatic now that I understand more clearly the wrenching decisions that confronted Peter and Paul as they brought word of Messiah and Spirit into an alien world.

  Every semester, when I read through the Bible with my students, I find myself caught up in the drama and catch myself taking the side of the conservatives at the Jerusalem Conference, wanting to draw the Gentiles into the world of Torah. I find the lives of my neighbors fascinating and beguiling, and there are moments when I am half a Judaizer myself and catch myself idly musing that wouldn’t it maybe be a nice way of connecting with the whole history of our faith if we did something with candles on Friday evenings or kept, well, just a very little bit kosher, like, say, no bacon cheeseburgers? I was, I must admit, even a little drawn to the nutty “Yeshua is Moshiach!” of Christians-turned-Jews-turned- Christians in Jerusalem. But every semester, Paul’s exclamation, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” (Gal. 3:1) calls me back to reality; that question was settled two thousand years ago. In the eyes of the world, and for all practical purposes, Judaism and Christianity are separate religions now; and we have all but forgotten that at the birth of the Church, a family was ripped apart. It is hard for us to relate to Paul’s anguish at the unavoidable parting of the ways.

  But now I can, just a little. Paul said that the Church is a new branch grafted into the older vine of Israel, that by faith in Christ the Gentiles are adopted and made children of Abraham and of God. Before I came to live in this neighborhood, I understood the theological import of the metaphor, but I didn’t respond emotionally to hearing that I had been adopted into a family I had never met. Now that I have met them, two thousand years after Paul lamented over them, I find that the metaphor of adoption speaks to me from a different angle. I sometimes feel as if I had been adopted at birth into a good and loving family, the only family I have ever had or will ever think of as mine. But now, as an adult, I have accidentally stumbled across my biological family and have become, rather hesitantly, friends with them: borrowing their books, leafing through their photo albums, going shopping with my half sisters. It has helped me to understand things about myself that never quite made sense before—my passion for spicy food and bad science fiction,my inability to be on time for anything, ever. All of a sudden these things have a context, and I know what they’re about. It’s fascinating, but it does hurt a little bit. I wish I could belong to both families at once—keep Mom and Dad and the kid brother I grew up squabbling with, and somehow be part of this new (or is it old?) family too. And it makes me sad that, although they are all being awfully nice to each other, they are different families and always will be; and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  But this state of affairs is temporary. Paul says that now we see in a glass, darkly, but the day will come when we will see face-to-face and know God as he know us. Ahuva puts it rather differently; she says,“When Moshiach comes,we’ll just ask him, ‘So then, have you been here before, or is this your first visit?’”Until then, we will have to go on wondering why God has done things this way.

  Why the whole of Israel did not turn to Jesus is a mystery to the writers of the New Testament and, therefore, remains a mystery to Christian theology. To the Church’s first leaders, devoted Jews, it was a tragic, frustrating mystery. To Paul, who loved his people and loved Torah, it was heartbreaking. He knew that God was in control and that his promises to Israel were eternal and would be honored. But despite his trust in God’s faithfulness, the division between the Jews who followed him out of the synagogues and those who remained was, for him, an open and agonizing wound. I have come to love Judaism from the outside and can imagine what it must be to love it as one’s own and yet to see oneself parted from it. I have been enriched as a Christian by being able to understand, just a little, Paul’s pain.

  At Mass, after the consecration prayer, with the presence of Christ among us, the priest says, “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith.” I’m always relieved that he calls it a mystery, because most of the time I am completely mystified by it. We respond, “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.”Mystified as I am, I’ll go on proclaiming that Christ will come again. And when he comes, my neighbors will greet him as their own. Not “Oops! So the Christians were right after all!” but “So here you are, finally! Baruch Hashem! What took you so long?”

  At that moment, the glass in which we see darkly will melt into uncreated light, the veil will fall from our eyes, and we will all see him—Hashem, the Christ, the One—face-to-face and call him and each other by our true names.

  Glossary

  Some terms will probably re
quire explanation. Like everything else in this book, I have learned these not from scholarly sources but from conversation with my neighbors. Some of the terms, like berakha are Hebrew and some, like Shabbos or shul are Yiddish—the the blend of Hebrew, German and Polish that was the lingua franca of Eastern European Jews for centuries. Because the roots are all Hebrew, there is some variation in spelling; the ones I use are, again, approved by a neighbor. In the pronunciation guide, “kh” stands for a rough guttural throaty sound that I still can’t do properly, although my children can.

  (A note on plurals: strictly speaking, the plural of mitzvah is mitzvot, and of berakha is berakhot. But my neighbors say “mitzvahs” and “berakhas,” so that is what I have done.)

  Adonai (AH-doh-nye), Hebrew for “God,” used in prayer

  Aron Kodesh (ERR-on KO-desh), a cabinet in the synagogue that holds the Torah scrolls

  baal teshuvah (bahl ti-SHOO-vah) literally “master of repentance”—a Jew who is not raised Orthodox but voluntarily takes on Orthodox observance

  bar mitzvah (bar MITS-veh), a celebration on a Hebrew boy’s thirteenth birthday, of his completing his Jewish study

  Baruch Hashem (bar-OOKH ha-SHEM), “Thank God”—a frequent expression, as in, “How are you?” “Baruch Hashem, I’m well.”

  berakha (BRA-khah), a blessing or benediction

  B’nai B’rith (beh-nay BRITH), an international Jewish organization promoting the betterment of Jews and the public at large through culture, society, and education

  bris pl. brissim (briss), the celebration upon the circumcision of a male child eight days old

  Chumash (KHOO-mash), the Pentateuch

  chuppah (KHOO-puh), a canopy under which the Jewish marriage ceremony is performed

  dreidel (DRAY-dl), a four-sided top used in children’s games during Hanukkah

  gefilte fish (guh-FILL-teh fish), freshwater fish, blended with eggs, matzoh meal, and seasoning, shaped into balls and simmered in vegetable broth, often served chilled

  halakha (hall-LAH-khuh), the entire body of Jewish law and tradition, including Torah, Talmud, and oral law; halakhic adj.

  Hanukkah (KHA-neh-kuh), an eight-day festival celebrating the Maccabean victory over the Syrians

  Hashem (ha-SHEM), “the Name”—how Orthodox Jews refer to God in conversation

  hashkafa (hash-KAH-fah), Jewish ethics or worldview

  hasidei umos haolam (hah-SID-ay OO-mes hah-OH-lum), “the righteous among the nations”; virtuous Gentiles)

  kabbalah (kuh-BAA-luh), the tradition of Jewish mysticism

  kashruth (KASH-root), the body of Jewish dietary law

  kibitz (KIB-its), to joke, wisecrack, or offer advice

  knish (knish), a fried roll of dough with filling

  kosher (KO-shur), fit to be eaten according to Jewish dietary law

  loshon (LOW-shen), proper speech

  matzoh ball (MAT-seh ball), a dumpling made from matzoh meal, usually served in soup

  menorah (me-NOR-uh), a candelabra with nine branches for use during Hanukkah

  mezuzah (meh-ZOO-zuh), a parchment scroll on which Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 are inscribed on one side and the word Shaddai on the other, kept in a small tube on the doorpost of Jewish homes

  mikveh (MEHK-vah), a ritual bath Orthodox Jews are required to take on certain occasions, as before Shabbos and after each menstrual period

  minyan (MIN-yan), the number of people required by Jewish law to be present to conduct a religious service (typically a minimum of ten Jewish males over thirteen years old)

  mitzvah (MITS-vah), six hundred thirteen rules in the Bible and Talmud

  Moshiach (ma-SHEE-akh),Messiah

  Novi (NUH-vee), the Prophets

  Pentateuch (PEN-tuh-too-k), the first five books of the Old Testament

  Pesach (PAY-sahk), Passover

  Purim (POOR-im), a festival celebrating the deliverance of the Jews from destruction in Persia

  Rosh Hashanah (rosh ha-SHAH-nuh), a high holy day that marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year

  Seder (SAY-duhr), the ceremonial dinner that commemorates the Jewish exodus from Egypt

  Shabbos (SHA-bus), Hebrew term for “Sabbath”

  Shabbos goy (SHA-bus goy), a gentile who performs tasks for Jews on Sabbath that are forbidden by Jewish law

  shalom zachor (SHU-lem ZU-kher), a party on the first Friday evening of a baby boy’s life

  Shavuos (shah-VOO-os), a festival commemorating God’s giving the Ten Commandments to Moses

  shomrei negiyah (SHOME-ray neg-EE-yuh), to refrain from physical contact before marriage

  shomrei yichud (SHOME-ray YI-khud), prohibition on males and females being alone together

  shul (shool), Yiddish term for synagogue

  Sukkot (soo-KOT), festival commemorating the harvest and period the Jews wandered in the wilderness

  sukkah (SOO-kah), a booth or hut built with branches

  Talmud (TAL-mood), collection of Jewish law

  Tisha b’Av (TAY-shah beh-AV), a fast observed in memory of the destruction of the temples

  Torah (TOR-uh), both the Pentateuch and the entire body of Jewish law

  treif (trayf), non-kosher food, literally “torn”

  Tu B’Shevat (too bi-sheh-VAT), the fifteenth day of Shevat, observed as a new year for trees

  tzevuin (ze-VOO-in), “painted” or “shady”

  tzitzis (tse-tset), the fringes or tassels worn at the corners of outer garments

  tznius (ZNEE-yus), the Orthodox code of modesty in dress

  yarmulke (YAH-mul-kuh), a skullcap worn by Orthodox men

  yeshiva (yeh-SHIV-ah), a Hebrew school

  Yeshua (YESH-oo-ah), Jesus

  YHWH (not spoken aloud), the letters representing the most holy name for God

  Yom Kippur (yom KIP-er), the Day of Atonement, a high holy day celebrated by fasting and the recitation of prayers

  Notes

  Chapter 5

  1. David Dawson, “Why Are We So Indifferent About Our Spiritual Lives?” in Why Are We Here? Everyday Questions and the Christian Life, ed. Ronald F. Theimann and William C. Placher (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), 20.

  Chapter 9

  1. Lauren Winner, Girl Meets God (New York: Random House, 2002), 163.

  About the Author

  MARIA POGGI JOHNSON grew up in Scotland and studied at Oxford University and the University of Virginia. She lives with her husband and four children in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and teaches theology at the University of Scranton.