Monday, October 29, 2018

Cherishing Jews

        I rarely write to authors who have influenced me.  But one who has written me back is a Jewish author residing in Jerusalem by the name of James Kugel.  In his book entitled, “In the Valley of the Shadow,” he shares his experience with cancer and the way he experienced God through his suffering.
       Nobody in the last 40 years has taught me more about how to understand Jesus’ resurrection than Kugel’s Harvard schoolmate, Jon Levinson, also a Jew.  Since I’m a Christian, this may strike readers as odd unless I explain that Levinson emphasizes a traditional Rabbinic Judaism which believes the God of Israel will be faithful to people by raising their bodies from the dead.  
       I got to meet Levinson once. His is one of only two autographs I have asked for in thirty years.  Levinson shows how seriously Judaism once took the hope of resurrection, and why it was natural that the Jewish Saul of Tarsus (who became known as the Christian Apostle Paul) interpreted his Damascus Road experience as a meeting with a resurrected Jew-- Jesus Christ.
       Of course, when Saul/Paul called Jesus “Christ” he was not using Jesus’ last name.   Christ means the “one anointed” to be King of Israel.  In light of the recent hate-crime in Pittsburg, it’s important for Christians to remind the world that Jesus, too, was a Jew. He was crucified for claiming to be the King of the Jews.  Despite popular notions, the writers of the New Testament did not hate Jews.  They were themselves, from first to last, Jews.  Whatever one might think of predominant forms of politics practiced among some Jewish people, one cannot understand Christianity without understanding that it is the child of Judaism.  
      While early Christians got cross-ways with some Jewish authorities, that’s partly because many Christians felt like they should invite all races of Gentile people into their Jewish synagogues.  Jesus gave his life to “create one, united humanity by breaking down dividing walls of hostility, thus making peace” between Jew and Greek. (Ephesians 2:14)

     Sadly today, such a vision bears repeating.