"Can We Talk?": The Jewish Jesus in a Dialogue between Jews and Christians

That Jesus was a Jew during the troubled Roman oppression in Palestine is a fact. That his "messiahship" remains a fundamental stumbling block between Jews and Christians and has been so for 2,000 years is fact. Can Jews somehow import him into Jewish thinking and open doors to conversations with Christians? Can Christians somehow revisit their thinking about him in ways that will open doors to conversations with Jews? Is there truly anything new we can say to each other in this twenty-first century about Jesus the Jew? Is there any hope of any present and future dialogue whatsoever without this conversation? This paper is a "preliminary" attempt to explore these and other questions in a dialogical context.