Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey from the Rock (review)

In the wake of almost two thousand years of Christian anti-Semitism culminating in the participation of countless Christians in the Holocaust, Jews who approach Christians in dialogue are understandably often apprehensive and even angry. Alan L. Berger and David Patterson’s new book amplifies the tension more than most, but with a positive resolution in mind. In Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey from the Rock, the authors challenge Christians to fully appreciate the ways in which their tradition’s “teaching of contempt” has incited acts of violence against Jews, and to disavow that teaching accordingly. Only then, the authors suggest, can the “rock of alienation” between the two religions yield a honey of “loving relation” (xv–xvi).

The book’s argument proceeds in seven steps. Chapters 1 through 5 comprise a kind of extended opening statement by the Jewish authors, chapter 6 transcribes a discussion between them and three prominent Christian scholars (the Evangelical David Gushee, the Catholic John Pawlikowski, and the Protestant John Roth), and chapter 7 is a short conclusion penned by Berger and Patterson alone. The authors cover an impressive amount of ground, although not in an entirely systematic way; sometimes it is difficult to ascertain how exactly certain chapters (and their subdivisions) directly follow from preceding ones, and the book frequently circles back to previously discussed issues. Chapter 1 (“Introduction”) basically outlines several key claims that are more fully fleshed out later in the book, such as the assertion that “Christianity was the necessary if not sufficient cause for National Socialism’s program of annihilating the Jewish people” (4; see also 54, 161–62, 172, 177–78). For example, the authors point out that many of those who carried out the Holocaust were professed Christians, and that several New Testament passages portray Jews or Judaism as inferior, including Matthew 27:24 (which gave rise to the accusation of deicide), John 8:44–47 (which suggests that Jews are in league with the devil), and the entire Letter to the Hebrews (“which is defined by its theological supersession and triumphalism”) (5–6; see also 56). After a thorough rebuke of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (12–17; see also 132, 217–20, 252–53), Berger and Patterson clarify that their “premise is twofold: Christians and Jews should not fear the differences between them, and dialogue requires difference” (20; see also 66, 180, 196, 243, 249–54, 261).

With the basic context of contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue set, chapter 2 (“The Symptoms of a Malady”) primarily focuses on the problems that the Holocaust poses to both the Jewish and Christian traditions. In a nutshell, the religious adherence of Jews and Christians through the ages did not prevent them from being murdered and murderers, respectively, on such a massive scale (44, 52). There are a few sweeping and dubious claims here; for example, from Romans 9 (which, in the context of speaking of Israel, comments that “it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God”), the authors somehow deduce that “as a triumph over the mortality of the flesh, the resurrection itself appears to sow the seeds of hatred of the Jews” (57). There is no acknowledgment here of the fact that many Jews traditionally look forward to the resurrection of the dead. Also problematic is the declaration that “for Christianity prayer . . . implies a retreat from the human community. . . . The silence of the cloister’s walls is—from the standpoint of the victims—‘the silence of indifference’” (62; see also 179). In response, one could demonstrate that Christians both within and outside the cloister’s walls see themselves as intimately connected to others, for whose earthly needs and eventual salvation they fervently pray (see also 224–25, where Pawlikowski and Gushee highlight the “communal dimension” of Christianity).

In any case, Berger and Patterson do offer several valuable “Historical Considerations from a Jewish Perspective...