Jacob’s Younger Brother
Karma Ben-Johanan
Harvard University Press, £30.95, 336 pages
I remember once presenting a paper on the theological basis for the post-Vatican II Catholic-Jewish dialogue. Someone posed a question which had never really occurred to me before: “Have you asked the Jews what they think about this?” Ignoring the fact that you cannot ask an amorphous entity called “the Jews” anything, what that person raised has always stayed in my mind. In part, Karma Ben-Johanan’s book provides an answer to that question; it also does something much more important, and much more wide-reaching.
The first part is an account of the run-up to Vatican II and Nostra Ætate, the document related to Catholic-Jewish relations which emerged from it; Ben-Johanan then chronicles the influence of John Paul II and Benedict XVI on the subject. The second part presents an Orthodox Jewish response from various groups. Through selecting these, Ben-Johanan tries to show not only their position concerning Jewish-Catholic dialogue, but the reasons for it.
Interestingly, she argues that this response comes from a resurgence of Jewish identity that is independent of the Catholic Church’s “new” theology of Judaism. The results of her work should at the same time be fascinating to the non-Jewish theologian, worrying to the happy-go-lucky liberal inter-religionist, and radically challenging to the Catholic Church’s perception of itself at this time in her history, and at this moment in her new theolog-
ical agenda.
Jacob’s Younger Brother presents a fascinating reflection of post-Vatican II theology, through the prism of the Catholic-Jewish dialogue that developed in its wake. The first point is the use of the texts themselves. The Church’s position went far beyond the texts of Nostra Ætate, moving from conversion of the Jews, to the presentation of the Gospel to the Jews, to no proselytising at all. The priority became not an ingathering of the Jews before the end times, but an engagement so that Christianity may gain something positive from Judaism as a dialogue partner.
We also find a use of the newfound attitude towards Judaism as a tool to appropriate the Holocaust (Shoah), and so provide a new para-digm for the suffering Body of Christ at the hands of the world. This presupposes a connection and identity with Judaism (specifically historical, suffering Judaism qua racial Judaism) which is neither presented nor defended in Catholic theology but which allows the Church to paint itself as a modern suffering Messiah at the hands of the world. This appropriates the suffering of the Jews in the Shoah into a new Christian world-view, in a rather disturbing way.
Ben-Johanan’s presentation of the theology and practice of John Paul II is incisive. Avoid-ing the theological specifics – to preserve the fundamentals of Catholic theology which had been challenged by Vatican II – he engaged in what now would be called “gesture politics”. Gesture and action meant everything, even if it sidestepped the intractable confusion which Catholic documents continued to produce.
Benedict XVI unintentionally made the situation worse by trying to clarify the theology while being unable to perform the gestures. In a beautiful, if wistful and saddening phrase, Ben-Johanan observes that “The global mainstream of Christian-Jewish dialogue had shown time and again more sympathy for vague goodwill statements than for direct doctrinal assertions.” The world preferred the gestures of John Paul II to the theology of Benedict XVI.
The Jewish response begins with the historical need of Judaism to preserve its existence in a Christian society which was, at best, hostile. To allow Jews to live, survive and prosper, medieval halakhists worked from the basis that Jews had to function “for fear of enmity” and “for the sake of the ways of peace”. Their actions were formed by the oppressive situation in which they lived.
To make this work theologically, the Ashkenazi rabbis defined Christians not as idolaters as presented by the Talmud, but as Gentiles of their own period – thus people with whom the medieval Jews could enter into contract and live alongside. Christians were technically shittuf: they could be dealt with. Without this, the separation of Jews and Christians would have been completely to the detriment of the Jews.
Transported to modern times, the question remains: do Jews still need to act “for fear of the enemy” and “for the sake of peace”? For some groups the existence of the State of Israel fundamentally changes the modern position, while for others it is modern religious pluralism and relative diminution of the power of Christianity. Thus “fear of the enemy” may be reinterpreted or redefined.
More importantly, emphasising different traditions radically changes Catholicism in the eyes of these Orthodox Jewish groups. Dialogue takes place at a much lower bar than the old “fear of the enemy”. When Judaism once again takes its place as the light of the nations, then the situation will be very different. Fundamentally, it is a reframing of an ancient question in a modern context. The questions themselves have not changed. This re-evaluation of the position of Judaism, Ben-Johanan argues, does not come from a response to modern-
ity, but from a strengthening of Jewish identity within these various groups. Jews have no need to be afraid either of the world (the continued existence of the State of Israel demonstrates this), or of Christianity (which now can no longer threaten it physically or psychologically). They can now look to their own destiny as a people chosen by God. In this Christianity exists either as a partner in salvation (for a distrusted minority), or as a memory of what can happen when they are knocked off track, or as a stumbling block to their destiny.
The fascinating thing that this book brings out is the mirroring of the two positions. Catholicism is losing its fight with modernism and modernity: its political position in the world and its power have radically changed; its theology has become one which not only has to compromise with society but which willingly now seems to seek that compromise. There is a fundamental angst over its identity.
Judaism, on the other hand, underwent all of these things at least from the Middle Ages onwards with a watering down of its theology in its relationships with other religions (primarily, though not exclusively, Christianity), its compromises in halakha from societal pressure, and its loss of divine purpose in its election. Judaism has no need to fight with modernity: modernity has at worst given it a breathing space to rediscover itself, and at best has provided a means by which the world (and Christianity) will begin again to look to Judaism as an instrument by which God wills to bring salvation to the world. In all this Judaism has no need for Christianity; at best her former oppressor becomes something either to ignore, or to get rid of.
Ben-Johanan’s book is excellent, not just for the academic work in bringing Orthodox Jewish voices to a wider Catholic public, but also for showing how these two faiths see themselves in our modern times: for the Jews after the Shoah, and for Catholicism after Vatican II. Judaism is finding itself anew while Catholicism seems presently to be watching itself dissolve, with its identity and its purpose being redefined into non-existence.
Dr Bede Rowe is Prior of the Monastery of Our Lady of Glastonbury in Chavagnes-en-Paillers, France
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