NEWS FEATURE: `Yitz’ Breaks Mold of Orthodox Rabbi in Affirming Other Faiths

c. 2004 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ Rabbi Irving Greenberg breaks the mold. Most Orthodox Jewish leaders shy away from nitty-gritty discussions of core theological issues in interfaith encounters because of their community’s historical concern that such dialogue weakens traditional beliefs. Greenberg embraces these discussions. He has traveled to India to discuss Buddhism and […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ Rabbi Irving Greenberg breaks the mold. Most Orthodox Jewish leaders shy away from nitty-gritty discussions of core theological issues in interfaith encounters because of their community’s historical concern that such dialogue weakens traditional beliefs.

Greenberg embraces these discussions.


He has traveled to India to discuss Buddhism and Judaism with the Dalai Lama, but he’s best known in scholarly religious circles for his four decades of involvement in Christian-Jewish dialogue. He stakes out positions that stretch the boundaries of long-held Jewish beliefs about Christianity.

Among his assertions is that Christianity is God’s way of extending the divinity’s covenant with humanity beyond Jews without the process overwhelming Judaism’s distinctiveness. He calls Jesus a “failed” rather than a “false” messiah _ a position in sharp conflict with that held by mainstream Judaism for 2,000 years.

Ironically, the 71-year-old Greenberg _ known to colleagues as “Yitz,” a nickname taken from his Hebrew name, Yitzchak _ says in his latest book that it was anger and despair over the Holocaust that led him to view Christianity sympathetically.

The book, “For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity” (Jewish Publication Society), collects some of his major, previously published articles on Jewish-Christian relations, providing insight into the progression of his thinking. It includes a newly written introductory essay that amounts to a spiritual autobiography.

The lengthy essay recounts how Greenberg came to the issue from the perspective of a Holocaust scholar whose initial motivation was “self protection and the defense of my people.” He first immersed himself in Holocaust studies in 1961 while a visiting lecturer at Israel’s Tel Aviv University. Driven by anger and despair over the enormity of Nazi hatred of all things Jewish, he resolved to investigate historical Christian anti-Semitism to understand how it contributed to the Holocaust.

Two unexpected things happened in the process. He came across influential Christian theologians, such as Roy and Alice Eckardt, Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, who excoriated their fellow Christians for their attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. And he experienced a shift in his understanding of faith, moving from a perspective he calls “Newtonian” to one he labels “Einsteinian” _ a reference to the quantum physics theory that all physical matter is connected on the subatomic level.

He explained during a recent interview at his New York home that he came to understand that not all Christians harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, and to believe that there exists more than “one absolute center point” of religious truth (Judaism, for example), with “each absolute center” meeting varying cultural expectations.

Judaism, said Greenberg, was God’s first covenant with a particular people. Christianity, originally an outreach to largely Greek-speaking non-Jews, is God’s second. Both are valid for their intended adherents. “God wants both religions to operate in a parallel fashion,” he said, sitting in his living room, an oil painting of olive trees in the Judean Hills behind him.


Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam also traditionally traces its origin to the prophet Abraham, with whom the Bible says God first announced his plan for covenantal relationships. Greenberg believes that God likewise intended for Islam to disseminate the core teaching of ethical monotheism to additional peoples.

However, Greenberg said violence perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists borders on “idolatry,” the Abrahamic tradition’s cardinal violation, and threatens Islam’s covenantal status. “If you preach death, it’s idolatrous. God does not abrogate covenants, but human actions can.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Greenberg is the ex-chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the body that oversees Washington’s Holocaust museum, and currently president of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, which funds programs designed to draw young and marginally affiliated Jews into communal life.

He is not the first influential Jew to extend theological legitimacy to Christianity.

The 20th century German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig is another example. Dual covenant theology is also a hallmark of contemporary liberal Protestant and Roman Catholic doctrine.

Still, within tradition-minded Orthodox Judaism, Greenberg’s thinking is radical. And never is he more at odds with his community than when he talks about Jesus.

“Jews deemed Jesus to be a false messiah out of defensiveness,” said Greenberg. “A failed messiah is someone who teaches correct values _ Judaism’s highest being that redemption lies in the ultimate triumph of life over death, that God is good and the source of infinite goodness, that God wants us to strive toward doing good rather than doing evil _ but who in the end falls short of convincing the rest of us to follow in his footsteps. A false messiah is someone who teaches that death will triumph, that oppressing others is acceptable, that it is OK to sin and to act criminally.”


Even Moses, the most revered of prophets within Judaism, was a failed messiah, Greenberg added. “Moses was a failure because he sought to transform people who left Egypt as slaves into truly free people, but he couldn’t do that. They remained slaves mentally and had to die in the desert before the nation of Israel could enter the promised land.”

To be called a failed messiah, Greenberg emphasized, is anything but demeaning. Rather, it is the highest of compliments, given the importance of the messianic ideal in Jewish thought. “To do so much good to even be thought of by some as a messiah speaks of the rarest of individuals.”

Christians, of course, differ with Greenberg on Jesus’ standing as a messiah. They nonetheless praise his willingness to tackle the subject.

“I’m very impressed and appreciative of the fact that Yitz is grappling seriously with the key element in understanding Jesus, whether he is or is not the messiah of Israel,” said Eugene J. Fisher, the American Roman Catholic Church’s top staff person on interfaith matters. “Not that we agree with his conclusion, but at least we’re on the same page. … He’s what every community needs _ someone able to confront his own community while staying within it.”

MO/PH END RNS

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