COMMENTARY: Big Answers to the Big Questions of Our Time

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Irving “Yitz” Greenberg is one of America’s most prominent religious thinkers. His recently published book, “For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity,” represents the mature culmination of more than 40 years of intense grappling with the big theological questions of our generation: […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Irving “Yitz” Greenberg is one of America’s most prominent religious thinkers. His recently published book, “For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity,” represents the mature culmination of more than 40 years of intense grappling with the big theological questions of our generation: the Holocaust, the meaning of a covenant with God on a planet filled with monstrous evil and unspeakable suffering, the future of Jewish-Christian relations, a Jewish perspective of Jesus, the meaning of the reborn state of Israel, religious pluralism, and the role of traditional religion in a modern secular society.

But unlike many theologians throughout history who wrote inside cloistered academies or within isolated religious communities, Greenberg has been an active and visible participant in contemporary society.


Currently president of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhart Foundation in New York City, Greenberg has done it all as a rabbi. After his ordination at Yeshiva University, he earned a Ph.D. in history at Harvard. Greenberg has served a large urban congregation, taught at major universities, worked as a campus rabbi, headed the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and co-founded the National Center for Learning and Leadership. During his decades of service, he directly touched the lives of thousands of people.

But everyone who knows Greenberg is keenly aware that above everything else, he is a highly original theologian whose ideas and concepts constantly challenge both Jews and Christians.

In his latest and most important book, Greenberg calls for a radical change in relations between Judaism and Christianity.

Greenberg is, of course, fully knowledgeable about the recent positive advances in that 2,000-year-old encounter. He should be, since he has been at the center of the dialogue between the two ancient faith communities. But unlike many others, Greenberg is not satisfied simply with attending high-level interreligious conferences or hearing beautifully crafted declarations and statements crafted by religious leaders. He sees such gatherings and pronouncements as necessary, but not sufficient.

Writing boldly, Greenberg urges his fellow Jews, including his own Orthodox community, to develop “a new understanding of Christianity” that overcomes the “stereotyping of the gentile.”

He is equally demanding of Christians and Christianity: “Christians who see the implications of the Holocaust and Israel are a prophetic leaven in the church which gives hope that the church can be reborn, purged of its hatred (of Jews and Judaism),” he says.

Greenberg pushes the theological envelope to its limits when he sees “a messianic moment” in our troubled, terrorism-filled, post-Holocaust world. But such an extraordinary moment in history requires that both Christianity and Judaism (and one hopes Islam as well) move away from past models arrogantly built on ultimate truth claims of spiritual superiority and the ugly denigration of the “other” religions.


He believes “a permanent kernel of hatred” developed early on within Christianity. That hatred, frequently in the form of physical violence directed at the Jewish people, “weakened (the Christian) redemptive capacity.”

Only a relationship reflecting authentic mutual respect and understanding on both sides can permanently change the hateful dynamic that has poisoned Christian-Jewish relations for two millennia.

It’s no surprise that Greenberg’s views got him into institutional trouble with the Orthodox community that nurtured him and to which he still belongs. Indeed, the first section of his book describes the painful account of how and why Greenberg has antagonized his Orthodox colleagues, many of whom affirm a different view of Christianity.

As often happens when thinkers test the limits of the religious status quo, Greenberg is more respected, widely read and influential outside his community than within. Yet, Greenberg will not abandon his life as a deeply committed Orthodox rabbi.

He writes: “I remained personally in love with the Orthodox community and its way of life, its thick texture of observance, its strong family and communal bonds, its learning and its passion for Israel.”

Greenberg’s book is much more than merely another publication sitting in the religion section of your neighborhood bookstore. It is the finely honed thoughts of a gifted thinker who has transcended personal pain _ the book is dedicated to a son who was killed in a tragic accident in Israel in 2002 _ and surmounted professional abuse.


But in the end, Greenberg has triumphed, and in his new and finest book you will learn why.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s Senior Interreligious Adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

KRE/PH END RUDIN

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