When Nuances of Christian Theology Start to Make Jews Nervous

Last month, the Biblical Mind—a mostly-Christian publication deeply committed to learning form Jewish approaches to the Hebrew Bible—published an article titled “Jesus Restored the Original Purpose of the Law in the New Testament.” The article, and the headline in particular, elicited some sharp criticism from readers, a decision to retitle it, and then confusion over that decision from other readers. At issue is supersessionism: the idea, rejected by many Christian theologians and endorsed by others, that with the founding of Christianity God revoked Jews’ chosen status. In its more sinister versions, supersessionism implies that the Jews are, far from being a nation like any other, a people singled out by divine rejection.

In conversation with Biblical Mind’s founder Dru Johnson, Rabbi Ari Lamm discusses the original article and the responses to it, this thorny history, and some of the toughest questions of Jewish-Christian dialogue.

Read more at Biblical Mind

More about: Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations, Supersessionism

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society