A Reflection on the State of Jewish Studies at Christian Institutions of Learning

              October 2015 marked the 50^th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, a seminal document that came out of Vatican II and set the course for the formation of Roman Catholic identity and the place of missionary work moving into the next century.  While it was communicated as a document on the relationship between Roman Catholics and other religions, the primary focus was no doubt on a reconciliation of the historically negative attitude towards Jews that had for too long been reflected in Church teaching and politics.

Pope John Paul II, building on Vatican II, made Judaism a special project of the Roman Catholic Church, making such gestures as establishing ties with the State of Israel and famously apologizing for the Holocaust. Following these cues, the Church set out to establish newly imagined relationships, both with kindred Christians and Jews, and one such experiment was my alma mater.  Under the supervision of liberal Sulpician Roman Catholicism, the Ecumenical Institute of Theology in Baltimore, MD was born in 1968 and became a place where Christians could come together for interdenominational instruction, and where Jewish instructors, mostly rabbanim from neighboring communities, could float in and out to teach as needed.

The EI provided me with my first opportunity to engage Jewish intellectuals. As my curiosity in Judaism grew beyond typical Christian interest in how Jewish biblical literature supports and props up Christian revelation, I was encouraged to enter Towson University’s Jewish Studies program in 2012 to pursue a second master’s degree, where I am now currently in my fourth year, and working on a thesis in approaches to Jewish theology.  

But looking back to my days at the EI from the perch of my more immersive experience in Jewish Studies, Judaism didn’t appear to be the grand goal conceived by an ecumenical and interfaith experiment, but remained largely a supplement, there for the exploitation of Christian understanding.  I feel this all the more strongly now, after what little I have so far learned about Rabbinics, Orthodoxy, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionism, not to mention every other shade of Judaism along the way.  Looking back, I have regrets about what I would have liked to have learned about Judaism at my alma mater before becoming entrenched in Judaism (to the extent that an outsider can be entrenched), and this brings me to my point:  Christian programs participating in interfaith dialogue can do a much better job of letting their spiritual progenitor speak for itself.

No doubt there are places that do interfaith dialogue better than others, and I don’t want to paint every effort with the same brush.  Yet even where interfaith dialogue succeeds, it is also prone to extremes, where the more dominant religion, recognizing historically oppressive tendencies, gives up its voice completely.  So for institutions of Christian learning interested in Judaism, I have a few practical points that may help bridge the gap between words and actions. The first is making a concerted effort to remove the phrase “Old Testament” from theological settings and move to a more appropriate use of the term “Jewish Bible.” There is nothing particularly radical about this desire, and it bodes with the spirit of Vatican II that was meant to restore the dignity of Judaism. But without giving Judaism the right to self-determination, it cannot be thought to control its own destiny. I don’t think this change requires Christians to give up their claim of special revelation, and what is gained is a defense against oversimplifying the Jewish Bible as a bridge to a destination that always has Christianity on the horizon. Changes like this will no doubt be resisted in more conservative settings. But in programs that have already accepted critically informed changes, the label “Old Testament” has curiously survived the culture wars.

An immediate effect of this change might unleash the potential of Jewish professors teaching at Christian confessional institutions. If any program aligning itself to the motivations behind Vatican II accepts that conversion is not just a formal interaction but is heavily influenced by indirect environmental factors then it follows that teaching the Old Testament as the Jewish Bible reduces the oppressive overtones of Supercessionism. The name of the Jewish Bible has never been a matter of Christian doctrine, but at this critical stage in history, it is a matter of good neighborliness.  It is difficult to suggest as some read Nostra Aetate that Jews are co-equals in salvation and at the same time diminish their scriptures by treating it as supplemental material. We should challenge any tradition that enshrines a thread of interpretation that for many Vatican II Catholics does not resonate.

A second point is a greater focus in Christian theological programs on Judaism as a comprehensive movement with a vast body of literature and not as a one-trick-pony whose identity is only conceived through the bible. Not only does this diminish a tradition that for all its brilliance spans biblical, Rabbinic, and modern trajectories, but it creates a classification for Jewish literature that it does not acknowledge; namely, that the closed canon experience of Christians is the same for Jews.  During my time at the EI, there was one requirement for a World Religions course. Yet, in the mandatory survey courses related to the Bible, the Old Testament label was still firmly affixed. So despite those times when we looked at “appearances of Jesus in the Old Testament” using the critical tools of biblical scholarship, confessionalism found other entry points.

While many Christians are used to living in the uncomfortable tension between doctrine and ethos cultivated by the Roman Catholic Church, I echo J. J. Goldberg’s opinion (http://forward.com/opinion/327449/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-that-vatican-memo-on-converting-jews/) that opportunities to make religious life for Jews easier are opportunities worth pursuing. One only has to look at the many historical papal declarations enlisted against the Jews over time to know that the relationship between Jews and Christians is always in danger of collapsing without an active effort to prevent it.