TWO RABBIS AND SOME UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS
The present dialogue between Rabbis Pesach Wolicki and Rafi Eis is very interesting for a number of reasons. The position of the new British regime by mouth of its Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband (link) and the reaction of the Netanyahu government, is just the fascinating start of the conversation. The Rabbis go on to talk about the founding of the state of Israel, the history of the West Bank and the extraordinary status of Jerusalem, which is geopolitically without precedent. For the ancients the last question would have been self evident, but it has become controversial since the onset of secular Western Enlightenment: what is a Jew?
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Apparently the answer to that last question is rather surprising: being a Jew is to identify with "the Jewish destiny". Present conversation does not clarify what that destiny is. But the answer would explain quite a few theological, philosophical and historical matters.
But the same troublesome question pertains to Christians. According to Rabbi Rafi Eis, Christianity is not a religion, because he includes the present radically secular, anti Christian British government in his definition. The Rabbi is making a habit of thinking in terms of the First Crusade (Jerusalem as "Christian" Utopia: link).
The Jews themselves have no compunction in ousting and excluding entire tribes or factions from their midst. The Bible is rife with examples; so is more recent history. But the most glaring instance of Jewish exclusion occurred in AD 90 with the expulsion of the early Christians from "the Jewish destiny".
The "Council of Jamnia" (or Yavneh) under the leadership of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was a school of Jewish law that established a reconstituted Sanhedrin after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in AD 70.
The Council introduced the Birkat ha-Minim (Blessing on the Heretics), a prayer in the liturgy that cursed the Minim (heretics), aimed at Jewish Christians who refused to renounce Jesus Christ. The curse effectively forced Christians to leave the synagogues.
So how did this come about? Saint Paul maintained that Gentile converts were not obligated to follow the Mosaic Law, including circumcision or dietary restrictions, as these were specific to the Covenant with Israel (Galatians 5:6, Acts 15).
Saint Paul connects the commandments from the Torah, showing that if you love your God and your neighbor, you keep all of the commandments. The New Covenant is where the Torah is written on your heart. “He who loves, keeps the whole law.”
So when gentiles joined fledgling Jewish Christianity rejecting circumcision and dietary laws as prescribed by the Old Covenant, Jews reacted with schism, expulsing the whole of Christianity, Jews and gentiles alike.
Today the first schism does not register anymore in the secular West. Culturally there is some vague awareness that Christianity grew out of Judaism, but how that happened is swept under the rug for fear of enflaming antisemitism.
It also helps maintain the anachronistic beliefs of many American Evangelicals and Christian Zionists that the Old Covenant somehow still pertains to them.
Some go as far as actually adopting Jewish customs. It is Rabbi Pesach Wolicki's calling as "ambassador to American Christians", to keep that game going for as long as possible.
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