Discussions on spiritual closeness of Jews and Christians are not just a sort of traditional theoretical discussions where some participants may agree and some disagree. Those discussions are of very practical importance. Those discussions are bringing closer the Jews and the Christians, Judaism and Christianity. Those discussions are advancing the mission of the Jews as the Chosen to create a better world for everybody based on the Torah’s guidance. Those discussions are enhancing the Jewish-Christian collaboration in fighting anti-Semitism and Islamic assault on Western Judeo-Christian Civilization.
Some time ago I published a paper entitled “Spiritual closeness of Jews and Christians and traditional rabbis’ efforts to prevent it” – see at
In the paper, I wrote:
Very likely what happened on our earth nearly two thousand years ago in fulfillment of God’s covenants is most important, but it all was distorted by history and the religious streams quarreling with each other until it was fully unrecognizable.
The man, who subsequently became Jesus Christ, was a Jewish rabbi and founder of one of the many sects of Judaism, which were distinguished from each other by the spiritual methods for perceiving the directions for behavior and actions received from God. After the death of Jesus, his successors Paul and Peter tried to spread Judaism’s spirituality as interpreted by Jesus to other nations in the Roman Empire. But Paul and Peter came up against the fact that the Gentile nations were not in condition to comprehend the Torah’s spirituality by this very method as the Jews had been doing. There may have been many reasons for it: the whole different historical experience of other peoples, a lack of education from early childhood, etc. Therefore, Paul and Peter began to update Judaism in order to facilitate bringing it to the minds of those who were not Jews. And at some moment (already after the death of Paul and Peter), the update so changed their version of Judaism that it ceased being perceived by the Jews and first Christians as Judaism, and it had to be separated into an individual religion. But the fundamental spiritual canons remained exactly the same: the Ten Commandments and their detailed elaboration in the Torah.
The main duty of the Jewish people is assistance to all Gentiles in the creation of a better world “according to God.” Therefore, friendship with Christians and combined spiritual work with them should be looked at as the fulfillment of this duty.
One ought to rejoice at such friendship and develop it. One of the most important elements of intellectual Jewish identification – is the acknowledgement of the connection with Christianity as the embodiment of the fulfillment of the chosen people’s obligations entrusted to this people by God, through the transmission of God’s covenants, set forth in the Torah, to all other peoples.
However, in the historic past, rabbis were scared of such Judeo-Christian closeness out of fear of Christian missionary attempts to convert Jews to Christianity. And rabbis were trying to prevent – and prevent by all available means – such closeness. And rabbis were right!
But the Christians learned the Holocaust lessons and changed their theological view on Jewish conversion. And many Christians these days are sincerely trying to improve their relationships with the Jews. Vatican considers the Jewish people “the elder brothers” and abandons the mandatory theological requirements of Jewish conversion.
However, many contemporary rabbis are still scared of such Judeo-Christians closeness and they distort the contemporary Christian theological teachings to justify their fear of Christianity.
[Then an example of such distortion was presented.]”
These days more traditional rabbis are coming to the same conclusion through comparative analysis of Old and New Testaments and of Jewish and Christian mysticism. Below are two examples.
In “Jewish Secrets hidden in the New Testament: The Global Torah Revolution” authors orthodox Rabbi Avraham Feld and OvadYah Avrahami concluded that the New Testament writings are largely founded on traditional Jewish Biblical principles. Acceptance of these original Jewish realities by growing masses of New Testament readers is currently sweeping the world. The authors found in the New Testament the Biblical prediction of a Promised Land far exceeding the current borders of Israel and realization of the miraculous fulfillment of the Divine Plan for humanity which is the Universal Dominion whether you are Christian, Jewish or secular.
In “Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism” author Shaul Magid makes the following points.
Christianity has among its cardinal principles that God became man, and that Christ is both fully human and fully divine. Mainstream Judaism holds that such a crossing of boundaries is impossible. Humans are mortal, flawed, frail; the Jewish God is omnipotent. The two cannot be reconciled.
However, in Hasidism the divine/human boundary was permeable, and sometimes crossed. In fact, in Hasidism we have the resurgence of the very incarnational theology that mainstream Judaism had rejected. In Hasidic thought, God and human are reunited. Indeed Chabad have alleged that the late Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson has been deified. Clearly, there is something Christian-like about the notion of a messiah who will rise from the dead, and seems to have powers well beyond the human.
Thus the traditional, orthodox rabbis are discovering the spiritual unity of Judaism and Christianity.
