Thanks to Jay for forwarding me a link to something I missed: an article in Jewish World Review by Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn, looking at elements of a particularly Jewish philosophy in the work of Bob Dylan. It’s just scratching the surface of many things but it is interesting.

It reminded me of some links I’d put aside on a tangential subject. Anyone who is interested in Dylan’s spiritual journey, or in the philosophical consistency that arguably underlies the great bulk of his work, is likely to be interested also in the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, on a variety of levels. Indeed, any practicing Christian who seeks to know his or her faith more deeply is likely to be led to a contemplation of how the God that he or she worships is also the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and is a God who has commitments outstanding to His chosen people. The phenomenon of Christians who are not merely tolerant but exceedingly respectful of Jews seems like a recent and a peculiarly American thing, although the basis for that disposition is as old as the New Testament — and, obviously, has its most fundamental roots in the Old.

The links I mentioned are to a couple of pieces by Richard John Neuhaus. I’ve linked to pieces by him often enough before. An influential Lutheran pastor before becoming an even more influential Catholic, a confidante of popes and presidents, and a remarkable Christian thinker and writer — his voice is a significant one. He recently wrote about a review of a forthcoming book by Jeremy Cohen called “Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen.” Neuhaus wasn’t attacking the book, not having read it yet, but was disagreeing with the arguments of the book as represented by the reviewer, Adam Kirsch, who opines that a literal reading of the Gospels is the source of hatred of the Jews, and that so long as the Gospels are read literally, Jews and Christians will never be reconciled.
Neuhaus responds in part:

Adam Kirsch is right: If genuine and lasting reconciliation between Jews and Christians depends upon Christians repudiating the authority of their Scriptures, such reconciliation will never be achieved. The happy fact, however, is that such reconciliation can be achieved and is being achieved as Christians more fully explore the teaching of the New Testament with respect to the Church and the people of Israel, and as Jews more fully appreciate the significance of that exploration. On the latter score, see Dabru Emet (To Speak the Truth), a statement signed in 2000 by more than 170 Jewish scholars and published in First Things, which, regrettably, has been almost totally ignored by the several Jewish establishments.

As I say, I have not yet read Jeremy Cohen’s Christ Killers. If it is as represented by Adam Kirsch, it is, along with Mr. Kirsch’s argument, a recipe for the continuing mutual distrust that precludes the firmly grounded reconciliation between Christians and Jews for which we are all obliged to work.

Much longer and even more interesting, however, is an older work of Neuhaus’s, to which he makes passing reference in this piece, that being 2001’s “Salvation is from the Jews” (the title taken from the words of Jesus in John 4:22). I think that reading it in full would be very rewarding for anyone interested in this topic from any angle. Just a paragraph here:

The salvation that is from the Jews cannot be proclaimed or lived apart from the Jews. This is not to say that innumerable Christians, indeed the vast majority of Christians, have not and do not live their Christian faith without consciousness of or contact with Jews. Obviously, they have and they do. The percentage of Christians involved in any form of Jewish-Christian dialogue is minuscule. Not much larger, it may be noted, is the percentage of Jews involved. In addition, significant dialogue is, for the most part, a North American phenomenon. It is one of the many things to which the familiar phrase applies, “Only in America.” In Europe, for tragically obvious reasons, there are not enough Jews; in Israel, for reasons of growing tragedy, there are not enough Christians. Only in America are there enough Jews and Christians in a relationship of mutual security to make possible a dialogue that is unprecedented in two thousand years of history. The significance of this dialogue is in no way limited to America. The significance is universal. There is one people of Israel, as there is one Church. Providential purpose in history is a troubled subject, and the idea of America´s providential purpose is even more troubled, but I suggest that we would not be wrong to believe that this dialogue, so closely linked to the American experience, is an essential part of the unfolding of the story of the world. Isaiah 43:19: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

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