David Berger has for decades been a much respected scholar in the field of Jewish-Christian relations. Among his many achievements is his magisterial edition and translation of the late thirteenth-century Niẓẓahon Vetus (“The Old Polemic”) which contains a vast apparatus of references to and cross references between medieval Latin and Hebrew polemical sources. The authors of the papers in this volume pay tribute to Berger's scholarship, teaching and friendship by offering papers which explore some of the major issues in Jewish-Christian relations. The dynamics of Christian attitudes towards Jews which combined a desire to convert Jews with a condemnation of Judaism even as it espoused a policy of preserving Jews on account of their usefulness for proving the veracity of Christianity is one of them. Others include the impact different Christian environments had on Jewish life and thought, Jewish perceptions of Christianity and the tools of Jewish polemics against Christianity.
The first set of articles concerns different types of violence against Jews and things Jewish. Louis Feldman looks once again at the so-called Testimonium Flavianum which was inserted into the text of Flavius Josephus' Antiquities to give credence to Christian teachings about Jesus Christ. Feldman argues that Eusebius may well have been the author of the insertion: he was the first to refer to the insertion and the variations in his citations of the insertion suggest that he might have felt it was his to adjust. Steven Fine's article on the defacement of a late Roman stone carving of a menorah by a cross in Laodicea emphasizes the need to take account of some of the less peaceful means through which Christianity established itself as the dominant religion in late Roman times. Eschewing a lachrymose approach to Jewish history must not prevent us from recognizing the harsh realities of Christian-Jewish (and indeed Christian-Pagan) encounters that did take place. William Chester Jordan's examination of the fanciful fourteenth-century narrative by John Mandeville about his travels shows how once again Jews were made to bear the brunt of all of the misdeeds recorded in connection with Jesus's suffering and death. In the hands of Mandeville, New Testament Jews not only replaced the Romans as the ones who supposedly crowned Jesus with a crown of thorns to ridicule him; medieval Jews were made to replace the Italians who held the crown in pledge from Baldwin II of Constantinople and, according to Mandeville, it was thus from the Jews that Louis IX acquired the crown so that he could venerate it in Paris. Benjamin Gampel deals with the physical violence perpetrated against the Jews in Iberia in 1391 and reminds us how important it is to understand the workings of princely authority at such ominous moments. Only if those in authority were willing and capable to uphold the peace could Jewish life and property be safeguarded. However keen King Joan of Aragon might have been in principle to protect “his” Jews, his attention was elsewhere.
The papers concerning Christian efforts to convert Jews include Robert Chazan's contribution on the polemical use of Genesis 49:10, which emphasizes how intensely the Talmud was used by thirteenth-century Christians to prove their faith claims. Judah Galinsky sheds new light on the Paris Talmud Trial through examining an additional manuscript version of the Hebrew account as well as a Hebrew fragment on the event. The section is rounded off by Robert Bonfil's search to find out who was behind the sermon the child convert Guilio Innocentio delivered to the Jews of Rome and why it was published in Italian in Genoa in 1556, while Sid Leiman argues against the existence of a sect in eighteenth-century Amsterdam and elsewhere whose members were professing Jews who secretly practiced Christianity.
Among the papers concerning cross-cultural influences between Christians and Jews, Elisheva Baumgarten's essay connects changing viewpoints on the efficacy of judicial ordeals among medieval Christians with allusions to ordeals in Jewish thought. Common strands in both cultures were put to use in similar ways to opposite purposes as each culture sought to confirm its own identity in opposition to the other. Bernard Septimus analyzes a Judaeo-Spanish poem in a fifteenth-century manuscript which propounds that good works actualized the potential one possessed “by virtue of good belief.” Septimus argues that the poem addressed internal Jewish discussions about the relationship between “right action” and “theoretical wisdom” as well as the Pauline position concerning justification by faith. Debra Kaplan juxtaposes early modern rabbinic concerns about the propriety of Jewish women going about their economic activities with more relaxed medieval approaches and draws comparisons with the status of women in Christian lands. Her article alerts us to the fact that awareness of gender issues can add a whole new dimension to our understanding of how Christians and Jews interacted with each other in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period.
In the section on Jewish deliberations on Christianity, Ephraim Kanarfogel explores the development of Tosafist ideas concerning Rashi's maxim on baptized Jews, “once a Jew, always a Jew.” Yaakov Elman's essay concerns the singularly mild approach by R. Menahem ha-Meiri (d. c. 1310) to Christianity, while Jacob Schacter analyzes Jacob Emden's (d. 1776) positive views of Christianity in light of his fiercely negative stance towards Sabbatianism. Miriam Bodian highlights the complicated attitudes to Christianity of the Portuguese Jews in seventeenth-century Amsterdam who were able to contrast the horrors of Spanish Catholic persecution with the benefits of Dutch toleration. Bodian argues that the leaders of the community, who had to deal with large numbers of members rediscovering Jewish rites and practices, remained staunchly convinced of the idolatrous nature of Trinitarian Christianity. At the same time, these thinkers and others were engaged in speculations on the possibility of Gentiles being saved.
As for Jewish polemical tools, Avraham Grossman concentrates on Rashi's insistence on the worthlessness of non-Jewish prophecy, which is exemplified in his ungracious treatment of Balaam. Elliott Horowitz explores the history of interpreting Isaiah's suffering servant as the people of Israel instead of the suffering Messiah, while Martin Lockshin analyzes how the peshat method of exegesis was used as a polemical tool again Christian allegory but not without due regard to the rules governing its application to the biblical text. Mordechai Cohen, for his part, looks at the use of peshat from the perspective of Maimonides' rejection of Christian hermeneutics. Daniel Lasker closes this section with an essay drawing connections between evolving Karaite views on rabbinic Judaism and the development of Karaite attitudes to Christianity. The volume closes with discussions by David Shatz and Michael Wyschogrod of the realities and exigencies of interfaith discussions in the modern period.
I am sure that David Berger will relish this volume which owes so much to his own vital contributions to this important area of research.
