This volume brings together articles published over the course of more than four decades by David Berger, a scholar of Jewish–Christian relations with an unsurpassed grasp of the polemics of both traditions. The book will appeal to anyone interested in the theological issues that have bedeviled, and still bedevil, relations between Jews and Christians.
Although the volume includes articles published over Berger's entire career, it is held together by a common theme and by the underlying continuities in a Jewish–Christian relationship spanning two millennia. Yet the book can also be divided into two rather distinct parts: the first fourteen articles, which deal primarily with the medieval period (including modern scholarship on this era), and the final eight articles, which deal with modern issues. The approach in these two sections is markedly different. In his treatment of the medieval era, Berger maintains an exacting scholarly distance as he examines the evidence. In his discussion of the contemporary scene, in contrast, he emerges as a passionate and engaged, though highly disciplined, participant in Jewish–Christian dialogue.
The volume opens with Berger's introduction to his edited volume History and Hate (1986), in which he briefly charts the course of antisemitism from late antiquity to the modern period. The essay's sweep justifies its placement at the start of the book. It does not, however, reflect the scholarly depth and rich insights that characterize most of Berger's essays. The three review essays that follow better reflect his critical acumen. Published between 1997 and 2004, they offer an evaluation of the work of major scholars (including Jacob Katz, whose work is the focus of one of the essays) who have contributed to scholarship on medieval Jewish–Christian relations. The reader should not expect facile conclusions. Berger does not, for example, support any one theory about why the late medieval period saw the proliferation of charges against Jews of ritual murder, host desecration, and the like. He invokes “common sense” to refute purely socioeconomic explanations (38). He enumerates ten factors that were among those that led to greatly increased hostility toward Jews in the late Middle Ages, and observes that “[a] candid look at the tangled web of our own psyches is a salutary reminder of the humility with which we need to approach the explanation of so durable, so protean, and so daunting a phenomenon as antisemitism in medieval Christian Europe” (39).
The collection proceeds to Berger's research and reflections on specific topics in medieval Jewish–Christian polemics. These essays often range well beyond what their titles suggest. The best of them are sweeping in their erudition and breadth, carefully crafted, and notable for their skepticism about generalizations—even when the latter reflect received scholarly wisdom. The text reproduced in this volume of the introduction to Berger's book The Jewish–Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (1979), while intended to introduce to the reader a single work (a critical edition and translation of the Franco-German Hebrew work Niẓẓaḥon Vetus), offers much more than that. The first section of this essay offers a superb overview of the overall development of medieval Jewish–Christian polemics, elucidating the different polemical issues Jews and Christians faced, along with the different exegetical, moral, and rational arguments each side developed. Though the book was written more than thirty years ago, I know of no better summary of the strategies that medieval Christian and Jewish polemicists adopted and elaborated in their confrontation. Even when Berger does eventually focus more narrowly on Niẓẓaḥon Vetus, he brings to his analysis a broad knowledge of Jewish–Christian polemics from late antiquity through the medieval period—as, for example, when he marshals evidence to demonstrate that this “relatively static” body of polemics has often also reflected changing historical realities (91).
Berger deftly analyzes the image (and ultimate fate) of non-Jews as presented in Ashkenazic polemics, considering, among other things, how Jews sought to offset their internalization of negative Gentile ideas about their own physical appearance. In another essay, he surveys premodern Jewish conceptions of the historical Jesus, contrasting twelfth- and thirteenth-century Ashkenazic approaches with the more sophisticated efforts of Sephardic and Italian scholars in the late medieval and early modern periods. An essay from 1992 analyzes the somewhat neglected fourteenth-century work ‘Ezer ha-emunah, which Berger describes as “the first large scale example of a Jewish response to the mature Christian attack on the Talmud” (161). Further, he reexamines Christian anti-Jewish polemic of the twelfth century, arriving at the conclusion that it was not motivated by “a Christian missionary ideology,” but was rather a response “to a genuine Jewish challenge” (198). In the piece that follows, a review of Robert Chazan's Barcelona and Beyond, Berger acknowledges the originality of Chazan's approach, while challenging it in significant respects. (This is presumably the reason for republishing a review that is easily accessible on the Internet.) The “medieval” section of the book concludes with several essays that, while models of close reading, are primarily for specialists in the field. They include, unconventionally, a paper written for Norman Cantor in 1965, when the author was a precocious senior at Yeshiva College. For readers who have only limited interest in the topic—St. Damian's attitude toward the Jews—the paper can be read profitably for the light it throws on the evolution of a major scholar. The linguistic and analytical skills are in evidence, but the craftsmanship and sweep will come later.
The second (and shorter) section of Berger's book, dealing with modern Jewish–Christian relations, transports us to the world we live in today, in which polemic has given way to dialogue. Many of the essays in this section present the personal perspectives and opinions of a scholar with many years of experience in the demanding arena of interfaith conversation. His positions arose in part from his role as a spokesperson for Orthodox Judaism. But the significance of his thinking about interfaith dialogue transcends easy boundaries. As both Jews and Christians who have been involved in dialogue know, fruitful exchange can arise only out of mutual respect and trust. However, as Berger is acutely aware, the missionizing imperative of Christian theology cannot but pose a challenge to Jewish trust. On this issue the author has devoted a great deal of thought, and he writes about it with candor and discernment. Whether he is discussing Vatican II and its aftermath or Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, he demands from the reader skepticism about easy conclusions and commitment to a single standard in matters of conviction.
Despite the obvious value of a collection that brings together the scattered work of a major scholar, the volume is not without shortcomings. This is particularly true of the introduction. There, Berger offers some poignant reflections on his career, as well as an explanation of why certain essays were included and others omitted. The book would be stronger if it were prefaced with an essay pulling together the “medieval” and the “contemporary” sections of the full work—that is, analyzing how the medieval debate is both essential to and distinct from contemporary dialogue, and, perhaps more importantly, how scholarship can fruitfully contribute to dialogue. Inevitably, such a volume includes some repetition, though it is by no means intrusive. Finally, Berger is strikingly reluctant to engage with recent scholarly literature that demonstrates the fluidity and porous qualities of religious boundaries in everyday life—a literature that has underscored the disparity between the strict boundary-maintenance work that is the heart and soul of polemics (articulated by members of an educated elite) and the realities of relations and perceptions among ordinary people holding conflicting beliefs.
But these are minor criticisms. Berger's best essays—lucid and incisive, breathtakingly erudite and psychologically insightful—are foundational to the study of relations between Jews and Christians. These essays are now available in a single volume. This is a welcome event.
