Introduction
In Jewish philosophy, be it medieval or modern, a comprehensive Jewish theological discourse about Christianity is conspicuously absent.Footnote 1 This is the result of a built-in asymmetry: whereas Christianity is rooted in the Jewish Bible (i.e., in pre-Christian Judaism)—a fact that renders Judaism indispensable for Christianity and its thought—Judaism existed before and thus independently from Christianity; its encounter with Christianity was only contingent, grounded in a historical fact, not in its very essence.Footnote 2 Consequently, throughout history, Jewish thought related to Christianity only in an apologetic context, i.e., where Christianity's presence—more precisely its dominance and the resulting persecutions and oppression—could not be ignored. The marginal treatment of Christianity in Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages (i.e., at its peak) is characteristic for all of its currents oscillating between Judah Halevi's (ca.1075–1141) suprarationalism and Maimonides's (1138–1204) rationalism. Even in Hasdai Crescas’ (1340–ca.1410) and Joseph Albo's (ca. 1360–1444) subsequent teachings, where Christianity features more prominently than in the thought of their earlier medieval predecessors, it does so only for apologetic reasons without ever assuming a pivotal role in their proper philosophies of Judaism.
The same holds true for modern Jewish philosophy since Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786). Interestingly, Mendelssohn himself wrote his defense of Judaism (Jerusalem, 1783) primarily for Christians (as an answer to critics who challenged his continuing adherence to Judaism), and he also reacted in it to the original Pauline antagonism between faith and law (albeit appearing in a modern Spinozist garb as an attack on Jewish particularism and the coercion involved in Jewish law). This Christian context notwithstanding, Christianity's shadow might hover over this book, but a genuine discussion about Christianity itself is virtually absent. Although Mendelssohn does refer to Christianity in some of his pre-Jerusalem writings (especially in the aftermath of the Lavater controversy), these are only reactions to attacks on his Jewishness, never assuming the form of a comprehensive theological assessment of Christianity.Footnote 3 What is true for the father of modern Jewish philosophy is also true for his successors.Footnote 4 Thus, in Jewish thought of all ages, there seems to be a surprising lacuna: the lack of a comprehensive Jewish theology of Christianity.Footnote 5
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were, however, two prominent exceptions to this rule: The Sephardic Orthodox Rabbi Eliah BenamozeghFootnote 6 (1823–1900), and the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). In both men's thought, Christianity played a pivotal (and largely positive) role—so much so that their Jewish philosophy would not be the same without Christianity. This is unique.
Recent developments in the Christian world (especially in the Catholic ChurchFootnote 7) regarding Christian-Jewish relations—triggered by the papal Nostra Aetate declaration of 1965Footnote 8—have led to the questioning and gradual abandonment of some classical Christian attitudes vis à vis “the Jews,” including supersessionism. These developments have elicited on the Jewish side an increasing effort to provide an adequate theological answer to the unprecedented Christian overture. Attempts at such an answer were made already in the early sixties of the last century—immediately preceding and following Nostra Aetate. There were two different approaches proposed by two eminent American Jewish leaders of that time: the Rabbis Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) and Abraham J. Heschel (1907–1972), the former opposing a theological dialogue with Christianity, the latter endorsing it.Footnote 9 However, neither of them purported to promote a new Jewish theology of Christianity. As the efforts from the Christian side intensified, there were more and more positive Jewish responses, which culminated, in 2000, in a public statement signed by more than 200 rabbis and Jewish scholars, termed Dabru Emet, and a Jewish-theological and academic follow up of this statement.Footnote 10 All these publications, however, bear the stamp of ad-hoc reactions to the Christian overture, are thus fundamentally apologetic, and lack the theological depths of a Benamozegh or a Rosenzweig. As Alick Isaacs put it, they are but
a brave attempt on the part of predominantly Jewish scholars to return the compliment. The catch is that even the most eminent of Jewish leaders could never claim the kind of authority enjoyed by the Pontifical See. Still less authority adheres to those liberal intellectuals whose contributions to this volume construct sympathetic renditions of Christianity.Footnote 11
Isaacs is not alone with this assessment. The premises of the Dabru Emet statement were weighed and found wanting by Jon D. Levenson, who exposed the deeply apologetic nature of the document. Levenson does not deny the unprecedented character of the post-Holocaust Christian overture, but he disputes the theological soundness of a Jewish response based, as he puts it, on a political model of “conflict resolution or diplomatic negotiations”Footnote 12 impeding “any sophisticated understanding of the two millennia of Jewish-Christian dialogue and dispute.”Footnote 13 Levenson thus denies the Dabru Emet statement Jewish authenticity and accuses it of theological light-mindedness.
In view of this critique, the pioneering efforts of Benamozegh and Rosenzweig in laying the ground for a Jewish theology of Christianity become relevant again. Not that Benamozegh or Rosenzweig could solve the problem of authority as poignantly put forward by Isaacs. But the mere fact that their writings are a product of an overall Jewish philosophy and not just semi-theological ad hoc reactions to a Christian overture (that did not exist at their time) suggests that they should be taken into serious consideration.
Although Benamozegh and Rosenzweig have been both subject to extensive research—especially as regards their perceptions of Christianity—a comparative study of their approach to Christianity has not yet been attempted.Footnote 14 As the approaches of these two spearheads of a Jewish theology of Christianity exhibits some striking similarities, such a study seems imperative. These similarities are all the more surprising, as Rosenzweig was ostensibly unaware of Benamozegh's writings.Footnote 15 Both men are regarded as proto-existentialists (the term “existentialism” was not born yet),Footnote 16 and as such would probably have appreciated the similarities between them. Benamozegh states explicitly that uninfluenced parallels in thinking make a strong case for the truthfulness of an idea by providing it with additional weight.Footnote 17 This article sets forth the parallels between Rosenzweig's and Benamozegh's views of Christianity and their interreligious implications.
Eliah Benamozegh and Franz Rosenzweig—The Cultural Background
At first sight, it would seem that the cultural, biographical, and mental gap between the Italian-Jewish rabbi Eliah Benamozegh and the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig could not be greater. Eliah Benamozegh was a scion of a renowned Moroccan Jewish family, a kabbalist from youth whose family settled in Italy at its finest intellectual hour, at the peak of the Risorgimento. Benamozegh's father died in his childhood, and thus he was raised by his mother and (especially in terms of religious learning) by his maternal uncle, the illustrious kabbalist Yehuda Coriat. Benamozegh stayed all his life in Leghorn (Livorno), where he served as the city's rabbi and taught at the renowned Collegio Rabbinico Livornese. He was an intellectual autodidact, eclectically absorbing whatever he got to read in European science and philosophy. One of the unique traits of his writings is his lifelong adherence to the teachings of Kabbalah and his attempt at its scholarly vindication by rational scientific and theological arguments; this attempt should be especially evaluated against the contempt for the Kabbalah that prevailed among nineteenth-century Western European Jewish and non-Jewish scholars. Benamozegh's theological system is laid down most comprehensively in Israel and Humanity, a posthumous work published only in 1914.Footnote 18
Franz Rosenzweig was a formidably assimilated German Jew—initially almost completely ignorant in Jewish mattersFootnote 19—who turned to Judaism from the very brink of it (after his near-conversion to Christianity), at the age of 26.Footnote 20 Whereas his academic credentials (acknowledged by one of Germany's most renowned historiansFootnote 21) were more than promising, in terms of Jewish knowledge and scholarship, Rosenzweig was thus a late bloomer. His Jewish philosophy—expounded mainly in his seminal work The Star of Redemption (1921)Footnote 22—draws upon his thorough academic knowledge of European philosophy and Christianity, as well as his highly original conception of Judaism that could somewhat alleviate but never entirely overcome his lack of classical Talmudic erudition.
In light of Rosenzweig's Jewish “noviceship,” it seems highly significant that his favorite Jewish thinker was Rabbi Judah Halevi,Footnote 23 who had written his magnum opus, the Kuzari, precisely from the vantage point of an outsider to whom Judaism had to be explained from its most rudimentary basics. However, what was only a literary device for the medieval Jewish scholar was personal reality for Rosenzweig. Benamozegh lived in Italy and spoke Italian, working hard to acquire good abilities in French (with the explicit purpose of reaching out to a larger Jewish publicFootnote 24). Rosenzweig lived in the very center of Jewish intellectual ferment of his time (Mendelssohn's, Heine's, Zunz's, Hirsch's, Geiger's, Steinschneider's, and Hermann Cohen's Germany) and spoke the language of that center.
This initial mental and cultural-geographical gap notwithstanding, there are nevertheless some conspicuous parallels in the two men's thought. The basis for these parallels lies most probably in the Western European background that was influential enough to provide a common Sitz im Leben underlying their thought: the challenges of modernity. They were both highly apprehensive of them, Rosenzweig “by birth” (having been brought up as a largely assimilated fruit of these challenges), Benamozegh by intellectual choice. Moreover, the main focus of modern Jewish philosophy—proving particularist Judaism's universal relevance—is also the main focus of both men's thought.
The Basic Paradigm: The Fire and its Rays
In order to understand Benamozegh's appraisal of Christianity, we have first to consider his basic vantage point: Benamozegh views both Jews and non-Jews as subject to God's covenant. This covenant is, however, a dual one. This conception rests on an old Talmudic tradition, according to which the Jews have knowledge of the “Noachide law,” a divine law that is incumbent upon all of humanity (whereas the Torah was promulgated only for the Jews). This law applies to the children of Noah (i.e., all of humanity) and includes seven commandments, one positive and six negative: the establishment of courts of justice as well as the prohibitions of blasphemy, idolatry, adultery, bloodshed, robbery, and the eating of flesh cut from a living animal.Footnote 25 Though these commandments were in fact never enforced by Jews on non-Jews,Footnote 26 there was nevertheless an inner-Jewish discussion about their exact meaning and scope, especially in the Middle Ages. The concept of a universal religion taught by Judaism—the Noachide law—is thus neither new nor original. It was codified in Maimonides's authoritative code,Footnote 27 and reemerged in Mendelssohn's Jewish thought, where it was cited as evidence of endorsement by Judaism of a rational universal religion.Footnote 28 But whereas this universalizing function of the Noachide law is not new, the radical transformation of the notion of the Noachide law into a core trait of Judaism's teachings certainly is.Footnote 29
One of Benamozegh's main novelties in this context is his claim that the nations of the earth are entitled to have their own religion or even religions. Thus, according to Bemanozegh, the Noachide law is not supposed to be an amorphous entity having no character of its own besides its reliance on Jewish tradition; it rather can and preferably even should be specific, with its own rites, its own history, its traditions, its sages etc., as long as it complies with the basic standards of Noachide law.Footnote 30 For Benamozegh, among the non-Jewish religions, Christianity is the most suited for this task:
Why should Judaism and Christianity not unite their efforts with a view to the religious future of mankind? . . . And if from these deliberations . . . could emerge a Christianity which preserves the character of divine authority . . . can we imagine a happier portent for mankind, or a more admirable solution to the great religious problems of our day? . . . Consequently, it is to Christianity that belongs the honor of making the principal attempt to create a universal religion.Footnote 31
Therefore, “it is Christianity, reformed to be sure on its first model, which will always be the religion of the Gentile peoples”:Footnote 32
The two religions themselves are and remain sisters . . . and if they are fundamentally united and interdependent, no power on earth will be able to separate them permanently. Indeed, to the contrary, they will know at the proper moment how to join their energies . . . they will recognize their original kinship, and through an appropriate alliance resume their common work for the accomplishment of their great destinies.Footnote 33
Among the Christian communions, Benamozegh views Catholicism as “the most consequent” and the most suited to assume this role,Footnote 34 namely to lead non-Jews to their ideal destiny as children of Noah. The relationship between Judaism and the ideal Noachide religion he represents with a simile of the fire and its rays: “The faith of Israel (is) the center, the hearth toward which converge, like detached rays, the beliefs of other peoples.”Footnote 35 Consequently, the positive effect of these rays upon humanity depends on their proximity and faithfulness to their fiery source.Footnote 36 The basic idea underlying this conception can be traced back to Judah Halevi and Maimonides, who maintain both that Christianity, and also Islam,Footnote 37 are a) influenced by Judaism and b) make their own positive contribution to humanity's redemption.Footnote 38 However, for Halevi and Maimonides this acknowledgement is far from enthusiastic; it follows the “God's ways are wondrous” pattern,Footnote 39 rather than a fraternal embrace (as is the case with Benamozegh) that was far beyond the scope of these medieval thinkers. In modern times, some Reform theologians like Salomon Formstecher (1808–1889) and Samuel Hirsch (1815–1889) embraced this medieval conception,Footnote 40 but they too stopped short of making Judaism and Christianity work hand in hand, as advocated by their Orthodox contemporary Benamozegh. In accordance with his stance that the ideal Noachide religion need not be an amorphous entity but can have its own sages, Benamozegh addresses Jesus respectfully as Yeshua Rabam (Jesus their teacher)Footnote 41—in contrast with the disrespectful Yeshu used generally in rabbinic literature. He refers specifically to the gospels as not only a legitimate but even a praiseworthy expression of the Noachide religion:
The reading of certain passages of the Gospels has never left us unresponsive. The simplicity, grandeur, infinite tenderness, which these pages breathe . . . overwhelms us to the depths of our soul; and we should easily have been long familiar with this thrill through the writings of our sages, by the Aggadah above all, of which the Gospel is indeed a chapter.Footnote 42
This utmost reverence to “certain passages of the Gospels,” their acceptance as “echoing the ancient voice of the Prophets and sages of Israel,”Footnote 43 and above all what Isaacs called “Benamozegh's tone”Footnote 44 (“The . . . infinite tenderness [of the Gospels] . . . overwhelms us to the depths of our soul”) is unprecedented in Jewish philosophy—certainly in Orthodox thought—and it was rightly recognized as such by Benamozegh's Orthodox adversaries.Footnote 45 Benamozegh's positive theology of Christianity might well be rooted in Lurianic Kabbalah and its concept of divine sparks that penetrate all existence.Footnote 46 Christianity would thus be perceived as a major expression of these sparks that, though to some degree alienated from their source, nevertheless carry their divine load into the furthest corners of reality.
Be that as it may, Christianity—albeit only after discarding its blemishes, especially its deification of Jesus and its pretention to be the New Israel—is destined to assume the role of the ideal Noachide religion. It transmits the rays that find their ideal and most concentrated expression in the Jewish fire, to the entire gentile world. This view, though sympathetic, cannot be accepted by any of the main streams in Christianity,Footnote 47 but from a Jewish perspective it seems to be the most positive judgment ever made about Christianity by a Jewish Orthodox thinker.
The praise of Christianity as the religion with the greatest potential to represent a genuine Noachide religion is articulated mainly in Benamozegh's Israel and Humanity, but it is definitely already present, though less accentuated, in his earlier writings, especially in his Jewish and Christian Ethics.Footnote 48
The complementary relationship of Judaism and Christianity, as perceived by Benamozegh, is emphasized even more by Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig acknowledges the historical fact of the theological asymmetry between the preoccupation of Christianity with Judaism and the indifference of Judaism to Christianity,Footnote 49 but he challenges it: According to him, “as there is a Christian dogma regarding Judaism, there must also be a Jewish dogma regarding Christianity.”Footnote 50 This call is unprecedented. It challenges the asymmetry mentioned at the outset and is, of course, based on Rosenzweig's overall conception of the unique relationship between Judaism and Christianity: “Before God, therefore, both Jew and Christian are workers on the same task. He cannot dispense with either. Between the two, he set an enmity for all time, and yet he binds them together in the narrowest reciprocity.”Footnote 51
For Rosenzweig, this interdependence of Judaism and Christianity is more than a historical fact; it is a divinely decreed necessity, as each one needs the other to fulfill its task: “Christianity, by radiating outwards, is in danger of evaporating into isolated rays far away from the divine core of truth. Judaism, by glowing inwards is in danger of gathering its heat into its own bosom far distant from the pagan world reality.”Footnote 52 Thus for Rosenzweig even more than for Benamozegh, Christianity is necessary for the salvation of humankind.Footnote 53 They even use the same simile: Rosenzweig too speaks about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity using the metaphor of a fire and its rays.
The Eternal People (is) placed outside all World History. In its life alone the fire burns that nourishes itself from itself and therefore has no need of the sword that would bring nourishment to its flame from the woods of the world. This fire burns in itself. Its rays that stream into the world illuminate the world; they do not need to shine for the fire itself. The fire knows nothing of them. It burns silently and eternally.Footnote 54
Here we arrive at the very core of Rosenzweig's Jewish-Christian philosophy: for Rosenzweig, Judaism does not strive towards any further goal, simply because the very fact of being in possession of God's perfect revelation means that the Jews have already “arrived.” There is nothing more elevated to strive to anymore. God's redemptive Torah has to be implemented within the Jewish people and in each and every Jew's individual life, but it is essentially already there: it must only be picked up and lived. And what about the rest of humanity? As Judaism has no built-in drive to get anywhere (because it has already reached the summit and was thus redeemed), the task to make the nations of the world partake in this redemption must be transmitted to another force that still strives somewhere beyond its present situation. This force is Christianity.
Rooting into the deepest Self, this had been the secret of the eternity of the [Jewish] people. Expansion through all that is outside—this is the secret of the eternity of the [Christian] Way.Footnote 55
Therefore:
Christian life leads the Christian into the outside. The rays shine continually until all that is outside is filled with the rays. Jewish life is exactly the reverse. . . . Hence, as the Christian way . . . (is) filling with rays that which is outermost, so Jewish life . . . (is) filling with a glow that which is innermost. The rays of the Star that refract outwardly in this way, the fire that glows inwardly—neither rest until they have arrived at the end, at the outermost, at the innermost.Footnote 56
Rosenzweig adds that whereas Judaism cannot appeal to non-Jews (except to an insignificant number of righteous proselytes), Christianity exhibits quite opposite features: it cannot exist without missionizing, for missionizing is its very nature. If it stopped missionizing, it would disappear:
Christianity as eternal way must always spread further. Simple preservation of its continuance would mean for it the renouncing of its eternity and hence death. Christianity must be missionary. It is just as necessary to it as is to the eternal people its self-preservation in the sealing off of the pure source of blood from foreign admixture. In fact the mission for it is plainly the form of its self-preservation. It propagates itself by spreading.Footnote 57
Thus, for Rosenzweig, as for Benamozegh, the rays (Christianity) are necessary for the salvation of humankind: Christianity steps in where Judaism cannot be influential.
However, there seems to be a difference in the relationship between the fire and the rays. Whereas according to Rosenzweig the source of the rays is in the fire—“This fire burns in itself. Its rays . . . stream into the world”—Bemamozegh's formulation—“the hearth toward which (the rays) converge”—might be indicative of a shift in the focus. As opposed to Rosenzweig, for Benamozegh the fire is not the source of the rays. The rays converge into the hearth; they do not originate in it. Both fire and rays are rather rooted in the same divine revelation that translates into different entities. This conception is quite consistent with the Kabbalistic background of Benamozegh's thought and the above mentioned Lurianic model regarding the divine sparks, as opposed to the more theological-philosophical model underlying Rosenzweig's thought. It also fits into Benamozegh's conception of the relationship between the Sinaitic (Jewish) and the Noachide (gentile) Law. The latter is not rooted in the former; both are rather different expressions of the same divine reality, adapted to different circumstances and to different audiences.
There is also another difference between the two that belongs to the pragmatic realm. As opposed to Benamozegh,Footnote 58 Rosenzweig did not anticipate a positive response in Christian circles. In a letter from the summer 1919, he writes: “The impact [of The Star of Redemption] on Christians . . . will expire with your life [he relates to his contemporary Christian friends]. My subsequent audience I can expect only among my people.”Footnote 59 I imagine both thinkers would have greatly appreciated an official Roman Catholic document from 2015, which reads like the parallel passages in Israel and Humanity and The Star of Redemption: “The Church without Israel would be in danger of losing its locus in the history of salvation. By the same token, . . . Israel without the Church would be in danger of remaining too particularist. . . . In this fundamental sense Israel and the Church remain bound to each other according to the covenant and are interdependent.”Footnote 60
The above-mentioned shift of focus notwithstanding, the simile of the fire and its rays as shared by both thinkers still seems to stand in its own right above all differences, as it exhibits the surprising affinity between two theologies of Christianity that were developed independently.
The Disequilibrium
The positive account of Christianity as it appears in both thinkers’ theological systems is nevertheless only one side of the coin. It is impaired by the claim that Christianity, as it developed historically, suffers also from a grave disequilibrium that threatens the success of its legitimate mission. This claim is raised by both thinkers, though it is vested in different garbs.
Benamozegh raises his reservations about Christianity in the context of a broader theory–again rooted in Kabbalah–the crux of which is that Christianity originates in misunderstood Kabbalah. According to Benamozegh, Jesus made the mistake “to declare aloud—according to Luke 12:3, to preach ‘upon the housetops’—what before him had been taught secretly . . . so the esoteric theology of the Pharisees was exposed in broad daylight and revealed to a throng which could scarcely comprehend its least word.”Footnote 61 This unauthorized exposure of Judaism's “esoteric theology” to “broad daylight,” together with the fact that according to Benamozegh Jesus was only “poorly instructed”Footnote 62 in Jewish teachings, resulted in a misreading and a corrupted form of Kabbalah:
We can observe a difference . . . between Christianity and the Jewish Kabbalah, from which indeed it is correct to say Christian doctrine came forth, in both senses of the word: first, because the Kabbalah was truly its source, and also because it diverged radically from its Kabbalistic origins. Thus, for example, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity transformed into distinct persons what were for the Kabbalists divine attributes.Footnote 63
There are some (mostly non-Jewish) precedents to the claim that Christianity—especially the Christian Trinity—is rooted in Kabbalah, albeit in a more positive sense. These precedents can be traced back as far as the fifteenth century.Footnote 64 The most sophisticated among them can be attributed to the German idealist philosopher Franz Joseph Molitor (1779–1860), who was, according to Gershom Scholem, the only Christian Kabbalist in the nineteenth century to be taken seriously.Footnote 65 Molitor wrote a four-volume work on the history of philosophy in which he establishes numerous connections between Christianity and Kabbalah. For our purposes it suffices to point out his attributing the Christian Trinity to the Sefirot Keter, Tiferet, and Malkhut.Footnote 66
Benamozegh seems to subscribe to Molitor's approach, although the details, namely the Sefirot involved, are not exactly the same: Benamozegh assumes that the Christian Trinity was inspired by the genuine Kabbalistic triad Chokhma, Tiferet, and Malkhut, but the unlearned founders of Christianity unfortunately confused this triad with another one: Keter, Chokhma, and Bina. As a consequence, Christianity confused Tiferet with Chokhma, and Malkhut with Bina, which according to Benamozegh, resulted in the erroneous concept of incarnationFootnote 67 that, in turn, entailed dire “moral consequences.”Footnote 68 These “moral consequences” (brought about by the mixing up of the Kabbalistic spheres) were thus the result of a theological disequilibrium. All this led to an over-spiritualization and the abandonment of the material body. The latter was left to its destiny and thus remained without proper instructions except the soul's wish to get rid of it. The abandoned body took revenge by becoming unrestrained:
Now, it can be fearlessly asserted, that from contempt of the body, of the flesh, as it was understood and practiced by Christianity, must one day come the vilest materialism. . . . Doubtless, there appears to be nothing so paradoxical, so incredible, as the union of contempt for the body with sensuality. But logic and history prove that this is not only possible but almost always inevitable. What does logic teach? . . . When a super-refinement of spiritualism cuts asunder the constituent parts of our being, and by care and effort detaches the spirit from its earthly shrine; when . . . it succeeds in isolating the noblest part of our nature, in snapping all the links that bind it to the body . . . a fatal separation. . . . No more influence now, it is true, of the body upon the spirit, but also no more control of the body by the soul. . . . This is the teaching of logic. Does experience speak less loudly? Does not history show us that whenever mysticism allows itself full rein, it is inevitably dragged into . . . excesses . . . by the impetuosity of a body abandoned to itself?Footnote 69
So here we have a claim of a spiritual disequilibrium which on the moral level entails corrupt behavior, all this being attributed to a metaphysical misunderstanding of the Sefirot.
Here, too, we can see an interesting parallel in the thought of Franz Rosenzweig. One of Rosenzweig's primary philosophical concerns is the development of what he calls “The New Thinking.” Rosenzweig's New Thinking has strong existentialist leanings, first and foremost his abandonment of the philosophical search for the “essence.” According to Rosenzweig, all philosophers, from the ancient Greeks until Hegel, suffered from a grave sickness: instead of looking at the world as it is, they abandoned it in the favor of the search for a (presupposed) essence of all things. Following their preoccupation with the “essence”—i.e., striving to find the one and only principle to which everything could be reduced and by which everything could be explained—they not only fell victim to reductionism, but also neglected the non-essential but very real world in front of their eyes.Footnote 70
Bemoaning this tendency to what he perceives as the philosophical reductionism of his predecessors, Rosenzweig in his Star advances instead his own conception of three elements, presented as the triangle God, World, and Man. These three “elements” are independent and irreducible. However, as a triangle, they entertain indispensable and fruitful relations with each other, at the same time maintaining their splendid existential independence. The relation between God and world is “creation,” the relation between God and man is termed “revelation,” and the relation between man and world is “redemption.” Like the three elements, these three relations too must be held apart and not confused. Rosenzweig maintains that the erroneous reduction of one of these elements to another leads to serious distortions of reality.Footnote 71 According to him, Christianity is grounded precisely in such a reduction: “The entire concept of ‘redemption’ underlying [The Star of Redemption] is unchristian. . . . Because for the Christian, Christ is the redeemer as well as the revealer. Keeping these two concepts strictly apart is Jewish. My whole structure [in The Star of Redemption] relies on this distinction.”Footnote 72 Thus, in spite of its positive and necessary role in world history, in the final analysis, Christianity is a “delusion,”Footnote 73 and “the Christian . . . in his march of conquest into the unredeemed world, must purchase each step forward with illusion.”Footnote 74 In fact, the Christian churches suffer from an inherent disequilibrium between the three elements God, World, Man: “The Northern [i.e. Protestant] Church . . . shows . . . the great image of that danger of the humanizing of God that deifies man. . . . The Southern [i.e. Catholic] Church . . . shows the image of that danger of secularizing God by deifying the world.”Footnote 75 Though Rosenzweig's reflections on the Catholic Church “secularizing God by deifying the world” are far from self-evident, his intention is clear: he accuses Christianity of mixing up elements that are, in fact, irreducible.
Thus, according to both thinkers, mixing up entities that should remain separate—be it the Sefirot (Benamozegh) or the three existential elements (Rosenzweig)—creates a spiritual disequilibrium that leads to a distorted perception of reality. Rosenzweig was aware neither of Benamozegh nor of his Kabbalistic precedent to his thinking.Footnote 76 As stated above, Benamozegh would have appreciated Rosenzweig's insight, for he maintained that it is precisely the ubiquity of Kabbalistic ideas that proves their truthfulness.Footnote 77
An Interreligious Epilogue
In December 2015 the Vatican's “Commission for religious relations with the Jews”—established nine years after the famous 1965 “Nostra Aetate” proclamation in order to implement its central §4 (regarding the relations between the Catholic Church and the Jews)— issued an official document summing up the achievements of 50 years of work.Footnote 78 The new theological insights regarding Jews and Judaism as formulated in this important document are the result of a significant change of paradigm: a shift in the Christian assessment of “the Jews” that began in the early sixties of the last century and intensified in the eighties. This change of paradigm that cannot be defined as any less than revolutionary—certainly in an institution as conservative as the Catholic Church—was not restricted to the latter but rather occurred simultaneously also in different currents of Protestantism. Because of its concise form, I will refer mainly to the 2015 official Vatican document, contenting myself with sporadic cross-references to similar developments in Protestantism.
While this document does not exempt Jews from the Christian belief that Jesus is the redeemer of all humankind,Footnote 79 it took an unprecedented step by declaring that Jews (unlike all other nations!) should not be institutionally missionized by the Church.Footnote 80 It also states that “God has never revoked his covenant with his people Israel.”Footnote 81 This abandonment of the traditional supersessionist stance, according to R. Kendall Soulen “the most important development in Christian teaching on the Jewish people since the second and third centuries,”Footnote 82 has had—since its first explicit formulation in 1980 by John Paul IIFootnote 83—an enormous impact in the Christian world. Since then the debate about supersessionism versus nonsupersessionism has not abated.Footnote 84 Unsurprisingly, the emerging new consensus that is critical of supersessionism produces also considerable backlashes.Footnote 85 Moreover, it seems to be clear that the abandonment of supersessionism affects also other theological issues and that its consequences are not entirely predictable.Footnote 86
The theological difficulties accompanying the new Christian nonsupersessionism can be seen in the effort to mitigate any imminent collateral damage that could jeopardize the very raison d’être of Christianity. It is precisely for this reason that the Vatican document strongly disapproves of what would seem to be a possible “next step” in the theological integration of non-supersessionism, namely a dual covenant theory: “There cannot be different paths or approaches to God's salvation. The theory that there may be two different paths to salvation, the Jewish path without Christ and the path with the Christ, whom [sic] Christians believe is Jesus of Nazareth, would in fact endanger the foundations of the Christian faith.”Footnote 87 The following statement purports to square the circle—the simultaneous exclusiveness of the Christian path to salvation and the fact that “God has never revoked his covenant with his people Israel” by virtue of which the Jews are included in the salvation, even though they do not believe in Jesus Christ: “From the Christian confession that there can be only one path to salvation, however, it does not in any way follow that the Jews are excluded from God's salvation because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God.”Footnote 88 However, an apodictic statement of this kind cannot replace a sound theological argument providing a common ground for both the reaffirmation of the exclusiveness of the Christian path to salvation and the inclusion in it of the Jews, the “people of the covenant” who do not tread on that path. The obvious good will notwithstanding, there seems to be a logical fallacy: if there is only one path to salvation, how then can the Jews reach salvation without treading on it?
Further on in the same paragraph we read: “That the Jews are participants in God's salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery.”Footnote 89 The repeated use of the terms “mystery” and “mysterious” (here and another three times in §36 and §37) in regard to the JewsFootnote 90—hitherto applied mainly in the context of the unfathomable aspects of the Christian Trinity, especially Jesus's double nature (human and divine)—not only refers to the above logical fallacy but also underlines the audacity of this step. The addition of another mystery to the Christian mystery of the Trinity seems to be theologically precarious.
Be that as it may, the Catholic Church is also clearly abandoning the theory of punishment that instrumentalized the miserable existence of the despised and persecuted Jews (in most cases actively brought about by theologically motivated legislation and incitement in Christian countriesFootnote 91) for Christian theological purposes: “We must in any case rid ourselves of the traditional idea of a people punished, preserved as a living argument for Christian apologetic. It remains a chosen people.”Footnote 92 Consequently, the Catholic Church is ready to accept a living and flourishing (and not just barely surviving) Judaism:
The permanence of Israel (while so many ancient peoples have disappeared without trace) is a historic fact and a sign to be interpreted within God's design. . . . We must remind ourselves how the permanence of Israel is accompanied by a continuous spiritual fecundity, in the rabbinical period, in the Middle Ages and in modern times, taking its start from a patrimony which we long shared, so much so that “the faith and religious life of the Jewish people as they are professed and practiced still today, can greatly help us to understand better certain aspects of the life of the Church” (John Paul II, March 6th, 1982).Footnote 93
This de facto adoption of the Jewish theological narrative in which the continuous existence of the Jewish people serves as a central proof for its continuing divine mission (as opposed to the traditional Christian narrative in which the Jews’ continued existence attested to their eternal curse and eo ipso to the truth of Christianity) is a historical novum in Christian thought. As the teaching about the Jews as being collectively responsible for Jesus's death and therefore collectively forever cursed was part and parcel of the Christian mainstream since the Church fathers,Footnote 94 the historical significance of this change of paradigm cannot be overemphasized.
On the Christian side the attempt at a genuine rapprochement between Christians and Jews via the abandonment of supersessionism seems to be motivated by the Christian ethos of love that received in the eyes of many Christians—perhaps for the first time in history— a substantial blow in the Holocaust.Footnote 95 On the Jewish side this attempt is motivated by the messianic impulse that, though not missionizing, strives for a world in which to Him “every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance” (Isa 45:23).
The two major Jewish attempts at a positive reevaluation of Christianity as presented in this article—one by a renowned Orthodox rabbi, the other one by perhaps the most famous Jewish philosopher in the modern eraFootnote 96—can be viewed as two outstanding blueprints of a Jewish theology of Christianity that preceded the above Christian overture. In spite of great differences in their points of departure, Eliah Benamozegh and Franz Rosenzweig exhibit substantial similarity in the most basic outlines of their approaches to Christianity. Whereas former Jewish thinkers at the utmost acknowledged Christianity's role in world history post factum, both Benamozegh and Rosenzweig deem Christianity—despite the flaws they attribute to it—as divinely inspired and necessary for the redemption of the non-Jewish world. In both men's thought, Christianity appears as Judaism's envoy. Benamozegh's uniqueness in this context lies in his unprecedented perception of the Noachide law as redeemed from its amorphous nature and identified as Christianity. Both his principal identification of Christianity with the Noachide law and his positive reevaluation—at times culminating in an enthusiastic embraceFootnote 97—of the core texts of the New Testament (the gospels) are an absolute novum in Jewish theology and should therefore not be underestimated, the more so as his dual covenant theory positing a mutual interdependence between Judaism and Christianity antedated Rosenzweig. For Benamozegh as well as for Rosenzweig, particularist Judaism needs Christianity in order to go universal. Here, then, we have a claim of reciprocity greatly sought for by growing parts of post-Nostra Aetate Christianity and exceptional in Jewish theology.Footnote 98 This is the crux of the simile of the fire and the rays as independently put forward by both thinkers.
In the last fifty years, in the course of ongoing Christian-Jewish dialogue, a number of Christian theologians eventually adopted a kind of dual covenant theory, some of them, like James Parkes, with specific reference to Rosenzweig.Footnote 99 However, as Leora Batnitzky has quite forcefully argued, Rosenzweig's special Jewish blend of a dual covenant theology—in spite of all its positive elements regarding Christianity—does not necessarily promote a dialogue. In fact, it might rather show its limits. Batnitzky adopts Levenson's reservations about the currently dominant mode of Jewish-Christian dialogueFootnote 100 and points at some significant parallels between Levenson and Rosenzweig.Footnote 101 In this vein, it has to be remembered that Rosenzweig's statement regarding Jewish-Christian theological interdependence (“Before God therefore, both, Jew and Christian, are workers on the same task. He . . . binds them together in the narrowest reciprocity”) does not preclude his inserting somewhat ominously, in the very same breath: “Between the two, he set an enmity for all time.”Footnote 102 Moreover, in view of the severity attributed by Rosenzweig to the disequilibrium that according to him is inherent to Christianity and inseparable from it—as demonstrated above—Batnitzky's sober assessment regarding the prospects of a Jewish-Christian dialogue based on Rosenzweig seems more than justified.
And what about Benamozegh? Though on the declaratory level he seems to anticipate such a dialogue, the partner in this dialogue is probably fictional. Neither Benamozegh's concept of this partner—“Christianity, reformed to be sure” (which means among other things abandoning the deification of Jesus)—nor his special brand of a dual covenant theology seems to be acceptable to most Christian communions today. The “reform” envisaged by Benamozegh is thus far too radical for Christianity. It would mean a conscious subordination of Christianity to Judaism, something which is presumably unacceptable even to the most sympathetic Christian. Therefore, and with regard to his severe reservations about Christianity, Benamozegh seems to share with Rosenzweig, Levenson, and Batnitzky their skepticism as to the possibility of an authentic Jewish-Christian dialogue that would somehow make both sides happy, and finally, yield some sort of theological harmony.
If this is the case with the most sympathetic thinkers towards Christianity Judaism has ever produced, a sober approach to a Jewish-Christian dialogue, as advocated by Levenson, seems to be in place. An overemphasis on an alleged Jewish-Christian intimacy will sooner or later lead to a disappointed lover syndrome producing a backlash. In this vein and on a more personal note, I would like to add that–except for the legitimate demand for a firm stand against anti-Semitism–Jews should avoid the chutzpah of giving Christians etzes (advice) on how to reorganize their theology.
In view of the above limits, it seems appropriate for Jews and Christians to keep a certain theological distance allowing for (even substantial) disagreement that would still encourage cooperation on levels that can do without overwhelming theological gestures. In this modest sense, both Benamozegh's and Rosenzweig's theologies of Christianity might deliver, albeit in a rather rudimentary form, some non-apologetic and authentic tools necessary for a Jewish reassessment of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity and for a possible collaboration as well as dialogue between these two religions, while delimiting honestly the theological limits of such an interreligious endeavor.
