This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
The way you look at Jesus changes everything. Jesus as messiah doesn’t go very far on the justice front. It’s great for empire though.
Have you noticed that some Jewish Israel/Palestine activists gravitate to Jesus? Joel Kovel has a series Jesus thing (here and here). Mark Braverman is sitting on the Jesus fence (link).
I’ve been fascinated with Jews and their journey toward Christianity for a long time. It’s like JuBu’s – Jewish Buddhists – when Zen was all the rage. Still, there’s something different about this flirtation with Christianity.
Buddhism for Jews is an exploration of spirituality with no strings attached. Whether this is real Buddhism or not is beside the point. You find few JuBu’s struggling with the empire Buddhism that supported Japanese fascism in the 1930s and 1940s or the recent Buddhist-Muslim flare-up in Burma. For JuBu’s that’s a world – and a religion – away.
Crossing the Jesus redline is another thing altogether. Jew-bashing has been a central preoccupation with Christianity for 1500 years. Since a liaison with Jesus is a flirtation with Christianity, it’s a serious boundary to cross for Jews. Lots of red flags.
Of course, neither Kovel nor Braverman want Christianity as it was. Many Christians don’t want it either. What they want is Jesus before Christianity – a Jewish revolutionary naysayer, anti-(Roman) occupation activist and profound spiritual explorer.
Is this the real Jesus? No one really knows much about Jesus in a true historical sense but Christianity’s canonical texts are suggestive. They point to a revolutionary sensibility which Christians rarely follow.
Christian liberation theology has crystallized Jesus’s prophetic sensibility. Christians who embrace Jesus’s radical prophetic message are, like the Jewish dissidents of our time, deep in exile.
There is a two way street in radicalizing Jesus. In order for Christians to find the radical Jesus, Jesus has to be placed in the Jewish prophetic tradition. Jesus’s Jewishness has to be located – and embraced – by Christians.
So whether you’re walking on the Jewish or Christian side of the street, Jesus, separated from Christianity and placed in the Jewish prophetic tradition, can be a unifier – especially when both the Jewish and Christian establishments sell out their own origins for status, power and wealth.
This makes for another strange transposition. Whether you’re walking down the Jewish or Christian side of the street matters little if the pursuit of status, power, and wealth orients your life. If you’re into Constantinianism – having religion bless empire – does it matter if you’re Jewish or Christian? That’s true for Muslims as well.
Jews, Christians and Muslims of Conscience are practicing the same religion more or less. They have to find and embrace the persistence of the prophetic. What better way than to do this together?
Empire Jews, Christians and Muslims are practicing the same religion more or less. They have to root out the persistence of the prophetic. What better way than to do this together?
Still, Jews flirting with Jesus is alarming, don’t you think?
In the end, though, perhaps it’s simply another way of sticking it to the Jewish establishment’s assimilation to power and empire Christianity.
“Jews, Christians and Muslims of Conscience are practicing the same religion more or less. They have to find and embrace the persistence of the prophetic. What better way than to do this together?”
That is how I feel too. On that level I do not feel that conversion adds much. It is simply not necessary.
“Empire Jews, Christians and Muslims are practicing the same religion more or less. They have to root out the persistence of the prophetic. What better way than to do this together?”
That last sentence is both right and wrong. They do work together, but on an unconscious level. Islamophobic Jews and Christians closely resemble in their thinking the Islamic extremists they despise–they all need their demon figures. They work together by stoking hatred, but of course there’s no way that all three could unify, unless by some miracle a fourth group came along they all hated more than they hate each other. In a way that’s what has happened with Islamophobic Jews and Christians–they don’t really respect each other’s beliefs, but the Muslims are their common enemy.
At this stage though, it’s hard to imagine a fourth group that could unify them–communism might have come close, but that’s gone. Maybe a Martian invasion would work.
In the late 19th century there were American Reform rabbis who looked forward to a fusion of Judaism with Christianity on the basis of a universalization of Judaism and recognition of Jesus as a Jewish teacher (though not messiah — Reform Judaism has always been against messianism). They cooperated with Unitarian ministers to this end. Beyond a certain point it’s hard to make a theological distinction between Reform Judaism and Unitarianism.
It’s a mystery to me why you are alarmed by “Jews flirting with Jesus.” What alarming result do you expect it to have? It’s much more alarming that Jews should flirt with Zionism, don’t you think? And global heating is also very alarming. What do these various religions have to say about that?
RE: “Have you noticed that some Jewish Israel/Palestine activists gravitate to Jesus? . . . It’s like JuBu’s – Jewish Buddhists – when Zen was all the rage.” ~ Marc Ellis
ONE POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: Gravitating towards a new religion might be one way of reducing the cognitive dissonance inherent in being an enlightened, progressive Jew at a time when Israel (the self-proclaimed Jewish nation-state) and its leaders (who often claim to speak for Jews everywhere, not just in Israel) are seen as being unenlightened and regressive. There are certainly plenty of unenlightened, regressive Christians and Buddhists, but there is no Christian or Buddhist nation-state with leaders who claim to speak for all Christians or Buddhists.
I can see how leaving one religion and immersing oneself in a new religion might possibly be associated with defense mechanisms like withdrawal, intellectualization, idealization, humility, mindfulness, altruism, introjection, sublimation, and possibly even humor.
FROM WIKIPEDIA [Defence mechanisms]:
SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms
Interesting article, and interesting comments. I’m an agnostic myself. By default because I’ve never been able to get past any religious premises. I don’t have faith. I don’t even have any will towards faith. I also don’t know whether the role of religion in human life is a net good or bad. Jesus is a character (individual or composite) who spoke in parables.