Three clips from Maccoby: (a), (b), and (c). Only problem with this is that it makes the entire Jewish tradition regarding Jesus, that he was a bastard (Kallah, 51a), the son of a Jewish prostitute and a Roman soldier (Sanhedrin, 106a), that he was a sorcerer who stole a parchment containing the Holy Name and worked magic with it (Toldot Yeshu), that the rabbis condemned him to death, that he is boiling in shit in hell (Gittin, 57a), etc, look seriously ‘anti-Semitic’ – RB
New book by US rabbi depicts Jesus as a Jewish patriot
Raphael Ahren, Haaretz, Jan 9 2012
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach revels in speaking publicly about topics most Orthodox Jews avoid. In 1999, he gained worldwide popularity with his best seller “Kosher Sex.” He has since written more than 20 books, among them “Kosher Adultery” and “The Kosher Sutra.” And while Boteach’s newest work, due to be released on Feb 1, does not take on the issue of sex, it promises to be no less controversial than his previous works. “Kosher Jesus,” Boteach’s first book published in Israel, asserts that because Christians no longer consider Jews to be their enemies, it is therefore time to recognize Jesus as a Torah-abiding Jewish patriot. “Kosher Jesus” amalgamates research, mostly by Hyam Maccoby, which suggests that the gospels give the wrong impression of Jesus. The US-born author and TV show host told Haaretz this week in Jerusalem:
This book is telling the Jews to reclaim Jesus, the authentic Jesus, the historical Jesus, the Jewish Jesus, and to be inspired by his beautiful teachings. It’s asking Christians to make an effort to enrich their Christianity through an understanding of the Jewishness of Jesus. Suddenly we have evangelical Christians emerging as the foremost supporters of the state of Israel. We have this political alliance. What is a lacking is a theological bridge. Christians don’t know the Jewish Jesus. They know the Christ-divinity but not the Jewish man Jesus. There’s a need to discover the humanity of Jesus. There was a lot of embellishment and editing. We have to remember Paul never met Jesus. He cannot offer us a first-hand account of Jesus’ life. Christian scripture doesn’t add up when it portrays Jesus as a self-hating Jew, or when it lists sins that allegedly led Jews to condemn him. Jesus never declared himself God or meant to abolish Jewish law. And the fact that Jesus thought of himself as the messiah shouldn’t bother Jews. I could declare myself the messiah right now. There’s nothing blasphemous about this. I even encourage people to have a certain messianic tendency in their lives, a desire to redeem the world. I regret that Jews allowed Jesus to be ripped away from them without even a fight. We just accepted a Christian interpretation of his life and narrative. One of the most influential people of all time is seen as a Christian who loved the Romans and said about the Jews that they are all the children of the devil. But Christian ideas of Jesus as divine messiah emerged as a savvy adaptation following the destruction of the Second Temple. Once Jews understand that, that they can take inspiration from Jesus’ often beautiful ethical teachings and appreciate Jesus as a devoted Jewish son who became martyred while trying to lift the Roman yoke of oppression from his beloved people.
If precedent is any indication, “Kosher Jesus” is bound to stir up controversy. Two years ago, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the New York-born Orthodox rabbi of Efrat, was attacked for saying Jesus was “a model rabbi.” He later retracted that statement, stressing that Jesus was “not a rabbi in the classical sense of the term.” But Boteach says he does not fear the repercussions of referring to Jesus as a rabbi in his book. He says:
I lived my whole life with criticism. The Talmud says that you learn more from your critics than you do from your fans.
USAia’s Rabbi, as Boteach is called on his website, is no doubt a polarizing figure. Some admire his chutzpah, while others often find him to be arrogant. Indeed, in his new book, which he expects will become “seminal,” he writes that Pope Benedict XVI asked him for an autographed photograph. In the next paragraph, he pokes fun at himself when he thanks his parents “for giving the world such a beautiful gift in the form of me.” Glenn Beck hailed “Kosher Jesus” as a “must-read for everyone willing to venture slightly out of their comfort zone.” Manchester-born Rabbi Jeremy Rosen called the book “a fun romp” that “makes you think and examine your own ideas.” But in Rosen’s review of the book, he also writes that religious leaders do too much to persuade others to change their ideas. Rosen quotes the late Rabbi Josef Soloveitchik, who maintained that Jews should engage in interfaith relations only when dealing with matters of joint concern, but should avoid theological debates. Boteach said of Soloveitchik’s approach:
That was right for his time. It’s not right for our time. Christians are our best friends today. There has to be a discussion of the theology. You can’t have this 600-pound gorilla in the room and just ignore it.
Boteach, who recently attended a large Christian pro-Israel gathering, said he found it irritating that participants avoided any mention of Jesus for fear of offending Jews. Boteach said:
It’s weird. How can you have a relationship with close friends and you can’t talk about the most important thing in their life and the most famous Jews that ever lived? My book says we Jews and Christians understand Jesus in very different ways, and that’s OK. But now, let’s have a conversation.
the whole ‘myth’ thing about JC i think it was IMO a political move and nothing much more even though the original adherents to Christianity were Jews.
I am of the opinion that a similar move should be at least voiced against Lubavitch but no one wants to rock the ship.
Recently here in Safed small paperback copies of the NT have been reaching mailboxes surreptitiously and large posters warning people of the ‘impending danger’ have been posted around town- it seems people like living in the middle ages.
By the way, I have just added a little widget that will show the location of visitors to Niqnaq, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. It hasn’t updated itself yet.
You know, I could put at least half a dozen Rami Fortis songs from YouTube on here that I think express the true soul of Jewish Israel. But none of them is quite as exquisitely ferocious as “Na’alaim”. I think that song is definitely in the running for best anti-war song ever written, by anybody anywhere. I wonder what that spoken intro to the last version I posted is on about. Something to do with Mickey Mouse, the government, ice-cream, and the police. Then there’s some very sarcastic muttering in the middle about the ‘new covenant’. He doesn’t sound at all impressed by it. He throws in sarcastic comments about churches in various songs. Then there’s this one, another classic of disillusionment which concludes that there is no God. Like the na’alaim copy, this is incomplete and cuts off abruptly before the end, but such is life:
http://yourphariseefriend.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/kosher-jesus-a-book-review-by-rabbi-eli-cohen/
Hi, Rabbi. I have a follow-up on this story here. It’s nice to see someone talking about Shmuley’s book in a moderate tone.
An aspect no one has looked at yet is the way in which these arguments in fact have a history in the haskalah. I don’t think Chabad is in general too keen on the haskalah, but Shmuley might be prepared to be at least nominally expelled from Chabad for left deviationism, just as certain Messianic Chabadniks have been nominally expelled, or almost so, for right deviationism; I mean the ones who claim that the late Rebbe was Moschiach, which among other things would cancel the prohibition shelo ya’alu be-homah (“not to ascend the wall,” i.e. not to take the Land by force).
Shavua tov.
It is not a halachic prohibition, only an opinion in the Talmud, e.g., a certain R. Hillel in the tractate Sanhedrin claimed that the messianic days already transpired in the days of King Hizkiyahu and this R. Hillel was never banished. In essence there is no obligation to believe in the messiah, which has already been established in many polemics.
It’s from Ketubot 111a (Soncino trans.):
Aviezer Ravitsky, in his Ha-qetz ha-meguleh u-medinat ha-Yehudim, cites such harbingers of zionism as R Alkalai and R Kalischer as talking as if all three oaths were addressed to the Jews, viz.: she-lo ya’alu be-homah (not to ascend the wall), she-lo yimridu b’umot ha-olam (not to rebel against the nations of the world), and she-lo yidhaku et ha-qetz (not to force the End). The difference is significant, because on the correct reading one could say that the nations had broken their oath not to oppress, and therefore that the Jews were free of the other two oaths. On this reading one could not.
Anyway, you’re quite right about their non-halachic status. Mordecai Breuer wrote in Ge’ulah u-medinah, 1979, “We have not found the three oaths explicitly cited as an ongoing halakhah” and Ehud Luz wrote in 1983, “It is in any case clear that in and of itself it [the Gemara] could not provide a foundation for a halachic prohibition.”
It seems to me that the zionist view, which I think was shared by Rav Avraham Kook, is not religious but Hegelian. I would express it as “the Jewish people will be its own Messiah” (i.e., collectively). The source of the statement “the Jewish people will be its own Messiah” is cited web-wide as “Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx, ‘La Revue de Paris’, p. 574, June 1, 1928″, but this ‘letter’ is an extremely obvious anti-Semitic fabrication. The statement sounds to me as if it could have come originally from Moses Hess. Some more interesting references from Ravitsky:
Other interesting comments Ravitsky makes are these:
Breuer may be perfectly right in terms of “the religious view on life”, but Kook is not expressing a properly religious view, as I said, but a Hegelian one, whether people choose to recognise this fact or not. Rav Kook’s thinking was not consciously Hegelian. It was based on the kabbalistic identification of the collectivity of Israel with a Divine being. But objectively this amounts to Hegelianism.
In the early 1990s, when he was in his 20s and the leader of the campus Chabad House at Oxford University. Boteach clashed publicly with Chabad. Contemporary press accounts suggest that Boteach outgrew his role in the movement as his campus activities and public profile swelled. He resigned as a Lubavitch representative in 1994 after movement officials in the UK objected to his invitation to then-Israeli PM Rabin to speak at Oxford. In a 1995 profile of Boteach in a publication called Inside, a Lubavitch spokesman praised Boteach’s work but said that he is “an individualist. He cannot be encumbered by the framework of an organization.” Though Boteach lost his funding from Chabad, he kept control of the organization he had built. It’s that organization’s US entity, now called This World: The Jewish Values Network, that currently pays Boteach’s salary. The group has top-flight supporters. The Judy & Michael Steinhardt Foundation, major funders of Taglit-Birthright Israel, gave a combined $260,000 in 2007 and 2008. The Steinhardts’ daughter, Sara Berman, was the board’s secretary in 2010 and is currently on the organization’s board of governors. (Forward)