New Conversations

on Jews, Christians and the Middle East

By the Reverend L. Humphrey Walz

Our last month's feature "UCC Contemplates Relations with Jews and Mideast" concluded with a stop-the-press announcement that the long-awaited special issue of the quarterly United Church of Christ New Conversations had become available with its promised supplementary materials on that theme. Its 17 sections, totaling 68 pages, though dealing with Middle Eastern matters only secondarily, do so in significant and thought-provoking contexts.

Its predominant concern is with overcoming in America any Christian-Jewish barriers created by the doctrine of "supersession," which holds that Jews, through God's covenants with their Hebrew-patriarchal forebears and Moses their law-giver, became the original Chosen People but, since the coming of Christ with his new covenant, have been superceded in that role by the Church.

Though entertaining some challenging questions and divergent views, the declared mission of this latest New Conversations is to emphasize "God's unbroken covenant with the Jews."

The practical goal of this insistence, the document explains through citations from various writers, is the recognition in action that "Christians and Jews are heirs to a vision both open enough to chart a path into an expanding universe and reliable enough to oppose irresponsible passion which, in recent decades (including the holocaust and the removal of the Palestinians), have been moving civilization toward the abyss" (Thomas Dipko, p. 18).

In this framework, some interesting parallels emerge. Dipko, a UCC conference minister, goes on: "The ethical demands of our faith do not stop at the threshold of our relations with the Jews. Arab Christians and Muslims in the Middle East and in our own nation await a word of affirmation and kinship for their predicament in a world that cares little for their heritage or their homelands" (p. 22). In a similar vein, he notes, Jewish author Michael Walzer urges friends of the state of Israel to keep reminding it that "the conception of justice, first affirmed by the Exodus code, reaffirmed by a prophet and then reinforced by centuries of exile and persecution, must determine how Zionists act" (p. 19).

Arthur Waskow of the Institute for Jewish

Renewal adds: "We can use the resources of Jewish culture and of Torah to teach ourselves and others that it is Jewish to affirm nonviolent expressions of Palestinian statehood" (p. 53). More specifically, Andover Newton theologian Gabriel Fackre sees developments in the Middle East as offering "an opportunity for the state of Israel to be ... the world's community of conscience, demonstrating what life together can mean. No realization of this vision is possible without the partnership of the Palestinian people" (p. 27).

In proclaiming the ancient Israelites and their surviving Judahite/Jewish "remnant" as a people chosen to become an exemplary community, Hebrew scripture saw the importance of a specific territory in which to develop a working model. The question precipitated by 20th-century Zionism and by dispensational-eschatological-territorial premillenarianism (often simplistically labeled "Christian fundamentalism") is: "Does the continuity of this covenant include a special homeland for contemporary Jews?" (Dipko, P. 19).

Fackre comments: "There are no New Testament warrants for the reacquisition of the soil of ancient Israel. Nor can there be any straight-line theological endorsement of the modern state of Israel." Still, he empathizes with the view that "as conscience of the human community, this [Jewish] people evokes the hostility of a fallen creation. As such, space-geography with defensible borders is needed to assure its continued witness" (p. 27).

Jay Lintner of the UCC Office of Church and Society later adds: "Jews aren't the only ones claiming the land. For Christians it is a justice issue: Palestinians have had their land taken away from them, and ... are victims of daily oppression. How can Christians respect the theological claim of the Jewish community when before them lies such oppression? " He concludes that in this "conflict over real estate... we are left with more questions than answers, more hope than fulfillment" (p. 64).

All of the other geopolitical comments in New Conversations are also made in a theological framework, asking such searching questions as: "Is the Jewish 'no' (to Jesus Christ) anti-Christian? Is the Christian 'yes' anti-Jewish?" And there's the disturbing underlying problem of recognizing how "such peoples have confused the voice of God with the echo of their own deepest—and sometimes ugliest—desires " (Methodist theologian Sharon Ringe, p. 29).

"How can Christians respect the theological claim of the Jewish community when before them lies such oppression?"

For its full range of opinions and discussions, send $4 to New Conversations, 10th floor, 475 Riverside Dr., New York, NY 10115, specifying the Summer 1990 issue. Once readers have studied the many-sided complexities they will appreciate why it took till late winter 1991 to compile, edit and publish it.

"Miraculous" Descent from Abraham?

A few Jewish readers of our March "Religion " pages, noting Dr. Michael Wyschogrod's position as Jewish consultant to the UCC Theological Panel, expressed concern lest his biological, non-religious views of essential Jewishness be regarded as universally accepted by other Jews. Those views, we were told, are most conveniently available in the 88-page paperback Trialogue of the Abrahamic Faiths (International Institute of Islamic Thought, P.O. Box 669, Herndon, VA 22070; $5). Ordering a copy, we found Wyschogrod, one of the Jewish contributors to that symposium, saying:

"The human family defined in terms of descent from the patriarchs became the Jewish people ... Judaism is therefore not a matter of faith ... The Jew is a Jew because of his descent from the patriarchs. And yet conversion to Judaism is possible. [In] simple common sense it ought not to be ... But... it becomes a possibility by means of a kind of miracle. The convert miraculously becomes seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And this ought not to be taken too spiritually. In the rabbinic view, a son and mother who convert may marry without violating the biblical prohibition against incest ... because ... they are no longer mother and son. "

The UCC has shown no tendency to buy this genetic "miracle. " Neither has it publicly questioned the assertion of unique Jewish descent from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which is a major basis for Israeli land claims in the Middle East. Perhaps it expects us simply to rely on what the Bible has to say on the subject. As previously noted in these columns, Abraham's almost unlimited progeny is cited in Genesis 13 and 17 as including a multitude of nations and individuals as innumerable as the dust of the earth. Toward this end Isaac, one of his sons, was slated to have his descendants "multiply ... as the stars of heaven" (Genesis 26:4). Jacob (the grandson who, after his conversion experience in Genesis 32:24-30, was also called "Israel") added 70 offspring as his contribution to the expanding family (Exodus 1:5). When, more than 13 centuries later, St. Paul, a self-proclaimed "Israelite," told the Athenians that God had made all nations "from one blood" (Acts 17:26, AV), he could have pointed out that the intervening dozens of prolific generations and wide-ranging mixed marriages had likely brought them as well as him into the Abrahamic bloodline. For us, a pocket calculator, especially its multiplier key, can readily confirm such possibilities on a global scale today.

The Example of Esther

In the Biblical book named for her, Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia, learns that Prime Minister Haman, resenting the independent spirit of her foster father, Mordecai, is plotting to kill not only Mordecai, but all the other Jews in the kingdom as well. To save them she must intrude her agenda, unbidden and at great risk, into a confrontation with King Ahasuerus. Her success is joyously celebrated in the annual Jewish festival of Purim.

Cherishing that example, Letty Pogrebin, a founder of Ms. magazine, has long defied entrenched male chauvinism in pursuit of her feminist goals. More recently, in Moment magazine, she has dared "the Jewish community to elicit more honesty in the Middle East debate." She commends Alan Vorspan publicly for expressing his "reservations about Israel's response to the intifada." She also cites last year's open "Letter of 41" Jews protesting "Shamir's manipulation of American Jewish opinion," and the Nishma. coalition leaders who wrote both Shamir and President Bush about cooperating with the UN commission investigating the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount tragedy.

Ms. Pogrebin craves even more Estherstyle forthrightness. She would like to entice into the open "the Jewish members of Congress who privately agree with Americans for Peace Now but publicly stand with AIPAC;" and "all the Hollywood celebrities, Washington insiders and New York movers and shakers who tell their close friends that Israel should negotiate with the PLO ... but who won't publicize their views because they're afraid ... it would tarnish their establishment credentials and get them excluded from meetings with Israeli big shots."

She would also like to "expose the secret progressives who believe one thing and say another ... and thereby create a false impression of unanimity that can be exploited by Israel's right-wing government." ("Only a confirmed anti-Semite," she quotes the Jerusalem Post's Allen Shapiro as saying, "could believe that Israel has the leadership it deserves.")

"Most of all," she adds, "I'd like to have out of the closet some of those 800 anonymous 'establishment'. . rabbis ... and lay leaders ... who have answered Steven M. Cohen's 1989 survey sponsored by the Israel-Diaspora Institute of Tel Aviv University. Where are the 76 percent who agreed that 'Israel should offer the Arabs territorial compromise in the West Bank and Gaza'? Why aren't we hearing from the 78 percent who said that Israel should not expand the settlements? Or the 67 percent who think 'Arab sovereignty in the territories' with border adjustments is necessary to any peace arrangement? And who is speaking for the 59 percent who agreed that 'Israel should offer the Palestinians the prospect of a demilitarized state in 15 years'? Leaders: Where are you now when we need you?"

The Reverend L. Humphrey Walz, D.D., retired associate executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast, is active in denominational and ecumenical peacemaking movements.