Abstract
In actuality, Judaism and Christianity are like Great Britain and America: divided by the same language. Still, British-American relations in general may be a helpful models for grasping [Irving Greenberg]'s understanding of the potential Jewish-Christian relationship. In the 17th century, there was only Britain. By the end of the 18th century, America emerged and broke with mother Britain. In the 19th, Britain was dominant, with America catching up rapidly. The last century has witnessed the primacy of America. Britain and America have been the great exporters of the idea of democracy. At Britain's height, it followed the model of inclusion by incorporating countries into the British Commonwealth. America, for its part, sought in the last century to extend democracy more than extend its borders, as, for example, in Germany, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Iraq. Similarly, in first-century BCE there was only Judaism. By the end of first-century C.E., gentile Christianity emerged and broke with its mother. In the second and much of the third century, Judaism remained dominant, with Christianity on its heels. By the fourth century, Christianity predominated and turned with fury on its mother. Just as revolutionary America saw Tories as traitors, early Christianity viewed "Judaizers" as heretics. Now America views them as anglophiles. Can Christianity do any less? In any case, the two major powers whose internal politics and foreign policy are most in tandem and most committed to spreading their common ideals are Britain and America. The question then is whether Judaism and Christianity can now see themselves as allies in extending the sovereignty of God. Greenberg's position dovetails significantly with that of the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, onetime professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In his 1967 article, "From Mission to Dialogue," Heschel wrote with regard to Judaism and Christianity that however divided we are by doctrine, we are united by "our being accountable to God, our being objects of God's concern." More specifically, he noted, "We are united by a commitment to the Hebrew Bible as Holy Scripture, faith in the Creator, the God of Abraham, commitment to many of His commandments, to justice and mercy, a sense of contrition, sensitivity to the sanctity of life and to the involvement of God in history, the conviction that without the holy the good will be defeated, prayer that history may not end before the end of days." Moreover, "Both Judaism and Christianity live in the certainty that mankind is in need of ultimate redemption, that God is involved in human history, that in relations between man and man God is at stake; that the humiliation of man is a disgrace of God." Heschel would thus undoubtedly agree with Greenberg's assertion that "the two faiths must learn to see themselves as two aspects of a general divine strategy of redemption."