New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature
Reform scholar sees mixed picture on state of Jewish-Christian affairs
Rabbi Michael Cook, one of the nation’s leading scholars on
Christianity, will pose a provocative question when he speaks at Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston on Tuesday, May 9: “Two thousand years of Jews in a Christian world — are things getting better?”
A summary of his answer might be, “Well, yes and no.”
In an e-mail interview in advance of his address, Cook told NJ Jewish News, “The years 1965 to 2000 may be the best decades Christian-Jewish relations have ever experienced.”
Buoyed over the course of several decades by Pope Paul VI’s 1965 declaration that Jews bore no collective guilt for killing Jesus, Cook, the Bronstein Professor of Judeo-Christian Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, believes there have been some setbacks in the relationship since the turn of the century.
He said one key stumbling block has been The Passion of the Christ, the Mel Gibson film that many critics felt renewed the charge of deicide.
Cook, who describes himself as “the only rabbi in America with a full-professorial chair in the New Testament,” was one of seven scholars selected by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to assess Gibson’s script in advance of production.
Their comments, expressing disappointment in the film, triggered widespread discussions —some angry, some supportive — in churches and synagogues across America.
“In many communities, Christian-Jewish relations on the local level were greatly strengthened,” Cook wrote.
And yet, the bishops’ subsequent “highly adulatory” review of the film irked Cook and others. “The solid bridge of trust Jews thought they had with the Catholic church became exposed as merely a drawbridge, readily placed in raised position when it was most needed by us,” Cook wrote this week. “We desperately needed press conferences by church officials challenging the movie. We got none.”
He called DVD distribution of The Passion and its use in religious schools “deeply disturbing…. If we had gotten strong support from the upper Catholic hierarchy, the impact of the movie in terms of lasting concerns would have been positive. Now it’s negative and long-term….”
On another front, Cook said he believes “tremendous damage” was done by some Protestant leaders’ urging their church hierarchies to divest themselves of stock in some companies that do business in Israel.
But he cautioned that Jews “not engage in overly broad generalizations — there are differences of opinion even within mainline denominations that have advocated looking into such plans, just as there are differences of opinion among Jews in their attitudes toward Israel.”
As for relations between Jews and evangelical Christians, Cook said he believes there is “upside potential.” However, “it remains to be seen whether either group, let alone both, would wish such avenues to be pursued,” he wrote.
But, he noted, “the greatest roadblock is evangelical missionizing of Jews,” with several Christian conservative churches funding “Jews for Jesus” and other messianic Jewish groups.
“Until some ground rules on this are hammered out, I don’t believe that Jews will feel relaxed and trusting,” wrote Cook.
Cook also said that “there may be suspicion by Jews” about some Evangelicals’ belief in Armageddon, the final showdown between Christian good and heathen evil that will trigger the “end of days.”
But, he wrote, “there are tens of millions of Evangelicals in America, and by no means do they all subscribe to the theology of their ideologues, understand it, or even, in some cases, know about it.”
Cook’s speech will begin at 7:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public. People desiring further information may call 973-994-2290.
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