review
Professor Leo Price’s ‘Introduction to the Jewish Religion’ is aimed at non-Jews, in particular Christians who would like to discover ‘their’ Jewish roots. Many Christians make the mistake of this by looking at Judaism through Christian glasses instead of Jewish or even better Noachide glasses. Anyone who looks at Judaism through a Noachide lens realizes that the Torah is intended for Jews and the Noachid commandments for non-Jews. Thus, both recognize the unity of God.
data
- title: Introduction to the Jewish religion
- author: Leo Price
- year: 1980
- publisher: Kok, Kampen
- ISBN: 90 242 0676 6
Contents of the book ‘Introduction to the Jewish religion’
In the book, Professor Leo Price tries to dispel misunderstandings about Judaism. These misunderstandings arise especially among Christians who look at Judaism through the glasses of the New Testament. They thus get a distorted picture of the Jewish faith. A well-known example is the ‘Jewish God of vengeance’ against the New Testament god (Jesus) of forgiveness.
Leo Prijs is a devout Jew who writes about Judaism from within. He deals with the attitude to the laws, especially the central commandment of charity; dogmatic rationale and desire for the Messiah; the daily Jewish religious life; Jewish literature (Talmud, Mishnah, etc.). Also attention to the relationship between state and religion in Israel and a separate chapter about the famous Jewish writer SJ Agnon. The last chapter deals with the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, based on the Christian misunderstanding about the God of vengeance in the Jewish / Hebrew Bible.
View from Etsel
We are regularly bombarded with reactions from an infour on InfoNu who believes that we write too negatively about Christianity. From his point of view, we can make a good living there because he approaches Judaism from a Christian perspective. Judaism as the Jews themselves see it is therefore difficult for him to understand. According to him, that Judaism is not correct either. Yet the Judaism we are writing about is exactly the Judaism that the Torah speaks about. After all, Jews observe the Torah and therefore know much better how the Torah should be interpreted than Christians who do not have the duty to observe the Torah.
That our conclusion is that Judaism and Christianity are completely different religions is not based on Jewish unwillingness, but on fact. The Torah is only for Jews. The Noahide commandments apply to non-Jews. So it makes little sense for non-Jews to look for ‘their’ Jewish roots. It is better to look at their Noachide roots. If Christians want to cultivate a better understanding of the Jewish people or Judaism, then the Noachide commandments must be observed. From there Christians (or more precisely Noahids) can better communicate with Jews. The Noahide commandments and the Jewish Torah are on the same wavelength. For Noahids, the message of the Torah is much easier to understand. The Torah can even supplement the Noahide commandments. A Gentile who studies the Torah is considered a high priest!
We dare to say with confidence that we care much more about the relationship between Jews and Gentiles than the aforementioned infour. By permanently approaching Judaism through the New Testament you create distance. Resentment will always persist among Christians as long as Jews do not think the same way they do. Christians also have to go to great lengths to show that Judaism and Christianity are the same with Judaism then interpreted in a Christian way. And as long as Jews do not want to see that, they are blind according to these Christians. And that basically stops contact. So Christians have achieved nothing like this. The search for ‘their’ Jewish roots has gone wrong.
The way of the Noahide commandments is therefore much more meaningful and fruitful. A Christian then no longer has to carry the baggage of the New Testament and sees much more clearly what Judaism really means. Only then does the concept ‘Chosen people’ acquire real meaning for non-Jews, namely that God makes his unity known to mankind through the Jewish people. As long as Christians are self-willed and say that Jews are chosen but then simply explain themselves how the Bible should be interpreted on the basis of the NT, things will continue to go wrong. Then you do not take the chosen of Israel seriously and Jews and non-Jews remain polar opposites.
The book is nicely described. Some degree of Jewish background knowledge is required to understand it properly. The information comes more or less out of the blue and will not always be clear to many Christians.
Postscript
After publication of the article, we received this message from the info officer via a PM:
One of my objections is this: We Christians consider the Tanakh (Old Testament) to be the Word of God (YHWH). But you Jews do NOT consider the New Testament to be the Word of God (YHWH). That is where the bottleneck is. The Old Testament (Tanakh) and New Testament form a UNITY that cannot be broken. As long as you (Orthodox) Jews keep fighting that, there will never be reconciliation between Jews and Christians.
This response indicates that the Jewish Bible is still being looked at through the New Testament. Although Jews have always observed the Torah in the same way more than a thousand years before the emergence of Christianity and have given Christians a different view of the Torah since then (Christian theology is completely different from Jewish theology), this informant claims that there are there is a unity. What unit are we talking about? It is Christians who have come to interpret the Torah differently, not the Jews. So there can be no question of unity anymore. This would only have been the case if Christians had the same view of the Torah as Jews. Ergo, if Christians would approach the Torah from a Noachide perspective, then there would be unity. But that is not the case.