CURRENT DIALOGUE
Issue 41, July 2003

Jewish-Christian Dialogue Can Enrich Christian Hermeneutics
Hans Ucko

Once upon a time in the Middle Ages, there was a Pope who told the Jews of a small town that they'd better pack their suitcases and get ready to leave, unless, of course, they could answer three questions. If they answered correctly, they could remain in the town and no one would ever bother them again. The Jews started packing. None of them thought they would be able to give the correct answers, except one of them, who wanted to give it a try: Yankel, the tailor's apprentice who said, "I'll go to answer the three questions of the Pope."

He arrived at the Pope's palace and was brought before the Pope. The Pope said, "If you answer the three questions correctly, your people can stay." Yankel nodded. He was prepared to answer.

"The first question is as follows," said the Pope, and held up one finger in the air. Yankel answered by raising two fingers in the air.

"The second question is as follows," said the Pope, and moved his hands horizontally back and forth. Yankel answered by clasping his hands with emphasis in front of the Pope.

"The third question is as follows," said the Pope, and took out a loaf of bread. Yankel answered by taking out an apple from his pocket.

The Pope said, "You've answered all the questions correctly. Please, go and tell your people that they can stay." Yankel went back home.

The Cardinals went up to the Pope and said: "We didn't understand this at all, neither your questions, nor his answers. Please explain them."

The Pope said: "I raised one finger in the air, which means, there is only one God. He raised two fingers, which means that you worship God in faith and deeds. I moved my hand from left to right to say that we are separated from each other. He clutched his hands, saying that he thought we could be united. I took out the bread, to remind him of the bread of life and he brought forth an apple to make me remember the fruit of the earth. He understood well and answered well. "
The Cardinals were in awe.

Back in the little town, the Jews were packing, when Yankel arrived. He said, "We don't have to leave. I gave him the correct answers."

Everyone was surprised and asked him about the questions and what he had answered.

And Yankel explained: "The Pope raised one finger to say that he would poke out my eye. I answered with two fingers, 'I'll poke out both of your eyes.' The Pope said with his hand that he was going to cut my throat. I answered by saying 'I'll strangle you.' And finally, I guess the Pope gave up, because he took out his lunch – and so I took out mine!
The Jews were in awe.

This story exists in many different versions, all of them reminding us of the Disputations, one of the manifestations of Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages in Europe, when Jews were forced into “dialogues” with Christian scholars and where the end result was to prove to the public how wrong the Jews were and how right the Christians were.

I don’t tell this story to embarrass Roman Catholics but to draw our attention to how our understanding of a situation or a text depends very much on our position, relation or experience vis-à-vis the situation or vis-à-vis the text. Two completely different backgrounds provide the raster or scan pattern for understanding the situation. The Pope is powerful. Yankel is powerless. The Pope can allow himself the luxury to confine the conversation to theological matters. Theological categories hover over actual reality and seem unrelated to the particularity of the situation. He has no particular concern for how Yankel must feel having a Damocles’ sword hanging over him. Although it is supposed to be a matter of questions and answers, for Yankel, the encounter with the Pope, cannot be dissociated from other encounters between the hierarchy of the Church and the Jewish community throughout Europe. Yankel‘s understanding of the situation is coloured in every respect by his personal experiences, as well as of those of thousands of Jews familiar with what it means to be at the mercy of the dominant Church. His genetic memory tells him that the dialogue with the Pope is threatening and the situation is potentially dangerous. He interprets defensively every word and gesture from the Pope. The Pope is out to get him and his fellow Jews. In the story of the disputation, there is a power relationship involved. For the Pope, there is no danger involved. Yankel on the other hand has to win. The Pope can afford to stay within the theological realm; Yankel doesn’t even dare to enter it. The relation to power is very much part of understanding the situation.

We learn from the story that the way you understand cannot be separated from the eyes of the beholder, i.e. the relation one has with the text is essential for the text to provide meaning. And the relation you have with the text or situation makes your understanding. It can be your experience, your longing, your fears, your hopes, etc.. The meaning of the text is obtained through the interaction of the reader and the text itself. On its own, the text has no meaning. There is not one understanding of a situation or a text. Hans-Georg Gadamer, of blessed memory, counted as the father of the new hermeneutics, coined the concept 'fusion of horizons' (Horizontverschmelzung). The reader brings something with him or her to an encounter, be it with a text or with a person. I become part of the text and this fusion makes it possible for me to understand. An understanding of a text engraved in stone that does not reckon with the reader, limits the possibilities of the text.

When it comes to the Bible, we in the church are often exposed to a set menu of how the text is to be understood. One significant example of raster or scan pattern is salvation history, which takes a helicopter-approach to biblical history and decides how the text is to be understood. Salvation history is linear and begins in the dawn of creation and ends with the end of history. A particular geography is chosen for God's action in history, which seems to eclipse God's dealings with people throughout time and places. For salvation history, the people Israel are called to be the very people of salvation history. For some time they live according to the will of God. But it does not last. They betray the covenant already in the period following the Babylonian exile. Some Bible scholars maintain that the covenant with Israel ended in 586 BC with the destruction of the First Temple. Israel had not lived up to the obligations of the covenant. There is however still a remnant left; the grace of God persists. God is gracious, but the disobedience of the people continues. This means that in the course of salvation history that there is now not even a remnant left of Israel. All have fallen off and God is unable to save them from falling out of grace. The outer sign is the destruction of the Second Temple and the loss of independence in 70 AD. A new era is ushered in, the Church, the new Israel, the true Israel.

Since the concept of salvation history is not only a Christian description of the history of Israel but above all a design to understand how God acts in history, with the people of the old covenant and with the people of the new covenant, there is also a particular way of looking upon Scripture as promise and fulfilment, the Old Testament representing promise and the New Testament representing fulfilment. This in itself is nothing new in the books of the Bible. It is present in different ways at a very early stage in theological reasoning. The common concept of promise and fulfilment is similar but what is new with the advent of Christian domination is that fulfilment takes precedence over promise. This becomes the hermeneutical master key. Fulfilment of the new covenant becomes almost synonymous with the abrogation of the old covenant. Using only one hermeneutical key in Church history and in the relationship to Judaism has opened up for a self-serving hermeneutic.

An attentive to-and-fro between the reader and that, which addresses the reader, enriches understanding. Every interpretation includes the possibility of a relationship with others, whether it is an encounter with a text or with another human being. There can be no speech, which does not bind the speaker and the person spoken to. When one "understands" another, one assimilates what is said to the point that it becomes one's own. One lives as much as possible in the contexts and symbols of the other. One is correlating an interpretation of the tradition with an interpretation of the situation.

A diverse input to our hermeneutical process adds to our understanding and should increasingly be part of how we approach the meaning of the Scriptures, how we explain Scriptures and how their meaning is to be ascertained. A holistic perspective offers an opening and widens the horizon. Interaction and interpenetration widen the view.

In his writings Emmanuel Lévinas points to the importance of the other. The other is as other not an alter ego. He or she is that other, whom I can never become, holding on to something, which is properly his or her and which can only be shared. Only together do we attain something that is more than that which I can hold in my own hands. The other is important for my own growth and development. In this relationship there is not an immediate reciprocity, i.e. that as I am dependent on the other, the other is dependent on me. It may very well be so but it is not an absolute given. Were there an automatic reciprocity, there would not be an attempt towards discovering the other. There is therefore risk-taking in discovering the need for another perspective, an integration of the view of the other. If it were possible to speak about integration in the interaction of two persons, then it would imply combining our different insights into a whole or to complete an imperfect perspective by the addition of another perspective.

New hermeneutics will be characterised by the "other," not the "self", maybe because of a thinking that emphasises multiple points of entry and perspectives, This will be the dominant focus. Hermeneutics lives or dies by its ability to take history and language seriously, to give the other (whether person, event or text) our attention as other, not as a projection of our present fears, hopes and desires. Thus, dialogue. Dialogue demands the intellectual, moral and, at the limit, religious ability to struggle to hear another and to respond -- to respond critically, and even suspiciously when necessary, but only in dialogical relationship to a real, not a projected, other.

In my opinion, there is no greater blessing for the Church than to have discovered the other, not as someone fashioned by how the Church wanted the other to be but how the other defined him or herself. How much more do we not now have to consider who the other is, who we are and what it takes us to relate to each other? Nothing can be taken for granted any longer. The discovery of the other as other has perhaps made us more cautious, more humble, less dogmatic. Careful, we are on sacred ground. The ground of the other and the ground we together tread. Interreligious dialogue has become the raster, the modus vivendi, and the modus operandi.

in the light of the experiences we make, findings in and through interreligious dialogue need to be considered as an integral part of the hermeneutics of Scriptures and our self-understanding. An interaction also on the hermeneutical level in the Jewish-Christian dialogue will offer new perspectives. A fusion of horizons might enable a discovery of hitherto hidden dimensions.

The Jewish-Christian dialogue is particularly relevant here. The sharing of Scriptures and world-view is given from the outset. Judaism is the eternal “Doppelganger” of Christianity, always present next to Christianity. “The relations between Jews and Christians have unique characteristics because of the ways in which Christianity historically emerged out of Judaism. Christian understandings of that process constitute a necessary part of the dialogue and give urgency to the enterprise. As Christianity came to define its own identity over and against Judaism, the Church developed its own understandings, definitions and terms for what it had inherited from Jewish traditions, and for what it read in the Scriptures common to Jews and Christians. In the process of defining its own identity the Church defined Judaism, and assigned to the Jews definite roles in its understanding of God's acts of salvation.”1

What has been achieved in and through the Jewish-Christian dialogue has not only benefited a changed understanding of the Jewish people, allowing Jews to define themselves but also led to a common commitment against antisemitism. The Jewish-Christian dialogue has furthermore brought as a challenge to Christian theology and the self-understanding of the church the self-understanding of Judaism. In the light of Judaism as a living reality, who’s the Church? When Faith & Order discusses the Unity of the Church as a Gift and Calling, what does it say about the interrelationship between the Church and the Jewish people and how do the hermeneutical keys used fit the findings of Jewish-Christian dialogue? There have been plenty of ecumenical documents on the Jewish-Christian relationship. They call for a better understanding of the Jewish-Christian relationship and could, I think, be summarised in the following way.

If the above summarises what churches have said about the Jewish-Christian relationship, the question remains what hermeneutical sense to make of these statements for the self-understanding of the church. Is the self-understanding of the church not challenged by statements saying that the “promise to Israel has not been rendered invalid by the Christ event because God’s faithfulness upholds it (Rom. 11:2, 29)” and the “existence of Judaism is for the church a sign of God’s faithfulness to his promises on which the church itself also depends in view of its manifold failures, especially in its relationship to the Jews"?2 20th century ecumenical hermeneutics has extensively elaborated on the biblical term “People of God” as a concept identifying the church. Vatican II gave prominence to the concept alongside the term “sacrament” as images of the church. People of God is used as a concept to indicate the laity and the clergy as one messianic people of God. People of God is further used as an expression of humankind as a whole. Liberation theology used the term to indicate “the people’s church.” In ecumenical hermeneutics there are very many powerful and beautiful images of the church as the People of God on pilgrimage towards the Kingdom of God but how does one relate one People of God to the other? How does the continuing vocation of the Jewish people as a people of God relate to ecumenical hermeneutical reflections on the church as the People of God? One is tempted to ask, “Will the real People of God please stand up?”

Interfaith dialogue is through its very essence a reminder of the other and is therefore a challenge to face up to the constant Christian temptation to project a Christian consciousness upon the other. Both the "pagan" and the "Jew" have too often served as the projected other of "Christian" self-understanding. Dialogue may therefore call for a hermeneutical turn, which may be difficult and demanding. It is however a necessary endeavour. If we are to hear one another, then dialogue is our best present hope. There is no innocent tradition, no innocent classic (including the Scriptures) and no innocent reading. It can and will all be challenged.

The Jewish-Christian dialogue rightly insists that the Holocaust cannot be ignored. If we do ignore it, then we should either admit the bankruptcy of all theological talk of history as the locus of divine action and human responsibility or admit that we consider only the "'good" parts of our history worthy of theological reflection. If we integrate the significance of the holocaust in our theological reflection, hermeneutical assumptions are being challenged. “If Golgotha revealed the sense of God-forsakenness of one Jew, Birkenau multiplies that anguish at least three and a half million times. For the rest of my life, this crematorium will represent the most powerful case against God; the spot where one could--with justice--denounce, deny, or (worst of all) ignore God, the God who was silent. Of what use are words at such a time? So many cried out to God at this spot and were not heard. Human silence today seems the only appropriate response to divine silence yesterday. We remain silent. Our silence is deafening. And then it comes --- in a mounting chorus ---, the great affirmation: Shema Yisroel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai echod, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”. At the place where the name of God could have been agonizingly denied, the name of God is agonizingly affirmed--by those with most reason to deny. I shake in the tension between my impulse to deny and their decision to affirm. Because of having stood at Birkenau, it is now impossible for me to affirm God in the ways I did before. Because of having stood at Birkenau with them, it is now possible for me to affirm God in ways I never did before.”3

It is important to be shattered, to have to rethink affirmations carved in stone by hermeneutics of tradition. It is important to be aware of the interrelationship of the biblical text and its interpreter and the influence of tradition on the interpreter’s understanding of the biblical text, i.e. the realisation of the role played by tradition in the creation of the interpretation. An example, maybe flippant to mention but nevertheless interesting as an illustration, is the apparent uneasiness Martin Luther demonstrated as he translated from the Hebrew the following verse from the book of Amos: "Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph" (Amos 5,15). Luther seemed to be troubled by the word "it may be,” perhaps, in Hebrew "ulay" and translated therefore, “Hasset das Böse, und liebet das Gute; bestellet das Recht im Thor: so wird der Herr, der Gott Sebaoth, den Uebrigen in Joseph gnädig seyn."4 If one hated evil, loved good, established justice, then one should be given guarantees and not only an ulay, perhaps! A 'perhaps' here would leave you hanging in the air. Perhaps this was the reason why Luther decided not to render in his translation the uncertainty the word ‘perhaps’ entails.

Jewish hermeneutics, through dialogue, will challenge established Christian hermeneutics. It does so because Judaism and Christianity are so close to each other. It does so because Jewish hermeneutics seems to allow for a plurality of understandings. The rabbis of old recognised that there were "seventy faces to the Torah,"5 only the first of which was the pshat, the literal understanding. They sensed that the text, any text, is multivocal--that there are a multiplicity of meanings implicit in the text and that each reader can find a voice that will touch him/her.

Abaye taught regarding the verse, "Once God has spoken, twice I have heard this” (Psalm 62,12), that one biblical verse may convey many different teachings. “In R. Ishmael's school, it was taught: “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer, that breaks the rock in pieces” (Jeremiah 23,29). So too, one biblical verse may convey many teachings.”6

Although from this text it isn't clear whether it is the rock or the hammer that symbolises the biblical verse, a parallel rabbinic text affirms the notion that God's word "is like a hammer" which, when it strikes the rock, divides into/produces many sparks. Like the hammer showering sparks, every word of Torah splits into seventy languages i.e., the number of nations in the world. The message is clear: There are as many interpretations of any given biblical text, as there are people in the world.7

A striking example of affirmation of pluralism is the tower of Babel-story. A traditional understanding of this story is that the tower of Babel is a negative event, where humans are punished and exiled to live in dispersion. God thwarted their efforts by turning their language into babblings. The builders of the tower were in defiance of God's commanding Noah and his sons to "… fill the earth" (Gen. 9,1). The builders in Shinar banded together in one place. God wanted them everywhere, all over the earth.

A parallel is often drawn between Genesis 11,1-9 and the story about the Pentecost, where the language barrier was broken: “Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. … each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? --we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (Acts 2,5-11). Pentecost becomes the antidote to Babel, where no one understood the other. The story of Babel could serve many a sermon, where the old is contrasted with the new, and the new is proved definitely better.

One can read the story of the Tower of Babel as a story about God preferring the plural. God saw that they were “one people,” they had “one language.” One is something God would like to reserve for God self. It began already in creation. All the living creatures were created in plural, as swarms of living creatures, cattle and wild animals. Only one was created alone: Adam, the human being. “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen.1, 27)“. This is how our Bible translation has it. However the Rabbis were convinced that the first Adam was male and female at the same time. The first Adam was androgynous. As there was one God, there was also one Adam. And says the Midrash: “Adam was walking around in the garden. And the Holy One, praise be upon Him, said: “I am alone in my world, Adam is alone in his world. … The animals will say: “It is Adam who created us. It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner” (Gen.2, 18).8 God discovers that his creation is not perfect. That is why there is no “and God saw that it was good” following the creation of Adam. God is self-critical and we hear for the first time the very opposite of “and God saw that it was good”, “it is lo tov,” not good. And God separates the woman from the man and they are not one but two.

This story is a good example of a God-willed affirmation of plurality. Whenever we try to hold on to uniformity, build a tower, grasp the whole truth or hold on to one truth as if there was only one truth, there is always God making sure that diversity is created and maintained. It seems like the pedagogy of God. Plurality, diversity, a multi-coloured rainbow as the sign of the covenant between God and human beings, all point to a life, which treasures the manifold and which is less a monument of Babel but much more a movement of people "over the face of all the earth".

The process of hermeneutical reflection reveals a time-bound character of traditional forms and formulations as well as ambiguous or vested interests on the part of the interpreters both past and present. This means not only that the interpreters should also be interpreted; it also means that we are involved in an ongoing process, in responsible ecumenical hermeneutics, realising and participating in an ongoing dialogue of meanings, always aiming at coherence. The multiple meanings, the seventy faces should not be feared. Truth on the ground is multiple, partial. Each person knows something no one else does. The sages said, “Who is wise? One who learns from all men.”9

Paper presented at the seminar “Interpreting the Bible in Pluralist Contexts,” Ecumenical Institute Bossey, July 2003.

Notes:

1. Ecumenical Considerations on Jewish-Christian Dialogue, WCC, 1982,
http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/interreligious/j-crel-e.html
2. Church and Israel, A Contribution from the Reformation Churches in Europe to the Relationship between Christians and Jews. Leuenberg Documents Vol. 6; http://www.jcrelations.net/en/displayItem.php?id=1009#preface
3. Robert McAfee Brown, Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 189-190
4. Die Bibel... nach der deutschen Uebersetzung Dr. Martin Luthers, Berlin 1824
5. Ottiyot d'Rabbi Akiba, Bamidbar Rabbah 13:15 et. al.
6. B.T. Sanhedrin 34a.
7. B.T. Sanhedrin 88a.
8. Pirke of Rabbi Eliezer, XII
9. Pirke Avot 4,1

Next article: Understanding Oneself through the Other – Rabbi Jack Bemporad and Rev. Dr Hans Ucko
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