#why can't christians just do their own thing and leave jews and judaism alone

[jessicalprice]

it was about right then and it’s still about right now

(reposted from Twitter)

(Image: a Tweet by @ ErinGreenbean that says: “Most of Jesus’ parables confront the listener with moving away from self-sufficiency/individualism and toward the whole/community.”)

This is literally what like every Jew who reads the parables has been trying to tell you,  but y'all keep insisting these stories are about how Judaism is bad.

These are stories from a teacher addressing an audience suffering under a brutal and exploitative occupation and they're literally about "you know how the Torah tells us to take care of each other? if we're gonna survive, we have to do that."

We have a text that uses the language of divine kingship frequently to convey a moral imperative if God is truly your leader, you will follow these laws. Jesus talks about the "kingdom of God" and Christians are like HE IS TALKING ABOUT THE AFTERLIFE. 

No, he's fucking talking about a community that existed in his here and now and was suffering and desperate and being militarily and economically and socially pressured to abandon their principles and exploit each other as they were being exploited by the Romans.

And he's reminding them that while the Romans may be occupying them, they don't have to rule them. Resisting hegemony and not letting it reshape you always involves, in a way, creating and choosing to occupy a different reality. 

In a society that--to use the language of the time, which I will be upfront that I do NOT like--acknowledges God as king, no one starves unless literally everyone is starving, because there are laws insisting that we share. Like, that's the whole point of every Jewish law touching on economics: what we have, even if it doesn't feel like much, can be enough when we understand that we are enough for each other. That’s there in the lost sheep, coin, and son(s) parables: you don't leave anyone behind.

There's the two men on the road to Jericho: The Samaritans are actually our family. We remembered that once, when they put Jewish prisoners on donkeys and sent them home with wine and oil. We have to take care of each other.

Then the men named above proceeded to take the captives in hand, and with the booty they clothed all the naked among them—they clothed them and shod them and gave them to eat and drink and anointed them and provided donkeys for all who were failing and brought them to Jericho, the city of palms, back to their kinsmen. Then they returned to Samaria. (II Chronicles 28:15)

All of these stories are about remembering that we're supposed to be family and taking care of each other and upholding a society that's an alternative to the hegemonic Roman war machine. And then Christian exegesis is all: how do we make these stories about how being Jewish is bad? We're in a whole different millennium and y'all are still insisting that Judaism was the problem Jesus came to solve.

Jesus tells a trilogy of stories about noticing when you've lost track of someone or something and Christians are like, "This must be a story about how Judaism hates the idea of accepting someone's repentance." 

Excuse me while I go build a menorah constructed of middle fingers.

Jesus tells a story about the relationship between two men in the Temple in which the real question is What does each of them do next and what is their responsibility to each other? and Christians are like this is about how the tax collector is good and the Pharisee is bad.

Y'all want so badly to make these stories about an us vs. them when the focus of most of them is just about "how can we do better as an 'us'?"

Like look at the parable of the four fates for seeds--what was actually happening to most of the harvest was that people were taking it, but Jesus puts it in terms of natural phenomena to take focus off that and put it on the hardship itself.

Most of the time, when there is an implied "them" to the "us" he's focused on, he tries to portray it as if it's inevitable/natural/etc. 

The focus isn't on "what are they doing to us?" 

It's on "what are we doing FOR each other?"

And you know what we know now, what we have terms and framing and concepts for? We know that in the wake of disaster, human beings get really good at caring for each other. We suck at being a society when things are good, but if a monsoon hits? We fucking get to work. 

But you know what got documented in heartbreaking detail after the Exxon Valdez spill? When the disaster is human-caused, communities tend to fall apart.

So what's the difference? 

Well, we can frame it in terms of human-created versus natural disasters but we can also frame it in terms of the victims' response.

It seems like, if we feel like it wasn't anyone's fault, it was just chance or nature or whatever, we get energized to take care of each other. If, on the other hand, we feel like it was someone's fault, we fracture.

Now, I don't think people around the Mediterranean in the first century CE were thinking in terms of disaster trauma or spontaneous prosocial behavior, but that doesn't mean they weren't thinking about what to focus on when they were suffering. 

To be honest, I don't see a consistent through-line in 100% of Jesus's parables. I don't even believe that all of the parables attributed to him were actually his, if he even existed as portrayed. But I do see a through-line in most of them. And that through-line is a direction of attention toward the needs of others and away from blame. And I genuinely believe that was because he was trying to keep his community whole and hopeful.

And it's ironic to me that even supposedly progressive Christian interpreters are still sitting there being like "he as calling out problems with Judaism.”

No, he was doing exactly the opposite.

[general-cerberus]

You can't build a relationship of mutual respect between Judaism and Christianity if you don't respect Jews. Understanding that it is harmful to imply that anything Christianity has done up to this point benefitted Jews or Judaism is required for that. Acknowledging that Christianity will never be necessary for Judaism to exist or be a complete religion, culture and peoplehood is required for that. Learning to stop taking things from Judaism and Jewish practice is required for that. Interacting and engaging with Judaism ON ITS OWN AND ITS PEOPLE'S OWN TERMS is required for that.

And you have no interest in figuring out how to do those things. So leave us alone and stop trying to assuage your guilt by 'can't we all just get along'ing us into listening to you defend the behavior of other Christians.

>Understanding that it is harmful to imply that anything Christianity has done up to this point benefitted Jews or Judaism is required for that.

Why is that harmful? Im not saying we've been good to the Jews overall, or that the centuries of harsh persecution didn't happen or could be offset by some mediocre promise. Im just trying to point out how we arent inherently antagonistic towards one another.

>"Acknowledging that Christianity will never be necessary for Judaism to exist or be a complete religion, culture and peoplehood is required for that."

I never said anything that impied otherwise. If i did, please enlighten me

>"Interacting and engaging with Judaism ON ITS OWN AND ITS PEOPLE'S OWN TERMS is required for that."

what Im trying to do here

>"So leave us alone and stop trying to assuage your guilt by 'can't we all just get along'ing us into listening to you defend the behavior of other Christians."

What bad behavior am I defending?

I don't feel no guilt about this. I ain't done nothing to hurt jews. I'm just trying to fight antisemitism and heal the rift between our communities