Excerpt from Jesus and the Thought of the World

Friends, in one way I rejoice in the triunity, in which I have the honor to be the first speaker; in another sense I regret it. I rejoice that we can discuss such a theme that you have invited me, a Jew, to discuss this matter with you. On the other hand I regret its futility, save as regards the liberal attitude it may encourage, for, after all is said and done, you are not going to be persuaded by me, and I fancy I shall not be persuaded by you. It reminds me of the public disputations held in the Middle Ages between Jews and Catholics; the futile result was usually the same. The Jews went away feeling they had presented irrefutable arguments on their side, and the Cath olics, to disprove these arguments, generally caused many Jews either to be put to death or to be forcibly baptized; so, of course, the question remained just where it was for both parties.

It goes without saying that we are talking as friends, honest friends, one with the other, just as honestly as I should expect that a Christian would discuss some point in my Jewish belief with me - differing from me naturally, because he is a Christian and I am a Jew, agreeing with me at certain points because he is a Christian and I am a Jew. Yet each of us must frankly present his own point of view without malice, with no idea of controversy, yet each emphasizing his angle of vision.

Frankly, the whole matter of the world's views of the person of Jesus is one of those subjects that I feel will only be understood by the presentation of every point of view. I have spent my last week, not in reading what the Jews have to say about Jesus, but reading a Roman Catholictreatise telling me what the Catholic Church has to say about Christ, so that I might thoroughly appreciate what the orthodox view of his life is.

Orthodox Judiasm has nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do, with Jesus or Christianity. No Jew could ever understand how the religion preaching love could have per secuted the Jews and Judaism unfailingly, generation after generation. The result on the part of the orthodox Jew was an unqualified contempt for everything Christian. Nor did he hesitate to express his feelings in this matter. It crystallized itself in a Hebrew version of the life of Jesus, in which all the facts of that life were explained on a frankly naturalistic basis. It further expressed itself in an abundant polemic and apologetic literature, in which these bold spirits placed the Jewish viewpoint before a hostile world. It indulged freely in criticism of Christian doctrines; contradicted the prevailing Christian exegesis of the Old Testament and even did not hesitate to speak its mind of Christian practices and persecutions. It was the frank expression of a self-reliant, self-intelligent group, who feared nothing more than faithlessness to its ideal. Many a one paid for his boldness with his life, after hav ing been subjected to unspeakable torture; but once under stand the point of view of this little handful of rejected and misunderstood people, as found in the literature of the Jew of the Middle Age, and you can appreciate the spirit of the Jew in all ages. If you want to understand that remarkable age of history you must remember that the dark ages of Christianity were parallel with an age of um paralleled spiritual and intellectual glory for the Jew; that it was not until the year 1492, after the world seemed to have refused its last resting-place to the Jew, that what we regard as the dark ages of Jewry had their beginning.

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