|  Native-son
rabbi ‘talks’ with Jesus
…
and the Pope answers
Locals
praise ‘Pope’s rabbi’
WEST
HARTFORD – Rabbi Nathan Hershfield of
Temple Beth Israel and his wife, Lotte, remember
Rabbi Jacob Neusner from more than four decades
ago.
“We
were both at his wedding,” Rabbi Hershfield
said. That was in 1964, when Rabbi Neusner
married Suzanne Richter. Rabbi Neusner was
later to be celebrated for opening a dialogue
among Jewish and Christian leaders.
Even
back then, Rabbi Hershfield said, Rabbi Neusner
was known as a scholarly man. “I always
respected his writing. His scholarship is profound,” Rabbi
Hershfield said.
Lotte
Hershfield recalled that everyone in the Neusner
family was bright. She said she knew his brother,
the attorney Frederick Neusner, who remained
in the area longer.
William
C. Bieluch, a retired judge, said that Rabbi
Neusner was associated with Mr. Bieluch’s
alma mater, Brown University. (Rabbi Neusner
taught at Brown from 1968 to 1990.)
“I
knew his brother, attorney Frederick Neusner,
who practiced law in Hartford,” Mr. Bieluch
said. “[Rabbi Jacob Neusner] was a very
prominent member of the Jewish community in
the area.”
Rabbi
Stanley M. Kessler, rabbi emeritus at Beth
El Temple, has known Rabbi Neusner for more
than 50 years. “He was probably one of
the most brilliant students and is one of the
most prolific writers of Jewish theology,” said
Rabbi Kessler, who is known for his involvement
in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Rabbi
Kessler said that Rabbi Neusner ruffled some
feathers in the Jewish community for his liberal
views. “But he’s a gentleman in
dealing with people, and his world outlook
is one in which he is aware of how to relate
to other religions and ways of life,” he
said.
|
By
Jack Sheedy
News Editor
RHINEBECK,
N.Y. – Rabbi Jacob Neusner grew up in West
Hartford, corresponded with the Pope and spoke
with Jesus after the Sermon on the Mount. That last feat got everyone’s attention. Especially
the Pope’s.
Rabbi Neusner is the author of A
Rabbi Talks with Jesus, an imaginary but serious conversation
with the Jesus
of Matthew’s Gospel. Originally published in 1993
by Doubleday, it caught the attention of then-Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. In his 2007
book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict devotes 20 pages
to a discussion of Rabbi Neusner’s book. Since
then, Rabbi Neusner has been lightheartedly referred
to as “the Pope’s rabbi.”
Jacob Neusner was born in 1932 in Hartford. He grew
up in West Hartford and graduated from William H. Hall
High School there in 1950. In 1929, his father, Samuel
Neusner, co-founded The Connecticut Jewish Ledger, a
West Hartford-based newspaper that still publishes weekly.
The paper remained in the Neusner family until the 1960s,
when it was sold to Richard Greenfield.
“I still keep in contact with Ricky Greenfield,” Rabbi
Neusner said during an interview in his Hudson Valley
home. “He’s really made something of that
paper. It’s very professional.”
Before he wrote his book, Rabbi Neusner
was working with the Community of Sant’Egidio,
an interreligious group that the Vatican has recognized
as a public lay
association.
“I was working on the Jewish-Christian dialogue,” Rabbi
Neusner said. “Most of the books that I read in
the area were not very interested in the basis for disagreement.
They were trying to gloss over truth claims and they
were heading toward a relativism – I’m right
for me and you’re right for you – and I decided
that I would like to take Christianity seriously and
deal with its truth claims.”
He chose Jesus’ claim, from Matthew 5:17, “Think
not that I have come to abolish the Torah or the prophets;
I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus states
repeatedly, “You
have heard it said … but I say to you …” Each
time, Rabbi Neusner said, Jesus refers to the Torah,
the law Moses delivered to the Jews at Mount Sinai, and
then Jesus expounds on it point by point. A Rabbi Talks
with Jesus evaluates each of these truth claims. He ultimately
concludes that much of what Jesus says goes against the
Torah. “If I had heard what he said in the Sermon
on the Mount, for good and substantive reasons I would
not have followed him,” Rabbi Neusner writes in
the book.
“Cardinal Ratzinger gave us a blurb for the book
because he understood that it took seriously the truth
claims of Christianity,” Rabbi Neusner said.
That in itself may not have been enough to draw widespread
attention to the book. But in 2005 Cardinal Ratzinger
became Pope Benedict. And last year, Pope Benedict published
Jesus of Nazareth, which devotes more discussion to Rabbi
Neusner than to any other living person.
“My book has just been translated into French,” Rabbi
Neusner said, selecting the slim volume from a row of
bookshelves. “It’s already been translated
into German, Russian, Croatian, Italian and other languages.” One
of the most published humanities scholars in the world,
Rabbi Neusner said none of his other books – and
there are hundreds – has been translated into so
many languages.
All because of the Pope’s book?
“Absolutely,” he said.
In Jesus
of Nazareth, Pope Benedict acknowledges
Rabbi Neusner’s respect and reverence for Jesus. But
he argues that Jesus, who “sits on the Cathedra
of Moses” on a mountain symbolizing “the
new and definitive Sinai,” becomes “the greater
Moses, who broadens the Covenant to include all nations” (p.
66).
The Pope writes from a strikingly different
perspective from Rabbi Neusner’s. As a Catholic,
the Pope accepts Jesus Christ as God. As a Jew, Rabbi
Neusner does not
and therefore maintains that the Torah of Moses is the
last word, the ultimate authority.
But if Jesus is God, would his word become the new Torah?
“Exactly,” Rabbi Neusner conceded, though
he does not accept that belief. “The Pope understood
this to mean that Christianity is represented by Jesus
and it’s not the invention of his followers.”
He said his book maintains that Jesus created Christianity
and that that is what the Pope liked about it.
“The Sermon on the Mount, the most Jewish passage
of the New Testament, is also the most Christian, because
it makes the claim of Jesus to be Christ explicit through
details of the law,” he said. “New Testament
scholarship has tended to differentiate between Jesus
the Jew and Christ the Christian, and they represent
Christianity as the invention of the apostles. But I
argue that Christianity is the creation of Jesus himself.”
Before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope
Benedict, he and Rabbi Neusner corresponded frequently. “Since he
was made Pope I haven’t had any exchange with him,” Rabbi
Neusner said. “But his book came out, and that
was like a personal letter to me.”
Rabbi Neusner teaches theology at Bard
College in Annondale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where he holds
an endowed chair in his name. He
earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College,
a Master of Hebrew Letters from the Jewish Theological
Seminary and a doctorate in religion from Columbia University.
He holds nine honorary degrees and has lectured extensively.
Although he has been away from the Hartford
area since 1950, Rabbi Neusner recalls it with fondness. “Growing
up Jewish in West Hartford brought me into constant contact
with Catholic fellow students,” he said. “This
was before America became the tolerant society that it’s
been for the past 50 years. But I always found Christian
friends who were respectful of me as a Jew and who were
encouraging.”
Now that a dialogue has opened up, is
Rabbi Neusner considering another book in response
to the Pope’s?
“What I’d like to write, along with scholars
of Christianity,” he said in an e-mail, “is
a work on concurrences between Catholic Christianity
and rabbinic Judaism.”
His working title is Common
Ground: Where Judaism and Christianity Come Together.
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