June Webinar Q&A and Resources
If you missed the June Webinar on "Jakob Jocz - Theologian of Jewish Christianity," you can now watch it on our website or our youtube channel.
There is never enough time for Q&A, so we are providing additional interaction with our June panelists below. We also want to provide you with two resources to complement our webinar about Jakob Jocz:
Jakob Jocz Website -- This website carries a good bit of digitalized material both by and about Jocz, including The Jewish People and Jesus Christ (his first major theological work) and The Jewish People and Jesus Christ after Auschwitz (his last)
Finally, we heard an incredible journey story from Hanna Miley. We want to make sure you are aware of her book:
By Hanna Zack Miley, A Garland for Ashes: World War II, the Holocaust, and One Jewish Survivor's Long Journey to Forgiveness
A question for Prof. Ephraim Radner: Jocz was a contemporary of another great Jewish Anglican scholar, Paul Levertoff. Did they know one another? How did they differ in their views of Jewish Christianity?
I simply don't know if Jocz and Levertoff knew each other personally. They may have, but I cannot find anything in Jocz's main writings that indicate anything more than careful study, by Jocz, of Levertoff's works. On that score, Jocz disagreed with Levertoff on at least two key things. First, Jocz rejected Levertoff's attempt to bring Hassidic mysticism (Chabad, especially, the tradition in which Levertoff was raised) into some kind of fundamental convergence with Christian theology. That is because Jocz rejected "mysticism" in general as a form of human self-reliance:
"But mysticism proper is infinitely more than religious inwardness. It is rebellion against historical revelation, and as such both Judaism and Christianity are opposed to it. While there is an undeniable affinity of outlook between Jewish and Christian mysticism, Jewish mystical speculations cannot serve as a bridge leading to Christian orthodoxy. The underlying principles of Judaism and Christianity are such that they automatically exclude each other ." (The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, p. 194, online edition)
The other matter in which Jocz disagreed with Levertoff was on the need/desire for separate Hebrew-Christian worshiping congregations. While Jocz insisted on the integrity of Jewish-Christian identity, he did so on the basis of witness not theological/social need, and worried that a separately worshiping Hebrew-Christian identity would devolve into self-regarding "religion" (vs. self-surrendering faith), something to which Christian churches had themselves succumbed with horrible results.
A question for Hanna Miley: You mentioned that Edith Stein was one of your heroes. What is there about her life as a Jewish disciple of Jesus that you find most inspiring?
Thank you for this great question. I'm selecting only three inspirational incidents from Edith Stein's life ... there are many more.
The way she loved her orthodox mother, waiting years for her sake before entering the Carmelite monastery.
Her patient endurance of professional rejections because she was a woman and a Jew.
The words she is said to have spoken to her sister Rosa as they left Holland for Auschwitz and death, "Come, let us die for our people".
I see the life of Jesus shining out of her Jewish identity, in her loving, patient endurance, her reliance on God right to the bitter end. Even writing this I feel inspired afresh!