Cue hand-wringing

[tree_and_leaf]

It's the Feast of the Annunciation (Lady Day).* I was going to write something contemplative about the Incarnation, but instead I am trying to work out what to teach the confirmation class about the Eucharist - or, more to the point, how to teach the confirmation class about the Eucharist. it possibly doesn't help that Youth Canon is obsessed with using talking about Passover as a way into it, and while the Eucharist as a sort of re-invented Passover is certainly important aspect of the sacrament (yay typology), I don't think it's a good place to start.


On a related topic, we are organising a youth Mass with a sort of Passover as the liturgy of the word (as an event for the youth group). It wasn't my idea, and I feel deeply, deeply ambiguous about it. On the one hand, it screams "appropriation" at me; on the other hand, Christianity did grow out of Judaism (and people who gloss over this fact usually turn out to be exceedingly nasty, see Marcionism and the particularly unpleasant pro-Nazi heretics the Deutsche Christen), but on the third hand, I know I would react badly to a non-Christian group performing something they labeled as a Mass. Of course, I can't imagine that anyone would want to; the relationship between Christianity and Judaism is complicated by the fact that Christianity stands in a different relationship to Judaism than to any other religion. Having become more conscious of the parting of the ways school of history, which sees - I think rightly - the early church as very much a way of being Jewish, and that in a way both Judaism as we currently know it and Christianity are descendants of the Judaism of the first century, I can see an argument for "eucharistic Passovers" being theologically appropriate.

But - and it's a big but - the relationship between Christians and Jews has been so poisonous historically, and largely because as soon as the Church got power we started misusing it - that I am uneasy about it. I don't, in fact, know how this looks in Jewish eyes (or indeed if there is a consensus amongst the Jewish community on that issue), but I am concerned that it would be seen as misusing something sacred and cause hurt and offence. And the church has behaved badly enough that we should have learned by now that we don't get to put our edification before the needs of other people, especially other people who we have previously wronged. (And I know that it's not the job of any Jewish people reading this to educate me, but I would like to know what Jewish flisties make of it. If, you know, you want to tell me).

On the other hand, if we can at least get it through our kids' heads that Jesus was a Jew, they will have learned something important.

But I'm still not sure we're doing the right thing.


On another note entirely, Bishop Alan had a good post about Oscar Romero. Morbid types like me tend to think that, never mind dying peacefully in your sleep, that really is the best way to go... But it's good to be reminded that the church gets things right at times, and Romero is one of the people who really did get it right. I wish they'd canonise him.


* And, not at all coincidentally, the date Tolkien chose for the destruction of the Ring and the liberation of Middle Earth. Typology, you can haz it.

Comments

[wychwood]

I don't know. I went to a Catholic ceremony (not a Mass) based around the structure of the Passover meal a couple of years back, and found it a profound and deeply thought-provoking experience, but that was at a closed Catholic youth event, so there weren't quite so many publicity risks, as it were. It didn't feel, to me, appropriative, but then I don't know whether that says anything, because I'm in the privileged position there.

I'd be interested to hear any Jewish opinions on the matter, though. Do you know liv? She's Jewish and has done a fair amount of interfaith work. If you wanted to unlock the post, I could ask her what she thought (at the risk of turning her into a Token Jewish Friend, admittedly)(which she isn't).

[tree_and_leaf]

I have unlocked it, and I'd be interested to hear your friend's opinion.

It's more or less a closed event, if that makes any difference - we're doing it with the Youth Group.

I've certainly found the process of putting the liturgy together fascinating, and I've learned a lot, but I can't shake the slight feeling of unease (and I'm not sure whether or not I should be feeling uneasy).

[wychwood]

Have passed the link along - she's quite busy, but will be along with comments when she can :)

[liv]

Hello! wychwood sent me here, and on the understanding that I am not at all speaking for All Jews Everywhere, some quick reactions to this. For one, you sound like you're really sensitive about the potential issues around this, and it sounds to me really valuable to be aware both of the common history of Judaism and Christianity, and the history of Christianity doing a lot of appropriating and persecuting.

My feeling is that Passover is one of our most universalistic festivals. Key part of the liturgy:

Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are in need come and celebrate the Passover.

My tradition, which is not everybody's tradition, has always involved making an effort to invite non-Jewish guests to join us for our Passover celebration. Given that I live in a Christian country that's usually been Christians, and indeed quite often ministers, educators and other Christian leaders. So I don't think it's in principle offensive for Christians to celebrate Passover.

What I find offensive is when it's an excuse for proselytizing, sort of: hey look, you can be Christian and still recite Hebrew prayers and eat unleavened bread, come and join us, it won't make much difference! But what you're talking about is an internal event for Christians, so avoids that pitfall.

As a personal preference, I would like people doing Christian / Eucharistic Passover to be very clear that the modern Jewish way of celebrating Passover is not a historically accurate rendition of how Jesus would have celebrated. Indeed, most sources we have for a modern Passover ceremony date from quite a bit after Jesus' time. It turns into appropriation when people work on the assumption that Judaism stagnated in the first century CE.

One element that is common, by the way, is the bit where Jesus washes the disciples' feet; that is a fairly important part of a modern Jewish passover ritual, where the highest status person present washes the hands of all the guests. Also, eggs. Some Christians feel that eggs are really a "pagan" thing to do with Eostre, and not really connected to Christianity at all, but if you do want an excuse to give the kids chocolate eggs, there is loads of egg symbolism in the Passover ritual. Eggs are spring and rebirth, but also death and something that partially maps onto the Christian idea of resurrection. They are the first food you eat to celebrate the spring, but also the first food you eat after a funeral, and the one on the special plate used for Passover is burned to represent sacrifice.

The other thing is that Passover is primarily a festival about liberation of slaves. If you make it primarily a festival about Jesus, that's fair enough, but don't leave out the social justice elements altogether, or you're making a mockery of what Passover stands for. When I run Passover events, I absolutely insist on a communal donation of food to a homeless shelter or similar, and a donation of money to charity, and usually give a prominent mention to contemporary antislavery orgs. I'm sure you have some equivalent charities with a more specifically Christian bent.

Regarding the history, our Passover ritual includes a mention (and refutation) of the blood libel, and some stuff about the Crusades and the Holocaust. I don't know if you want to mention those sorts of things; in some ways it could be educational for the kids to know that Passover when it coincided with Easter was often a time of mob violence against Jews, because we were accused of killing Christian children to make our Passover bread, of deliberately desecrating the Host, and of course in sermons at Easter itself of killing Jesus. The problem is that bringing up these things might cause people to remember the accusations more than they remember the fact that they're false, so it would have to be a judgement call.

Other advice: be very careful about searching the internet for information. There are two very dubious organizations who have a very widespread internet presence, and unless you know what you're looking for they can drown out the genuine information. One is Jews for Jesus, a creepy Christian cult thing that tries to convert Jews to Christianity, or rather to convince Jews that they are already Christian by spreading subtle misinformation about Jewish practice. The other is an ultra-Orthodox organization who believe that some old rabbi who died about 15 years ago was in fact resurrected and is the Messiah. Some of their info is good, though ultra-Orthodox, some of it is really eccentric cos they're just eccentric, and quite a lot of it is intensely misogynist, homophobic, racist etc, and I wouldn't want you or your youth group to get the impression that that's what mainstream Judaism is like. Judaism 101 is a good starting point, it's mainstream, it's fairly impartial, and it has a lot of links, references and citations.

Is this any help to you?

[tree_and_leaf]

Thank you for such a detailed and helpful answer, especially when you don't know me! I wouldn't dream of using such an event as an occasion to proslytise, and I'm rather horrified that people do.

Passover is primarily a festival about liberation of slaves. If you make it primarily a festival about Jesus, that's fair enough, but don't leave out the social justice elements altogether, or you're making a mockery of what Passover stands for.

That's an important point - personally I don't think you can "do" Christian theology adequately if you neglect the social gospel (or liberation theology, or God's preferential bias to the poor, or whatever you want to call it), and it ought to be something Christianity and Judaism have in common, though heaven knows there are enough self-proclaimed Christians out there who think you can (alas).

We have talked a bit about antisemitism with the kids, and the disgraceful part the church has played in it...

[seekingferret]

Hmm... I'm playing with the intersection of Easter and Passover in my good_ficday story, mostly looking at Easter from the Jewish side. And something which is facilitating my story is the ways in which, when I go seeking resonances, I find them. The Catholic liturgy of the word for the Easter Vigil is filled with the sort of readings that Jews do over Pesach, which makes for some easy intertextual playing. The calendrical relationship between Easter and Passover is playing out in a lot of moon references in my story.

I don't think it's deceptive to look to the Jewish Passover for inspiration. But most of the time when I look at how Christians incorporate Seder elements in their Easter celebration, it's a big dose of UR DOIN IT RONG.

And often that's because the goal isn't to examine the way Easter came from Passover but to confer authenticity on Easter by way of Passover. Easter's legitimacy as a holiday should not come from its Jewish roots- it comes from its Christian roots, as the observance of the resurrection of Jesus. That it happened on Passover means there are typological connections (yay typology), but nothing more than that. If you want to embrace Jewish symbology, that's fine, but embrace it as symbology, as a way to better understand the meaning of the day, not as proof that you're doing it more like Jesus did. The fact of the matter is that Jesus was a Jew is true, but it denies the fact that Jesus's message was Christian. Which is why Jews don't believe Jesus was the Messiah in the first place.

[tree_and_leaf]

And often that's because the goal isn't to examine the way Easter came from Passover but to confer authenticity on Easter by way of Passover. Easter's legitimacy as a holiday should not come from its Jewish roots- it comes from its Christian roots, as the observance of the resurrection of Jesus.

Oh, absolutely. Though typology is quite important...

Anyway, thanks for your input (and I look forward to reading the fic).

Regarding Events of the First Century

[deaterrae.livejournal.com]

seekingferret -

I am currently an M.Div. student at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, and I am serving as a T.A. for the Newer Testament Texts in Context class, an introduction to Newer Testament Studies.

I'm compelled to respond to your posting here. You wrote:

The fact of the matter is that Jesus was a Jew is true, but it denies the fact that Jesus's message was Christian. Which is why Jews don't believe Jesus was the Messiah in the first place.

Christianity did not exist in the first century of the Common Era. Jesus did not teach Christianity because it did not exist. He was in all ways Jewish, preaching a Jewish message to Jews. It was a tumultuous and confusing time in Judea, and many powerful preachers shared their messages seeking for answers and hope, anticipating that things were so chaotic that it had to be the end times. All of the scriptures we have in the Newer Testament were written by Jews in a Jewish context in the first century, when the followers of Jesus were in all ways simply another sect of Judaism. It was not until the second century of the Common Era that there was any clear split or even evidence of the term "Christian" existing.

Please, also, do not assume anything about a tradition of which you are not a practitioner. It is not your place, or mine, to state anything about why persons follow a given tradition. To make any statement regarding why Jews don't believe Jesus was the Messiah is inappropriate. It is also supersessionist and therefore Anti-Semitic. Based on the original posting of the author of this blog, I cannot believe that s/he would in any way support such claims.

One of my professors recently postulated that early believers began having their huge celebration of the resurrection at the time of Passover to connect Jesus' sacrifice to the already-practiced tradition of the paschal lamb and scapegoat. It is more important, I believe, to remember that every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection, which is why the Sundays in Lent do not count as days of Lent. They are still a celebration.

Is it not enough to think of the Eucharist in terms of the radical com-mensality that Jesus practiced? Does it have to be entirely based on a Passover tradition? The Gospel of John intentionally does not have the last supper occur as a Passover meal to further the connection of Jesus' sacrifice to that of the paschal lamb. In the first century, and truly throughout history, the act of eating in community has been a central practice of acceptance and caring. Let the Eucharist continue the tradition - and Jesus' practice of eating with everyone he encountered, Jews, Gentiles, tax-collectors, and prostitutes.

I apologize for my need to bring up some of these issues. It is imperative for me to support inclusivity in religion and to try to further understanding instead of misconception. Blessings to all who read this.

Re: Regarding Events of the First Century

[seekingferret]

I'm sorry. I'm sure you've had plenty of education in this, but it's difficult to imagine a Jew reading the teachings of Jesus as they appear in the Gospels and saying that "Jesus was preaching a Jewish message." Jesus repeatedly repudiates Jewish law and sets himself up in opposition to the Rabbinical authority of the Pharisees. It's one thing to say that Jesus was a Jew, born to Jewish parents and living in a Jewish culture. It's certainly reasonable to say that to hope to understand Jesus's message requires an understanding of 1st Century CE Jewish culture. It's another thing to say that Jesus's message was Jewish. I used the term "Christian" not prescriptively, but merely to assign a name to a message that is definitively not Jewish.

I'm not making any assumptions about practitioners of Judaism. I am a Jew, and I cited one (of a number) of the reasons why Jews don't believe Jesus to be the Messiah. However, I am speaking up against the habit, and I believe it is an insidious habit, of claiming Jesus as a Jew as a backdoor method of evangelizing the Jews, as the Messianic Jewish movement does quite brazenly and intentionally and as other Christian groups do, often out of ignorance, because they have been taught that 'Jesus was a Jew'. There are few Jews who haven't been asked the jawdropping question, "Since Jesus was a Jew, why don't you believe in him?"

And I'm speaking out against the movement I see evidence of in parts of the Evangelical world to use the Seder to confer legitimacy on Easter, as if dressing up their Easter in the trappings of Judaism made it more ancient and holy. This is an appropriative act that many Jews find offensive. We see members of a religion that for centuries has persecuted us, killed us, exiled us, and worked to destroy our cultural cohesiveness, and now they are taking the trappings of our religion, without the full context required to understand those trappings, and using them to decorate their religious observances. It's a tremendous insult if it's not done thoughtfully and respectfully.

I appreciate the sentiment of inclusivity that you conclude your message with, but you need to keep in mind the position of Christianity with respect to other religions in the West as a privileged culture with more power than, for example, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc.. When Christians unilaterally 'include' elements of other religions in their worship, out of the spirit of inclusivity or not, it is a minefield of unthinking privilege.

[liadnan]

When I was growing up (and possibly to this day) one of the things on the local Christian ecumenical calendar was a passover, usually celebrated on the correct day (not if that was actually part of the triduum, which I suppose must be possible). My own feeling was always that it was a bit off, for the same reasons that concern you (though I'm not sure I'd have used the word appropriation at the time).

Am actually invited to a proper passover* this year, courtesy of a close friend and colleague, which will be my first.