Jesus for Jews?

This week, as Christendom celebrated what it dearly believed to be the 1,943rd anniversary of the birth of Jesus, the Jews of the world still awaited their promised Messiah, and the ingathering of them, the chosen people, in Palestine. Yet in the U. S., perhaps half of the Jews gave their friends Christmas presents, told their children about Santa Claus; some even put Christmas trees in their living rooms and wreaths in their windows. So widespread is their celebration -- purely social -- of the Christian feast, that few rabbis bother any more to inveigh against it. Indeed, one rabbi last fortnight ardently defended Christmas-for-Jews, in the influential Protestant Christian Century. He was Louis Witt of Dayton, Ohio, leader in the Central Conference of American Rabbis, chief Reform Jewish body. Said Rabbi Witt:

"For years I, as a rabbi, like all rabbis, denounced with all the oratorical fervor and fury at my command this celebration of Christmas by my own people. . . . 'Christmas,' I pleaded, 'is for the Christian -- for him it is a happy, beautiful, holy day. It is not for the Jew -- for him it is at best alien, at worst fraught with bloody memories and immemorial terrors!' . . .

"Wandering through many lands, touched by many cultures, facing an ever new 'spirit of the age' in his duration through the ages, the Jew has survived in part by virtue of the force and logic of syncretism.* Judaism is an amalgam of countless creeds and cultures held together by the cement of its own native genius.

. . . The rabbi, in opposing the Christmas-Jew, may be opposing not him but a vast tide of psychic coercion, a veritable Zeitgeist, that flows through him and that renders all pleading and thundering . . . futile. . . .

"Christmas in liberal America is no longer the dogmatic, denominational, ecclesiastical institution it used to be and, alas, still is in many lands that are drenched with bigotry and blood. An amazing and increasing number of Christians no longer believe in the supernaturalness of Jesus' birth or in the divinity of his person. ... I say then, as a rabbi, thank God for Christmas ! . . . A Jew celebrating Christmas! Who knows what is back of it, what will come of it? ... Is it neither treason of Jew nor triumph of Christian but partnership of Jew and Christian in the making of a better world . . .?"

Passionately Rabbi Witt was answered in last week's Christian Century by another rabbi, Edward L. Israel of Baltimore. Said he:

"Does Rabbi Witt intend to maintain that Christmas is just a pagan thing which needs syncretism with Judaism for pur poses of spiritualization? I think that Christianity will bitterly resent the gratuitous inference. . . . Dr. Witt pursues his blundering and ill-considered way by gratuitously unitarianizing most of Christendom [i.e., by remarking that Christians no longer believe Jesus divine]. As a Jew, I unqualifiedly condemn Rabbi Witt for this affront. . . . The truly devout Christian of whatever denomination has far more respect for the Jew who, conscientious to his own religious loyalties, does not observe Christmas, than for the Witt type of Jew who tries to crawl into Christmas observance, salving what remains of his Jewish conscience by endeavoring to water down and compromise sound Christian doctrine. . . What do these Christmas-observing Jews really want with Christmas? Witt and other Jews suffering spiritual hernia rationalize about 'good will.' The real reason is their inability to give their whining children a positive Jewish compensation for the superficially alluring trappings which have nothing really to do with the spiritual significance of Christmas. . . ."

Having furnished a battleground in which Jews could toss grenades at each other, the Christian Century last week dropped an editorial bomb of its own. On the touchiest subject in Christian-Jewish relations it said:

"The most obvious common possession of Jew and Christian is nothing less than Jesus himself. . . . The entire furnishing of his mind was the gift to him of his Jewish heritage. . . . Jesus was a Jew -- in blood, in loyalty, in mental outlook, in his criticism of Jewry, in his positive message. . . . Why should not Judaism do much more than [celebrate Christmas]? Why should it not make a place for Jesus in its own faith ... a place fully consistent with the nobler ideals of the Jewish tradition. ... If the religion of Judaism is good for Jews it is also good for Gentiles. ... If it is not good for Gentiles, it is not the best religion for Jews. To cherish it in withdrawal from the rest of society may be defended in a hostile environment . . . but in the environment of American tolerance ... it is not fair to democracy to cherish a religious faith which provides a sanction for racial or cultural or any other form of separatism."

* Meaning: absorption of alien religious concepts.

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