Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

RELATIONSHIP OF JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY
greater justice to Jesus because they were surrounded by an enemy
(i.e., Christians) one hundred times larger than Jewry, aggressively
proselytizing and persecuting the Jews in the name of Jesus' claims.
Out of defensiveness, the rabbis confused a "failed"
messiah (which is what Jesus was) and a false messiah.
Out of defensiveness, the rabbis confused a "failed" messiah (which
is what Jesus was) and a false messiah. A false messiah is one who has
the wrong values: one who would teach that death will triumph, that
people should oppress each other, that God hates us, or that sin and
crime is the proper way. In the eighteenth century, a putative Jewish
messiah named Jacob Frank ended up teaching his people that out of
sin comes redemption; therefore, one must sin. Such is a false
messiah.
A failed messiah is one who has the right values, upholds the
covenant, but who did not attain the final goal. In the first century,
130-135, Bar Kochba, the great Jewish freedom fighter who led a
revolt against Rome that temporarily drove Rome out of Jerusalem,
sought to free the land. He was hailed by Rabbi Akiva and many great
rabbis as the messiah. His rebellion was crushed; it did not bring that
final step of redemption. It turned out that he was a failed messiah.
But Akiva did not repudiate him. Since when is worldly success a
criterion of ultimate validity in Judaism?
Calling Jesus a failed messiah is in itself a term of irony. In the
Jewish tradition, failure is a most ambiguous term. Abraham was a
"failure." He dreamt of converting the whole world to Judaism. He
ended up barely having one child carrying on the tradition. Even that
child he almost lost.
Moses was a "failure." He dreamt of taking the slaves, making
them into a free people and bringing them to the Promised Land.
They were hopeless slaves; they died slaves in the desert; neither they
nor Moses ever reached the Promised Land.
Jeremiah was a "failure." He tried to convince the Jewish people
that the temple would be destroyed unless they stopped their morally
and politically wrong policies; he tried to convince them to be ethically
responsible, to free their slaves, not to fight Babylonia. No one
listened.
All these "failures" are at the heart of divine and Jewish
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