THE MISUNDERSTOOD JEW, by Amy-Jill Levine ****

Relations between Jews and Christians have improved significantly since Louis Brandeis was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Woodrow Wilson in 1916, an action that sparked widespread hatred against Jews across the country. In fact, one of the sitting justices, a Christian, shunned Brandeis by not talking to him and even leaving the room whenever the new justice spoke.

Despite the overall decline in anti-Semitism in America, occasional incidents, including attempts to convert Jews to Christianity, still occur. However, they should remind us that we must continue to be vigilant against its reappearance. For example, two years ago, an inebriated Mel Gibson, surrounded by three adoring women at a bar in a California city, was quoted by a reporter mouthing angry attacks against Jews who, he claimed, were causing many geopolitical problems in the world. In the fall of 2007, the conservative author and political activist Ann Coulter, told a TV news reporter that Jews need to be "completed," a code word for being converted to Christianity. Similarly, on Martin Luther King's birthday in January of 2007, a conservative Republican state legislator to the Virginia legislature, after having nonchalantly told black Americans to "get over" slavery, repeated the erroneous view still held by some fundamentalist and bigoted Christians that Jews killed Jesus Christ. A few weeks after this unfortunate incident, the Richmond Times-Dispatch featured a story in which it showed a Jewish delegate giving the Republican legislator a warm birthday embrace after he entered the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates. So much for the oft-held belief that Jews lack the capacity to be forgiving and compassionate!

Fortunately, there are serious scholars in our midst who can help us challenge the lingering prejudices and hatreds against Jews and point the way to a possible dialogue to gain a better understanding between our two faiths. In her excellent book, THE MISUNDERSTOOD JEW, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine writes eloquently about the importance of Christians seeing Jesus as the Jew that he always was. She is concerned that some Christians view Jesus as a Jew only in a superficial sense. In fact, she writes, Jesus was a Jew from his birth to his death. Moreover, he ate, talked and dressed like a Jew and obeyed the laws faithfully during his entire lifetime.

Dr. Levine's book offers excellent advice to believers who are troubled by the gospel writer John's statement that "the only way to the Father is through his Son," a statement that clearly implies to me that Dante's circles of hell may lie ahead for those who do not accept Christ as their Savior. Importantly, she provides a view of the Good Samaritan that is historically at odds with the way in which most Christians see the story, but which offers, I believe, a credible and suitable ending for both faiths.

Some Christians may have forgotten that the ancient Hebrews gave them many gifts, including the idea of monotheism, the wisdom and learning of the great Hebrew prophets, the Psalms, the Ten Commandments and lastly, and very importantly, Jesus himself who became their Christ. Importantly, as evidence of his Jewishness, Dr. Levine writes that Jesus' reference to the two commandments cited in the gospel of Mark 12:28-34--love God with all your heart and soul and love your neighbor as yourself--are in the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18. Thus, they were not original to Christians, but provide compelling evidence that Jesus embodied the teachings of the ancient Hebrew prophets which some Christians often forget or do not choose to acknowledge.

In fact, similar verses as these should help establish the basis for constructive dialogue between the two faiths. "If possible," she writes, Christians and Jews need to "read the Scriptures in an interfaith setting." Furthermore, Dr. Levine writes that the "elimination of anti-Jewish readings must come from theologians, from those members of the church who conclude that anti-Judaism is wrong and who insist on Christian sensitivity on the issue." Above all, she says that "we must make every effort to see through each other's eyes, hear through each other's ears, and interpret with a consciousness of each other's sensitivities." Perhaps if we can begin the serious dialogues such as Dr. Levine advocates, we can further eliminate more instances of anti-Jewish feelings that continue to lurk in the minds of some people.

As a lifelong Catholic, I highly recommend this book.