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Back to Question of the Week David |
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A: I'll start by saying that one influence of Christianity is that we no longer recite the Ten Commandments as a central part of the daily service. This recitation apparently was an ancient Jewish custom, but our rabbinic ancestors wanted to emphasize that there were 613 binding commandments, not just ten. This was in response to "heretics" (probably early Christians) who denied that all of the commandments/mitzvot of the Torah were binding. This is one sort of influence: in order to clarify that "we're not them" certain practices are instituted, prohibited, changed, etc. A second sort of influence, particularly from the time of the Crusades, involves Jewish reaction to the things Christians did to us. Again in the liturgical realm, many of the Jewish mourning practices, including the entire institution of yahrzeit and many of the traditions surrounding the recitation of kaddish were instituted following the Crusades. The Jewish communities of the time required ways of dealing with the trauma and grief over the many Jews who were murdered by the Crusaders or who took their own lives rather than fall into the hands of the Crusaders. With "good ritual," though, people create rituals and then those rituals create people. The way that we, as contemporary Jews, respond psychologically, spiritually, etc. to death and mourning is now partly conditioned by the rituals that our ancestors invented in response to persecution at the hands of Christians. The great irony of this particular example is that it is likely that some aspects of those rituals, such as the yahrzeit candle, were borrowed from our Christian 'neighbors.' David particularly asked about the ways Judaism has borrowed theologically or ideologically from Christianity. It seems that this influence has most often made itself felt in mystical circles. Thus, the "hasidei Ashkenaz," a group of Jewish mystics in 12th-13th century Germany, adopted certain practices of asceticism and penitential rituals (such as sitting for an hour each day in a freezing river) that most likely were influenced by Christian practices. (Note, though, that in their rhetoric, the hasidei Ashkenaz were quite extreme in their avoidance of Christians and anything Christian!) While these exact practices, and their exact ideological justification, did not continue for a long time, they most certainly left a general imprint on Ashkenazic Jewry and its approaches to body, sin, repentance, etc. It is only logical that Jews are most open to Christian influence when they veer off into extreme messianism, since Christianity at its root was a Jewish messianic movement and provides a ready template. Thus the followers of the false messiah Shabtai Tsevi adopted certain ideas and practices from the Christians. Even in our own day, certain Jews expected a certain rebbe to be resurrected (after three days!?), an expectation with clear Christian echoes. Finally, movements within Christianity have been very influential within Judaism. Jewish theologians have long been aware of philosophical trends in the non-Jewish world, from medieval Scholasticism to liberation or feminist theology, and have sought Jewish answers to the contemporary questions. Certainly the most important movement within Christianity for Jewish thought and practice has been the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation had immense influence on both the ideology and the practice of Reform Judaism and, through Reform Judaism, on all the denominations of Judaism. (How all of Judaism has been influenced by Reform is another whole Reb-on-the-Web.) written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz |
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