What Judaism Has to Offer

Christians have done their best and worst to convert the Jews, with a range of persuasions running from sweet reasonableness to slow torture. The Jews, on the other hand, seem to have no missionary zeal. It was not always thus; Jesus described the Pharisees as crossing "sea and land to make one proselyte," and one Maccabean king, John Hyrcanus I (135-104 B.C.), even compelled the conquered Idumeans to become Jews and undergo circumcision. But in the main, Judaism has been the religion of one people, its heart being the covenant between God and Israel. Some day, according to the bulk of Jewish tradition, that covenant will include all mankind. In the meantime converts are traditionally discouraged, and conversion merely for the sake of marriage is expressly forbidden.

Should modern Judaism abandon this position and assume a missionary role? The question is being raised more and more frequently. In the current issue of Commentary, Rabbi Jakob J. Petuchowski, young (29), Berlin-born Reform rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Washington, Pa., explores the ground on which a new missionary Judaism might be built.

Thrusting & Drawing. Despite the "chosen people" concept, he points out, Judaism has never had the idea that outside it there is no salvation--the idea that has enabled so many Christians to look upon missions as a kind of rescue work. Judaism recognizes all righteous men as sharing in the world to come; non-Jews need only obey the "Seven Laws of Noah"--the covenant God made with all mankind--instead of the 365 negative and 248 positive injunctions of the Jewish law.

The modern Jews most sympathetic to Jewish missions to the Gentiles are generally the liberals in the reform group. Yet these, says Rabbi Petuchowski, have precisely the least to offer. "The orthodox Jew could conceivably enter the arena with the Creed of Maimonides in one hand and the Shulchan Aruch [a codification of Jewish law] in the other. He could say to the prospective convert: 'Here is a new way of living. Take it!' And then the convert would really have taken something; he would not merely be moving from one 'branch' of universal religion to another. But ... if the prospective convert is confronted with a statement that leaves it an open question whether or not God is a person, whether or not there is such a fact as Revelation, whether or not prayer is answered, and with an idea of ceremonial practice completely divorced from any idea of 'divine commandment' . . . then he might think twice before burning his inherited bridges to salvation behind him."

A God to Argue With. A better blueprint for a Jewish mission to modern man, Petuchowski suggests, would begin with the meaning of Jewish history. "What is there in the heritage of Judaism that has enabled the Jew to retain his spiritual and emotional equilibrium under the most adverse conditions?" In this, Petuchowski thinks, non-Jews could find much.

For one thing, the Jews have a God who makes no distinction between matter and spirit; man need not "die unto his flesh" to grow in the spiritual life. For another, Judaism is not centered on creed: "Man's deeds, not his theological professions, bring him close to God or remove him from God." And though it has its saints noted for their submission to God's will, "Judaism also honors the man of faith whose moral sense is outraged by happenings beyond his comprehension. There is room in Judaism for an Abraham and a Jeremiah, a Job . . . who 'argue' with God. Such 'struggles with God' are neither heresy nor sin.

"Nor, again, is sin ... something transmitted through the generations from a mythical 'Fall.' A man is responsible only for his own acts . . . Confession to God . . . remorse, and avoidance of the same sin when temptation arises again, are the sole means of restoring his harmonious relation with God."

The militant, mission-minded Judaism Rabbi Petuchowski looks for would lay no claim to the personal salvation of the individual; that he can obtain by being righteous outside of Judaism as well as in it. But the salvation of the world as a whole is a different matter. Here "religious Jews do believe that the plans for God's kingdom on earth have been delivered into their keeping; that Judaism, as the religion with the most positive approach to all aspects of human life, holds the best promise of enrichment for the earthly life of mankind as a whole. Those Gentiles, therefore, who have this larger salvation at heart, should be made acquainted with what Judaism has to offer, and should be invited to cast in their lot with the household of Israel."

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