• Introduction
  • Point 1
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Combat Religious, Racial, and All Other Forms of Antisemitism – Biblically, Liturgically, and Catechetically.
  • Point 2
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Promote Interreligious Dialogue with Jews
  • Point 3
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Develop Theological Understandings of Judaism that Affirm Its Distinctive Integrity
  • Point 4
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem
  • Point 5
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Acknowledge the Efforts of Many Christian Communities in the Late 20th Century to Reform Their Attitudes Toward Jews
  • Point 6
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Acknowledge the Efforts of Many Christian Communities in the Late 20th Century to Reform Their Attitudes Toward Jews
  • Point 7 and 8
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Differentiate between Fair-Minded Criticism of Israel and Antisemitism and to Offer Encouragement to the State of Israel as It Works to Fulfill the Ideals Stated in Its Founding Documents, a Task Israel Shares with Many Nations of the World
  • Point 9
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 10
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 11
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 12
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.

Point 1(A): The Jewishness of Jesus

The tensions between power and dominance vs. compassion and caring are particularly intricate for Christians and Jews because of the religious and historical interconnections between the two traditions.

In calling for Christians to combat antisemitism, Point 1 of the Berlin Document draws attention to the Jewishness of Jesus. Over the centuries for diverse reasons, both Jews and Christians have sometimes tended to deny that Jesus was an authentic Jew. This reached a bizarre crescendo in the Nazi era when some Christian theologians claimed that Jesus was really Aryan (see: Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.)

 

[ Twelve Berlin Points Forum ... ]