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by Ruth Langer

The many medieval depictions of Ecclesia triumphant and Synagoga defeated clearly haunt Mary Boys as symbols of all that has been — and continues to be — wrong in the relations between Jews and Christians. Her search for a corrective to this sinful understanding drives her new book, to the point that she accompanies the book with a commissioned artwork, a new depiction of Ecclesia and Synagoga where both stand tall as representations of their faith communities. An essay on the symbolism embedded in these new figures will have to be reserved for a different venue, but it must be noted here that rather than looking at defeated Synagoga in triumph, the new Ecclesia, while still standing in relationship to her sister (marked by their similar styles of dress and hair), walks with her sister in parity and friendship as they together move forward.

As I read Boys’ book, I felt not only that Synagoga was being given the opportunity to walk alongside her sister, but that she was being invited to look over her sister’s shoulder as well. While Boys has written her book as a Christian educator for a Christian audience, much of what she writes needs to be known by the Jewish community as well. Boys’ task in this book is two-pronged: to translate much of the important scholarly work on issues pertinent to the Jewish-Christian relationship into terms more accessible to non-experts in the field; and to push forward the process of ending supersessionist teachings and their consequences in lived Christian life. Throughout the book, Boys is forthright and honest; nothing is honey-coated. To those who would point to the great strides taken to improve Jewish-Christian relations in the past decades, she cites instance after instance where, in spite of official pronouncements, anti-Jewish supersessionist sentiments still appear regularly in liturgy and educational materials.

Indeed, Boys is convinced that the first critical task is precisely sensitization to the anti-Jewish assumptions that infuse Christian teachings. Her book literally unfolds, beginning with stories designed to raise these sensitivities, and moving from there ever deeper through the tasks necessary to address the consequent issues. Once one is aware of Christian anti-Judaism, Boys suggests, one must confront and acknowledge the full and gory history of Christian anti-Judaism and its consequences (Ch. 4). This knowledge creates an imperative for discovering new non-supersessionist ways to tell the Christian sacred story (Ch.5). But a responsible retelling must be grounded in a sophisticated understanding of the worlds of Jesus and the early Church (Part III, Chs. 6-10). Only after presenting a synthesis of contemporary historical scholarship does Boys begin explicitly to discuss various areas where this scholarly task needs to be integrated into actual contemporary church practice and teaching. Her chapters on Scripture, Liturgy, and the symbolism of the cross (Part IV, Chs. 11-13) provide fine examples of the types of challenges that Christianity needs to confront. However, they are just examples. A comprehensive discussion of similar depth would require several more books. Boys concludes with an analysis of various official church pronouncements about Jews and Judaism and a brief programmatic discussion on how the churches might meet the challenge of bridging the gap between official policy and the minds and hearts of the community (Part V, Chs. 14-15).

As a Jewish Studies professor at Jesuit university, I found myself musing constantly as I read this book about how it could be integrated into my courses at Boston College. Not only is Boys’ writing sufficiently free of jargon to be (for the most part) accessible to the non-specialist reader, but she demonstrates in multiple ways how an encounter with the "other," most significantly the Jewish "other," preferably in person but even through books, is critical to the theological formation of a faithful Christian. As a Jewish professor, I can create this encounter, but articulating its goals without preaching has been challenging. One solution is the model of co-teaching developed for interreligious learning by Mary Boys and Sara Lee. But lacking that possibility, Boys’ book may very well prove to provide that missing voice.

Is Boys’ book perfect? Any synthetic and accessible presentation of many complex fields of scholarly inquiry is bound to have some problems. Although Boys acknowledges many expert readers in her introduction, I still find myself with a list of minor quibbles about her portrayal of Judaism. For instance, the Samaritan and the Essene rejections of the Jerusalem Temple were not really comparable, as the Samaritans rejected both place and cult while the Essenes apparently rejected just the cultic practices of their contemporary Jerusalem priesthood. (p. 109)

While Boys correctly points to the centrality of the Temple and its sacrifices in Jewish life of the period and offers a sophisticated if necessarily brief discussion of their meaning (pp. 117 ff.), she concludes with Gerd Theissen’s interpretation of Jesus’ relationship to the Temple. This skews her otherwise balanced portrait. Theissen suggests that the primary function of Temple ritual was to forgive sins. Although this was unequivocally one role of the Temple, the focus of the Jewish liturgical response to the Temple’s destruction suggests that this function was not central. The key prayers of the rabbinic verbal worship system correspond to the covenant-maintaining mandatory daily and festival sacrifices, not to the more voluntary and incidental sin offerings. Themes of sin and forgiveness drive rabbinic liturgy only one day a year, on Yom Kippur. But these issues and others like them are minor in the scope of Boys’ work; we could argue and discuss them, but the outcome would not change her book.

My only major "quibble" is more fundamental. While the synagogue became an increasingly important institution after the destruction of the Temple, Jews never designated their community by its name because it represents just a single facet of Jewish communal life. Instead, Jewish self-identification, from biblical times, has been as Israel, the name God gave our ancestor Jacob and the name of the land that Jacob’s descendents call home. Medieval theologians projected the Christian ideal of religious community embodied in Ecclesia onto her sister Synagoga, ignoring (or rejecting) precisely these familial/ national and geographical elements of Jewish theological self-identification and leaving only the religious. Boys, with her sensitivity to the symbolic, has done so much to make the attitudes embodied in the medieval depictions repugnant to her readers. I would encourage her to take one more symbolic step: eliminate the name "Synagoga" and call Ecclesia’s sister "Israel."

[This review appeared in SIDIC Review 33/3: 30-31. Posted with permission.]