Church Potluck: A Smorgasbord of Christian Curiosity
Church Potluck serves up thoughtful, friendly, informal conversation at the intersection of Christianity and contemporary culture. Just like a church potluck, we offer variety: a variety of topics, a variety of academic disciplines, and a variety of Christian traditions. Guests are friends and colleagues who are also experts in the fields of sociology, political science, theology, philosophy, divinity, and more.
Church Potluck: A Smorgasbord of Christian Curiosity
Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Navy Chaplain's Mission
In this episode of Church Potluck: A Smorgasbord of Christian Curiosity, Rabbi Albert Slomovitz shares his journey from chaplaincy to interfaith scholar, offering insights on bridging Jewish-Christian relations. The conversation explores how contextual knowledge and interpretation, such as Midrash, can clarify difficult biblical passages for both faiths. Through examples like the "eye for an eye" passage and the portrayal of Jewish people in Passion plays, the episode highlights the value of interfaith dialogue for fostering mutual understanding, while moments of humor remind listeners of the importance of cultural sensitivity in combating prejudice.
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
All right. So, Rabbi, it looks like they've got a busy day ahead for you here at Berry College.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely A lot of things going on, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good, but we get to be the first. We get the first crack at you. Yes, yes, yes, although this is kind of the second crack because of all the grass blowing out there that they were just doing all the leaf blowing. Well, welcome everyone to Church Potluck, where we are serving up a smorgasbord of Christian curiosity. I'm your host, dale McConkie, sociology professor and United Methodist pastor, and you know there are two keys to a good church potluck plenty of variety and engaging conversation. And this is exactly what we try to do here on Church Potluck sitting down with friends and sharing our ideas on a variety of topics from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian and religious traditions. I have just a two-person podcast today. Usually we have some sidekicks and some extra voices on, but just two people today.
Speaker 1:It is time to introduce our guest, rabbi Albert Slomovitz. Yay, good to have you on the podcast, rabbi, thank you. So let's see, I'm going to go through your credentials and then you can add to them here. So you are the founder of the Christian. I'm sorry, you are founder of the Jewish Christian Discovery Center. Right, you are author of A New Look at Rabbi Jesus, jews and Christians Finally Reconnected. You are a chaplain, like I had been for nine years. You are a chaplain for the Navy and also for law enforcement. What type of law enforcement were you? Cub County Police? Oh, very nice, very nice. And you've got lots of fancy degrees and you've taught at Kennesaw State and you've got quite an impressive array. What other kinds of things would you like to add about yourself?
Speaker 2:First of all, I'm retired from the Navy Okay, too old to do that and I've written a few other books. One is about the Supreme Supreme Court in Racism, oh, wow. And the other one is called the Fighting Rabbis, which is a history of rabbis in the US military for the whole history up to Desert Storm, desert Shield.
Speaker 1:Oh, very sweet.
Speaker 2:And I've authored some children's books.
Speaker 1:That's part of your at the Jewish Christian Discovery Center connected to that project Right, very nice. Why don't you tell us about your children's books real quickly?
Speaker 2:If I could take a step back. Sure, and, by the way, it's great to be on Barry today, great, beautiful college. I have two backgrounds that sort of came together about 10 years ago. I have my military background and that was fascinating because there were only a handful of rabbis in. I was in the Navy at that time.
Speaker 2:So inevitably people would come up to us and say they looked at our insignia and say what is that? And first it had Hebrew. It was supposed to be the little tablets of the Ten Commandments, and then it changed to Roman numerals. But it was very unique, not seen that often. So once we said we were rabbis, people had all sorts of questions for us and I was asked questions in the oddest situations. I was once in a gym changing clothes with the other fellows and there'd been a Marine captain whom I knew, and so we just exercised together. I forgot what we did, but we were changing and he said Rabbi, can I ask you a question? I said sure. He said what do the Jews believe about Jesus? Now, at that point the rest of the locker room got very silent.
Speaker 2:So we were literally dressed and undressed, and I did respond to him and we can get into some of that later. But the interesting thing was that I discovered in the military that people had never met a knowledgeable Jewish person, certainly not a rabbi and once they got to know you and you got to know them and they felt comfortable, then they asked the questions and so that sort of set me up for what was coming. At the same time I was able to attend Loyola University of Chicago. We were assigned in Chicago and I earned two degrees. One was my second master's in interfaith relations and the second one was my doctorate in American history. And I put those two things together, the military background and sort of the academic background.
Speaker 2:And then I looked at the world and saw all the prejudice and anti-Semitism. So I found it. I wrote a book, the one you mentioned, a New Look at Rabbi Jesus, jews and Christians, finally Reconnected, because I wanted to show people how similar we were. That's the whole point of all this, that once we discover that Jews and Christians, that we are related, I would say then it's hard to be prejudiced. You mentioned your cousin before. Then it's hard to be prejudiced. You mentioned your cousin before. It's hard to be prejudiced against someone who you're literally related to. If that's your cousin or your brother, whatever you might disagree, but you're not going to go hating a lot on that person. So that's sort of the goal.
Speaker 2:And so in the midst of that, I've written some books for children and we have four books that are printed and beautifully illustrated, I might add. They really are quite attractive. We found a lady's name is Remy Bryant. She's down in Atlanta and the books were. It's a whole world. First I wrote the original book and then the children wanted to do activities, for example, wanted to do activities, for example coloring, and I'm showing it. I know this is a podcast, but there are pictures and then there are word puzzles in the back for the kids to play with. And then we had a request for a Spanish translation. Each original book generated two other books. We actually have a video which I will show. I have a lecture later that video with actors and directors and producers and all that, a seven-minute video which I think I showed when I lectured at the Temple recently.
Speaker 1:Yes, I had the honor of listening to your presentation at Rod F Shalom. About what?
Speaker 2:several months ago I don't remember exactly how far back, but Right. So that is sort of the genesis of all this that I found myself in a unique position, from the military background, the academic background, to be able to speak with some authority about why we're related. And so the Jewish Christian Discovery Center has been going on for six years now, and we're finding that there's a tidal wave of prejudice that we're trying to push back a little bit on.
Speaker 1:I wasn't going to go to the prejudice right off the bat, but let's go ahead and do that, because we have had an outbreak in some sense of prejudice. Or maybe it's not an outbreak, maybe it's always been there, but it's been much more visible in the last several months.
Speaker 2:I could speak to that, or you could speak to that in terms of some of the things that have been happening just right here in our own little northern Georgia. Yeah, I must say it's just disconcerting in a way. I agree Because the example I give is that Judaism is the mother of Christianity, gave birth to Christianity, the Jewishness of Jesus, Christianity gave birth to Christianity, the Jewishness of Jesus. I'm actually finishing up a curriculum for Sunday school kids that I put together with a Catholic educator and a Baptist minister, Rabbi, priest and minister.
Speaker 1:I was going to say there's a joke in there somewhere.
Speaker 2:Right, and the name of the book is the Jewish Life of Jesus, and we start with his circumcision, his bris, we call it, and all the way through his death. And so there's, every aspect of Jesus's life was a Jewish one, one would think. And again, the weird thing about how my brain operates is that I'm doing two things at once. The history side of me is wanting to make sure that I can verify what I say on the other side, and the other side is the interface side, so I'm not just sort of saying, yeah, jesus is Jewish, believe it, I can prove that. So I go back and forth and it is unnerving and very much unsettling.
Speaker 2:Listen, if you disagree with the policy of a government any government we'll say Canada. So I disagree with the Canadian government about, let's say, something, environmental, I say yes, I vehemently disagree with that decision. However, I don't turn around and say, oh, and, by the way, I hate all Canadians. I mean that's illogical. So if you disagree with the government policy, say so and write. Nobody writes letters anymore. Send an email to your representatives in Congress, the president, whatever you want. But to somehow merge that into prejudice against everyone, that's the part that's unsettling to me. So I started this six years ago and, yes, anti-semitism existed, but I didn't think it was on sort of this level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I 100% agree with you that we should be emphasizing the Jewish background and the Jewish life of Jesus. Last episode we had on Church Potluck, we talked about the video series called the Chosen.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm familiar with that.
Speaker 1:You're familiar with that, and one of the things that I really emphasized in that podcast was just how wonderful it was, that's in terms of all the video representations of Jesus I've ever seen. That's one of the most Jewish ones, and they took time to go back into the Jewish culture and some of the reasons. So have you found that to be a good, positive step, or were there things about that you found problematic? What were your experiences.
Speaker 2:No, I like their approach. I really do. And what's interesting is that in my context, I do a lot of visiting to churches and in my chaplaincy work I had friends who were ministers of all sorts Lutheran, methodist, catholic, whatever and so once you go beyond the titles and you get into them as people, there's this really basic interest, don't forget, for Jesus. We know him in the scriptures as a baby, as a child, and then within a little bit he's a grown man. That's right. By the way, the example is Moses in Exodus. He's a baby raised in the house of Pharaoh, then he's a young man.
Speaker 2:The tradition gaps, the childhood, adolescence and all that. So what I do is I fill that in. Where did he live? What were the influences in his life? How was he educated? And people. When I start talking about that, I think that people are going to say, oh, too much information. But I've never had that. I've had people say to me oh, we're glad you're doing this because we don't know. No one's ever told us what that is. So you're helping us by filling in those gaps.
Speaker 1:And I think that there are so many things in the Christian scriptures in the New Testament that you can't understand without that context or at least it's very difficult and it just seems there are so many things that are said that just seem very out of place and odd, unless you understand the cultural context of the time.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. I mean, when I studied undergraduate I went to Columbia University. In the Jewish Theological Seminary they have what's called a joint program. So I remember one day I signed up for a class, a Bible class, at Columbia. So I walk in the classroom and on the old blackboards again we're dating ourselves. But it said Acadian, mesopotamian, babylonian. And so I kind of said out loud oh, I'm in the wrong class because I'm here to study Bible. And the instructor said, no, you're in the right class, but if you're going to study Abraham and Sarah, you study the world in which they lived, which makes 100% common sense.
Speaker 2:If someone's studying today, if I'm writing a book about 2024, I have to talk about the internet and artificial intelligence and things like that. I guess I could write it without it, but if I made a reference to it, everyone would say, of course, but if it's going to be 200 or 300 years from now, I have to have a little asterisk about exactly what that was and what was going on. So yes, and that's kind of the sad part for me, that sometimes some of the Christian friends I meet will say we just study the Bible alone and without commentary, without that larger context, and that's where we get in trouble. That's where we get in trouble. There's a number of stories in the Scriptures that if they're not interpreted for people, then they may misunderstand them. I mean the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, the same thing, and one of the examples I give is Exodus 21.
Speaker 2:Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, I mean the Bible says you exact revenge. However, for us, when we're reading the Bible, in the bottom of the page there's commentary and the rabbis say no, it says it, but it doesn't mean that. What it means is you compensate people If you injure somebody and they're out of work, or pain and suffering, that sort of thing. So you clearly, if somebody cuts you off in traffic, you don't have the right to zip around and cut them off. It's just not how society goes.
Speaker 1:I had also heard one commentator say that is also meant to be a restriction, an eye for an eye, that you do not do anything more than what had been done for you, but the idea that you can really see this and assume that it means one thing. But there's much more nuance there and you need to know the context.
Speaker 2:In the Jewish context, what we call it is midrash, which is wrestling with the text, or understanding the text, and I want to give people that's what I'm going to say in my lecture today. I want to give people the freedom to do that. Just to take a verse in the Bible, because if it's not explained in a way, listen, my book is a commentary to the book of Matthew, so it's sort of unusual for a rabbi to be doing commentary, but I had the academic background from Loyola and history whatever. But Matthew was a Jewish book written for the Jewish community, but Jesus was Jewish. I mean, it's all a Jewish affair. But if you don't understand it, there's the scene with Pontius Pilate where he's asking who do you want to crucify Jesus? Or, by the way, it's not Barabbas, it's Bar Abbas. If I have time, I'll mention that. But part of that story the crowd allegedly says his blood be upon us and upon our children. Okay, tell me what that means, because I once had somebody ask me was the Holocaust God's punishment, god's fulfillment of that verse?
Speaker 2:I'm shaking my head in disgust after that, Right right, but this was a young man who didn't know any better and never had someone explain it to him or give him any possible other explanation. So, yes, so the Bible obviously is wonderful, but we have to understand it in its context. If not, I think we're doing a disservice to ourselves, honestly.
Speaker 1:What do you think are some of the biggest and most consistent misunderstandings that Christians have in the conversations you've had with them?
Speaker 2:in the conversations you've had with them. Gosh, it really depends, I'd say. The good news is that people have questions. The bad news is that sometimes the questions are very elementary. A quick example we were seeing about three years ago. There was a group of people when the Braves opened their new stadium down in Cobb County. We're the group that were looking at the stadium. Okay, fine, wonderful. So we're having lunch and I'm sitting across from a man and he says I'm a deacon at my church. I said great. I said I'm a rabbi, so we'll talk business. We're conversing a little bit and then he says to me in a kind of serious voice you know, I never figured out what do you people do when you go to services? And I was quiet for a minute.
Speaker 2:I was taken aback by that I said we get together, we pray, we talk, we eat, we leave.
Speaker 1:I mean basically whatever you do, it's a church potluck. Except it's a synagogue potluck.
Speaker 2:I'm sort of you know, whacking myself in the head. Here's a grown man. He was like 55, 60. If you're a deacon of your church you're like wow, I mean, that's a big deal. People look to you and say you're well-versed and you know the rituals of the church. And for him to kind of come over the top and again in a million years only because he was sitting with me by chance and we're just having this banter back and forth. He felt comfortable enough to say what do you all do? Now I could have said like Leviticus, bring your animals, we'll sacrifice your animals. I mean, I don't know what. I could have said anything and he would have said, okay, but wow.
Speaker 2:So in many ways we're just at that point of beginning to learn about each other, without even going to the traditional prejudice against Jews and all that, just sort of even before that. If you're asking me what we do, come, go to a service, and that's sort of the sadness that the interesting part about this is. In the military you had much more access to Jewish services and Protestant services and Catholic services and Muslim services, whatever, because we're all in the same complex. So all the chaplains it's like being in university, you had people next to you, so we talked all the time and I ended up being a senior chaplain at Naval Air Station, pensacola on my last tour and I was responsible for everyone's religious freedom. So we had to make sure that every group had what they needed, and I would go around and often speak, and so we just had this great environment of learning and studying together, and sometimes the chaplains would come to me and say we're reading this verse for our service this Sunday. What do you think about it? So we had that experience.
Speaker 1:Oh very nice, Very nice.
Speaker 2:But once you get out then you find that people are much more isolated. In that effect it's one church, one synagogue and you kind of focus on your needs and growing that building and people lose sight of the larger society or the larger possibilities of dealing with some of these interfaith issues.
Speaker 1:Very interesting. I love that imagery of everyone getting there and still holding on to their own faith, but having that opportunity to interact with one another and to learn and grow from that, I really like that. That's my understanding. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I've learned also, the more I'm in this business, the more it even strikes me more the connections that I once I was at Catholic Church and somehow we got onto the confessional. We're just talking. So I said to one of the priests I said, father, what is the basis of confessional? The confessional? And he had a big smile on his face. I said why are you smiling? He said we took it from you. So why didn't we took it from you? I said what do you mean? Took it from us? He said no. He said it's based on the Ten Commandments and the Ten Commandments and we put our sins, we use that as a framework and that's the confessional.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that. Okay, so that reinforces my basic belief of how connected we are. But we go through life not knowing that. So that sort of we lose by not sitting together and looking at the same text and saying, oh, you see, let's say the suffering servant in Isaiah this way, but there's a possibility of seeing it another way. That doesn't detract, believe what you want, but at least know that somebody else could see it differently. And life goes on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, very nice, very nice. Hey, let's play a game show. Okay, all right. So this game show we're going to call it, is it Kosher? All right, so you tell me I'm going to say a few things and you're going to tell me whether this is something acceptable that Christians do or something that we should be careful about or worried about. Okay, all right, is it kosher? First question is it kosher? Using the word kosher for a game show, is there anything sacred about the word kosher? And this is diminishing it by no, no.
Speaker 2:Kosher means clean. Yeah, that'd be okay. Yeah, what's going on in the world? You can call it kosher.
Speaker 1:Yay, all right, I got that one right. All right, I'm real curious to see your answer on this one. Is it kosher to call someone a Jew?
Speaker 2:these days, I have noticed a very conscious decision I made long ago not to say that because of the potential of it being misinterpreted. That sort of. There's a fine line to that. I think people would prefer Jewish. I'm a Jewish person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I have been trying to do on a very consistent basis, because of the possibility of the way it has been used.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean if you would say I love Jews, okay, fine, but unfortunately I was with someone again years ago in the military that just bought a car. When you go to Okinawa, japan, we're in Okinawa, you turn cars over, so you're on the island for as long as you are. You buy a car to get around and then when you leave, you just sell it to the next person. That's background and, by the way, it's shift, and it's shift with your left hand, so the driver's seat's on the other side. Too much information. So, at any rate, I was talking to somebody. He said, yeah, I bought a car. So of course your question is how much? And he said I drew them down. And five seconds later, two seconds later, I kind of stopped, like okay, because my brain is just, I know this guy, he's a good guy, but should I say something? And then his face turned red, he caught what he had done. No, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. I said okay, but I mean we just kind of left it like that because I couldn't say, oh, you're absolved.
Speaker 2:But so when you say the word Jew, unfortunately and I don't think people, yeah, they don't mean that I hate Jewish people and I want them to die, blah, blah, blah, but nevertheless I don't need an insult, you know. I mean just say I bargained them down, but that feeds into Jews and money and Jews and power and all that and Jews control. So it's just something we should. I'm very cautious about the words I speak and the language I use, and so I think it's fair to say to people really, can you eliminate that please? Or say it another way, because just flip it to yourself. I mean I wouldn't say I mess it as somebody down or something like that. I mean really, or whatever. So it's just, it's not helpful. So, yeah, if you can say Jewish another way or Jew another way, do that.
Speaker 1:Great, thank you. And a little side note to our audience. If you hear some thumping and some background noise, rabbi Slumovitz, I'm sorry. Rabbi Slumovitz is a very expressive talker and so he's using his hands and he's hitting the table sometimes, and so this is just so. That's exactly so. When you hear that noise.
Speaker 1:This is him being enthusiastic in his conversation, so take those noises as good things that he's having. We're alive, that's right, All right, so we'll go ahead and thank you very much for your answer there. So the next thing is it kosher Christian passion plays. Historically, the Passion plays about the last seven days of Jesus' life. Very often have historically had the characterization of very often being hateful toward Jewish people and blaming the Jewish people are still uncomfortable with that, with those because of the historical consequence if they're done in a more proper way these days. Do you have any opinion or thought on that?
Speaker 2:Yes, great question. By the way, I'll try not to tap.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's okay if you do. Now the folks know what's going on.
Speaker 2:I think that's an area of concern. My wife and I went to see Jesus Christ Superstar a few years ago at Cobb County and there's one scene where it's like I alluded to before, that the crowd is saying crucify him. And I whispered to my wife this is where we get in trouble. So, yeah, I mean again, all these scenes have to be understood in context. What's going on? As an author myself, this is what the Jesuits I mean, it's great, I'm a rabbi with Jesuit credentials. But the Jesuits taught me to look at the books from the perspective of the authors. What are they trying to do?
Speaker 2:In the Christian scriptures, or the Jewish scriptures for that matter, they're trying to make a point to follow Jesus. Okay, we get that. So, yeah, there has to be protagonists and antagonists, etc. But what's always amazed me is that you would think that the Christians would process okay, god chose Jesus and this is Jesus's life, so all this is part of the divine plan. Like the parallel would be Pharaoh In Exodus. It says a number of times God hardened Pharaoh's heart. You would think one plague would be enough, all the water blood, okay, and then a second plague. I mean, really there's a lot of plagues going on and you would think the Egyptians would say to Pharaoh what Enough already, let us go. Let them go because the cattle are dying. There's lies, I mean, whatever it is, but God hardened Pharaoh's heart, so you have to go through this whole cycle. So I think in many ways the function of Pharaoh is like the function of any antagonist in the story just to build up emotions and heighten the story. Think for a second If Moses and Aaron had gone to Pharaoh time number one and said you know, let our people go. And there was silence for a minute and Pharaoh said okay, have a nice day. Well then you don't have an Exodus story, you don't have a crossing of the Red Sea being pursued by the Egyptians, you don't have Mount Sinai, you don't have all that. So the story needs to have this built-in drama. But I always wondered why Christians didn't just say this was all part of the divine plan and whatever is happening on earth.
Speaker 2:In fact, there is a gospel called Gospel of Judas. I'm sure you're familiar with it, Written around the year. It's in my book. I'm pushing the book a little bit, that's all right. It's written around the year 120. It's on a papyrus. It was found in Egypt a little bit. It's written around the year 120. It's on a papyrus. It was found in Egypt.
Speaker 2:It's called the Gospel of Judas, where Judas and Jesus are having a conversation and Jesus is saying to Judas you're my number one disciple. And Judas says why? Because Jesus says you're letting me go of my earthly body and then I'm taking my place in heaven next to God, so you're doing exactly what I asked you. And then, and this is the key point here Judas says back to Jesus and again, I'm not making this up, this is an actual document that's been translated. Judas says to Jesus how will people perceive me? And Jesus says look at the sky, look at the night sky. You're my brightest star. And this is 120. So this is like people conceivably a few generations from the original event. So they're seeing Judas in a totally different light and I wish more of that would occur. I wish more people would see Judas like that.
Speaker 2:But it always struck me as just being so odd that if this was God's plan in the beginning, then all this is supposed to happen like it's supposed to happen, and everyone's an actor doing their part. So why would you take some of the actors and say ah, we're blaming you, but the whole essence, as far as I see it, of Christianity is the death and the resurrection, and I mean this lovingly. If Jesus lives to be 100 and dies in his sleep, let's say okay, good, but you don't get the drama of the resurrection which all the Gospels portray. Yeah. So, unfortunately, by telling the story without any sort of again context or way to understand it, people do come back and that's really hard. How do you defend against that? People say the Jews killed Jesus. No, were there some people who disagreed with him? Sure, are there some people who disagree today with priests, ministers and rabbis? Yeah, so that's not unusual. But to have that as the basis of a relationship, that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that. And another way that I look at it as well, when I read the scriptures, I have no sense of Jewish people as a whole having this kind of hatred at all for Jesus. And you do have that one scene. But even that one scene very clearly makes it clear that the leadership, the establishment at the time was the one that was fomenting the anger. And, yes, it seems that Jesus was a prophet who was speaking out very harshly against the leadership of the time. The Jewish leadership, just as, in my mind, the Christian leadership of today, deserves to be criticized for that. But that doesn't mean that all the American people deserve that kind of, or all Christians deserve that kind of criticism. So I've never understood that leap to anti-Semitism.
Speaker 2:It's horribly unfortunate because, again, jesus was Jewish and so when I visited Auschwitz which again a horrible experience theoretically he would have been one of the victims. I mean he's Jewish, so he would have been there and his family would have been there. I spoke at a church recently and I gave out some of the children's books that I'm tapping You're fine and I told them that Jesus is Jewish. We have a big program for Hanukkah Christmas. I give kids menorahs, little plastic menorahs and stars of David to put on their Christmas tree. Kids love it.
Speaker 2:So I was speaking at church and one of the kids says to me Jesus was Jewish. I said yes, so he raises his hand. He said so what were Joseph and Mary? What religion? I said, okay, think about it. A second. He said oh, they were Jewish too. I said yeah, I mean it's like a family. I mean sometimes family look, I have kids, I have grandkids. Not everyone gets along 100% of the time, but sometimes you have family arguments, but it's still family at the end of the day. So sometimes people say things they don't mean, they apologize, and so if we could see this only as a family, then it would be eliminated. But unfortunately we're dealing with centuries of teachings that Christianity replaced Judaism. It's called supersession.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Big word, but that's what it means, and so we're still, in some ways, I'd say that some of the clergy is getting better because we say Hebrew Bible, christian Bible, jewish scriptures, hebrew scriptures, whatever. But we're starting to realize that after Vatican II— Pope John Paul II yeah Nostradate, oh sorry the Catholic Church in 1965 says that they're recognizing Judaism as a valid religion, which took 1906 years Okay.
Speaker 2:But what we say is that we're covenanted. Just like Christians are covenanted with God, so are we. So there's two covenants with God. So we really have to get on that level of equality and just say, yeah, you see God this way, we see God this way. But let's talk about all the connections we have. And that's the, again. The saddest part about this is that we don't see the connections.
Speaker 2:And I must say to my Christian friends, even within the Christian world there's a lot of dissension about who's a real Christian, who's not a Christian. Oh, 100%. And so I'll visit somebody and say, hey, you guys. And I'll mention Loyola. I'll say, oh, I have a Catholic background. And people say, oh, catholics, a Catholic background. And people say, oh, catholics. I say, what do you mean? Oh, catholics, oh, they're not really Christian. I say, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not talking about that. I said if you're a Protestant, you come from the church, you come from the Catholic church, that's your history. And then, of course, the church comes from Judaism. So we're going to start by saying we have no connection, we're separated. Then it's going to be hard to make that connection.
Speaker 1:Well, Rabbi Slomovitz, thank you so much for playing, Is it, Kosher? I wanted to finish up here and we'll give you the last word, so you can finish up any way that you want. But just having a conversation a little bit about some of the more difficult points, I really appreciate your effort to find the commonality, find the common history, find the connectedness, but there are some aspects of Christian theology that would seem to be in stark contrast with Judaism, and so I'm just curious to get your take on these. And you know, the most obvious one would be the fact that Jesus was not just a human but he was also divine, that he was God incarnate, and that seems to be for most Jews, I would imagine you know a proclamation too far right, that it crosses the line and that kind of outside of the realm of Judaism. So where is the common connection? Or how should Jewish people and Christians be understanding that together?
Speaker 2:I have a great answer. A few weeks ago I was at a wedding reception or sort of an engagement reception, and one of the people was Jewish, one was not, and one of the relatives of the non-Jewish person said I hear you're a rabbi. I said yes. So he said I have a question for you. He said I've been raised my whole life that we're waiting for the second coming of Jesus. I said okay. And he said I know for the Jewish people you're waiting for the Messiah to come like first time. I said correct. So he said which is it? And I said you know, I'll take either one. I'll take either one Because we know from Isaiah, chapter 11, that when the Messiah comes and, by the way, this is a big deal, I mean, when the Messiah comes, it's supposed to be a time of peace and the lion will lie with the lamb, etc.
Speaker 2:If there's a coming again and it's connected to Jesus and that's what it is and it's time of peace, hooray. And he loved that. We're both waiting, and so I just want to put that off to the side and say, yeah, jewish people look at Jesus as a rabbi, a prophet. Even Messiah means anointed. There were other people previously, so just not the Messiah.
Speaker 2:Right, right and again. Picture yourself in Jerusalem. Pick an early decade 30, 40, 50. Jesus is killed by the Romans, but the Romans are still there and the persecution is getting worse because they're tightening their grip. So if we were alive, then I'm putting on my history hat for a second. I teach history at Kennesaw State and I ask my students to try and see history in real time. In real time, what conversations were they having? Was Jesus the Messiah? The Romans are still killing people, and now they're killing early Christians. At that time they were saying I guess not, because if you look out our door they're the Roman legions and they're still killing people, or the temple is destroyed in the year 70.
Speaker 2:So I think it's legitimate to have a conversation about were the criteria for the Messiah met at that time? Was it a time of peace? Was it not? Listen, believe what you want. I mean believe. But that doesn't mean that we take the belief and whack somebody over the head with it. That's the thing. From the Jewish perspective, we say, yeah, we're waiting for the Messiah. Okay, you think the Messiah came, is coming again. Okay too. Let's say somebody says he comes once a century. Okay, good, I mean it's all good, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter as long as if a tree falls in my yard, my neighbors come and help me, or if a tree falls in my neighbor's yard that I go and say what do you need? So in a way, it's sort of paradoxical that you have a belief that, instead of just being a belief, it's used as a sort of negative force against someone else. You'll give me a time frame, but I'll tell you a quick story.
Speaker 2:Grandmother was at home and we had a visiting nurse to take care of grandmother. And she comes in and she looks at the wall I have Jewish stuff and she says oh, what is that? I said Hebrew, I'm a rabbi. And then I explained to her I was a Navy chaplain. End of the day she walks out and she says can I say a prayer? Like I'm going to go home and say a prayer. So I figure, oh, that's sweet, you're going to say a prayer for my grandmother it's actually my wife's grandmother and she says no. I said what are you going to pray for? She says I'm praying for you. I said, ok, good health and all that. She says, no, you're godless. And I said what she said yeah, if you don't believe in Jesus, you have no belief, like nothing counts. And I said, well, I'm out. I said I'm a rabbi, jesus was called a rabbi and I said some of the prayers. He said I say some of the same prayers. I pray to God, I believe in God very much. And wow, I said I'm okay.
Speaker 2:But the fact that she felt compelled first of all to say this to me but she was going to pray for me because I didn't believe exactly one way, that's kind of what we have to ask ourselves Is this at the end of the day, is that what our belief is, that we're so focused and sure that this is our belief? But what about when I was in Okinawa? We had Shinto and Confucius and all sorts of people, indigenous Okinawan beliefs. I never went to them and said, okay, all this is trash. No, in fact, the Japanese are sort of multi-believers that missionaries would come to their home and say you want to be a Baptist? Yeah, you want to be a Methodist, yes, you want to be Lutheran. So they said yes to everything and it's okay in their mind.
Speaker 2:But I never come over the top and say, because you don't believe this way, you're unacceptable. That's, I think, where we want to talk about? What do we believe, what does it mean? And at the end of it all, it's sort of ironic again that when I was doing the book of Matthew and Jesus is asked all the time give us the bottom line he goes back to what he learned in Leviticus love your neighbor as yourself. Okay, anchor yourself there, place yourself there, but don't come to somebody's house and say I'm praying for you because you're godless Pretty bad, no, that's about as upfront as I've heard.
Speaker 1:But there is that part of the conservative wing, the evangelical wing, fundamentalist wing of Christianity that says this has eternal consequences. Right that, your right belief about who Jesus is does have this eternal consequence. And I imagine that Jewish people very often have maybe not that dramatic of an experience, but have very often experiences of Christians wanting to save them. And that might be coming from a good place, but I'm sure it comes over as a rather it could be hostile or very dismissive. Yeah, I don't know how many.
Speaker 2:I always imagine, like, what are people in their living room? If you go and put a camera in front of them and you say, hey, what do you believe about this? Or that they're going to be nice. But I always think about, if somebody's sitting in their living room just by themselves, what do they believe? And even if you don't believe that, I don't know, because I think the mistake we make is we're selling too much. I think we're selling salvation, we're just giving the store away and without saying anything, if I say, if you come to my church, there's a place in heaven for you, then without saying anything else, you're implicitly you're implying that oh those people are not so ready, and sometimes it's not implicitly either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, know. So, yeah, send me to hell. Okay. People always ask me. They say I was on.
Speaker 2:I was speaking at kenesaw a while ago and somebody says where do jewish people go when they die? I said everyone knows that, miami, you have to go back to florida or boca. I'd say boca, we moved up north. But you know, like I don't worry about that. I mean, there's a belief in Judaism that God judges us in some sort of amorphous place, but that's a God issue, that's not a people issue, so I don't worry about that.
Speaker 2:The Jewish faith says we're very existential, like, if you see poverty, help people. If you see an issue, deal with it. And you're doing it, for, like this world, you're not focused on the afterlife, which nobody knows about. Yeah, but if you're telling people, as children you know, believe this way and this is what you get, then I think that it's incumbent upon the clergy to really say but what about our neighbors down the block who are not like us? That, I think, is fair to discuss. And do you really want to say, unfortunately, we love you but you're going to hell? That sort of thing? I mean really. I mean, come on To me. In my book I have a parable about Jesus and I have him crying. And he's crying and he says in effect, I meet him at a park bench and I'm not sure who it is, but he says my children have messed it up. My children have not gotten the main message here. So we just live in a paradoxical world that religions end up separating people when they should be binding them together.
Speaker 1:Under this rubric of that was a very nice way to conclude, so I think we could stop there, but I want to give you the last word. Is there anything that we haven't said that needs to be said? I want you to give the web address for your organization, but anything else that you want to say before we wrap this up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, first of all, wonderful interview. Thank you so much and, by the way, you can give me my prizes for winning whatever I won in your contest on the way out. No, I mean listen, you can Google the Jewish Christian Discovery Center.
Speaker 1:Look for the video the Magical Encounter. Is there a dash between Jewish and Christian in the—? No, Okay.
Speaker 2:Like I said, google the Jewish Christian Discovery Center. The website is therabbijesuscom, but you can find us out Now. I guess I just want to end in a simple message Ask questions, just ask questions. That's a quintessential Jewish philosophy and I wish people would do more of that and not be so accepting, because the accepting can lead you in places that are not healthy for good, honest, spiritual interchanges.
Speaker 2:There was a time in history called the Golden Age of Spain, 8th through 12th centuries, where priests, ministers, rabbis, imams—there were no ministers—priests, rabbis, imams sat together like we're sitting together, and they were studying a medieval philosophy and quoting Aristotle and quoting Plato and Socrates high level. So if you're having lunch with an imam and a priest and a rabbi, what are you going to say at your Sabbath service whenever that is? Oh, this week I had lunch with so-and-so. It's going to be high-level, recognition of each other getting along and that's sort of how I think most people want to live. Just live in that sense of I have a neighbor, I'm a good neighbor, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But I will say that, be aware that prejudice is quite tenacious, it is quite powerful and I think we underestimate its power, and I would remind people that ignorance can easily bleed over into prejudice, and not knowing about some of the contexts we're talking about can easily have people slipping, even without really knowing it, into prejudice. So when I say ask questions, I mean ask questions, push your ministers. I don't like to hear this, but push your ministers and say to them really or what are the consequences of what you're saying to me? And study, frankly, learn. Jesus didn't live in a bubble, he lived in a world and, yes, he was a child and I guess he fell and he bled and he whatever, and he yelled, he screamed, I mean he was a kid. And so study. And then I think the more you study, the more you enhance your faith.
Speaker 1:Rabbi, I really appreciate your chaplain's heart. You can see that chaplain aspect of who you are as a rabbi coming out in all of this and I thank you very much. And I like that very last line too, that ignorance leads to prejudice. I think that's a very powerful line. So I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, I'll give you a bang. All right, there you go.
Speaker 1:I like that very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you, I want to thank our audience today and Cousin David. I hope you thought this was a good episode. Maybe not as funny as you would like, but I had a good time with Rabbi Slomovitz. I want to thank our audience for sitting around the table with us today. I hope that we have given you some food for thought and something to chew on. But we aren't done yet. We probably will have a very short little bit of leftovers because Rabbi Slomovitz has to get over to his presentation, but you might hear us talking a little bit afterward. But thank you so much. This has been Church Potluck. See you next time. All right, we're done and we're still recording, though Usually we just debrief a little bit Anything you want to say. But I just want to thank you very much. I thought that was a good conversation and I think our audience will like it a lot.
Speaker 2:I hope so. I mean, you just don't hear things like this too much. So it's nice to have the opportunity to do that.
Speaker 1:I loved what you said about said about in the military, how everybody's rubbing elbows together, and so how could you not have more empathy and more understanding in that kind of a context?
Speaker 2:It's always ironic that people from the outside look at the military and whatever their perception is it was mine too like marching and following orders and all that. But once you get on the inside even for a rabbi, we had an enormous amount of freedom because we are contracted. I don't know Methodists, you guys have a bishop that sends you to a place. So for us we're contracted with like a local synagogue, but in the military. And so if you're with a local synagogue, that synagogue's sort of your boss, you have a contract with them. Board your directors.
Speaker 2:The military they just sent you to a place and they said, okay, like, do your job. And you have no board of directors because you're working for the government. And you know, if I wanted to come into a base and say I don't like this prayer book, I want another one, they'd say, fine, let's order it or whatever. Whatever you want to do, and I always had. I never had a rabbi as a boss at a priest or minister. So they said to me we don't understand the intricacies of your service, just do it, don't cause problems, you know, take care of your people. It was sort of ironic that you had all that freedom to be like, okay, do what I want. It's awesome. And I did have people who said to me early on you said you're in the military, you were a chaplain.
Speaker 1:No, I was a chaplain here at Berry for nine years. Wonderful.
Speaker 2:So you get it. I had people I'd go to rabbinic conventions and people would say, well, how much are you making Whatever? And they said, oh, we're making more in our congregation. I said, okay, good for you. I run into those people now and they say to me I envy you. I say why? They said you retired at 20 years. I was 48 when I left the Navy. But my retirement I've been getting my retirement ever since, and so that worked out well.
Speaker 2:But just having that that most people wouldn't think that you would have so much freedom. I arrived at the Naval Academy as the second rabbi in its history, Wow. And so we developed Holocaust programs, trips to Israel, I was teaching Hebrew and history at the academy, and so all those were like a tabula rasa just go in and do what you want Fantastic. So it was something that people wouldn't anticipate. Yeah, even now riding with the cops, sometimes they'll say you're here. I've had this question I've always wanted to ask while we do this traffic stop yeah, okay, whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good work. I don't need to go, but I just want to let you know very quickly my father-in-law is Navy and when he retired he became civilian and worked at Pensacola as the overseer of the junior ROTC program all over the nation.
Speaker 2:Okay, what was your father-in-law's name?
Speaker 1:Hans Krucke. When was he in? About 80 now, so he was in during the 60s.
Speaker 2:He was down near Cuba during the—. When did he retire, oh?
Speaker 1:you know what I want to say. It was somewhere in the 90s or early, early, early 2000ss and he was a. Navy chaplain? No, not a chaplain. He oversaw the, but he was in Pensacola so I don't know which base you were at, but he spent his whole civilian career coordinating the junior ROTC program for the Navy.
Speaker 2:Okay, I mean I had two tours at Pensacola. One was called CNET, which is the civilian headquarters, and the other one was, as I said, senior chaplain at NAS. But I love the military. As somebody said to me when I was joining, it's great as long as no one's shooting at you. Which I came in post-Vietnam and I came in 79. I got out 99 before 9-11. Except for Desert Shield, desert Storm and I was at the Naval Academy, it was a time of peace.
Speaker 1:I'm glad I wasn't in it wartime. I have a friend past friend who served as a military chaplain for a while. Maybe I will try to get you guys together and do another podcast on being military chaplains. And I also like how you switch your back between your yarmulke and your—we didn't really talk about that on the podcast because it's visual but you're switching between yarmulke and your naval hat in between. That's cool.
Speaker 2:The switch which I talk about a little bit in the book is that imagine and you would appreciate this as a sociologist, I mean, imagine I'm doing academic history, so I'm at Loyola and I'm trying to get my PhD in American history and, of course, history. You need primary sources, I mean, you need sources. So whatever you're going to assert historically, you have to prove you just can't say the Civil War began in Fort Sumter in Charleston, south Carolina, april 1861.
Speaker 2:Now you can say, oh, it began in Tampa, whatever. But no, we can prove that to you. And then I walk a few hundred yards. They call it Institute of Pastoral Studies, where they're talking about Matthew and the miracles of Matthew. You don't have to prove it, you just have to believe it. And making that switch between those two, and so what I try to do is blend it.
Speaker 1:That's cool, that's very cool. Now, if you could point me, next to where I'm going.
Speaker 2:That'd be appreciated.