There's one aspect of Christianity that Jews, if we're to be honest, must reject,

and that Christians, most notably Pope John the 23rd, have begun to reject.

It's the concept of rejection itself, the idea that Christianity represents God's rejection

of the Jewish people, the old Israel. This is known technically as

supersession or replacement theology, and it's enshrined in such phrases as the Christian name for the Hebrew

Bible, the Old Testament. The Old Testament means the Testament or the covenant that was once in force, but no longer.

On this view, God no longer wants us to serve him the Jewish way through the 613 commandments,

but a new way, through a new testament. His old chosen people were the physical descendants of Abraham. His new chosen people are the spiritual

descendants of Abraham. In other words, not Jews, but Christians. The result of this doctrine,

the God had rejected the Jewish people, were devastating. They were chronicled after the Holocaust

by the French historian Jules Isaac,

and more recently they've been set out in books like Rosemary, Radford, Reuters, Faith and Fratricide,

and James Carroll's Constantine's sword. The doctrine led to centuries of persecution and to Jews being treated as a pariah people.

Reading Jules Isaac's work brought about a profound metanoia chuvar change of heart on the part of John

the 23rd, which led to the Second Vatican Council of 1962 to 1965,

culminating in the Declaration, Nostra Itate, which transformed relations between the Catholic Church and the Jews.

I don't want to explore the tragic consequences of this belief here,

but rather it's untenability in the light of the biblical sources themselves. To our surprise,

the key statement occurs in perhaps the darkest passage of the entire Torah, the curses of

Bukhosa. Here in the starkest possible terms

are set out the consequences of the choices the people Israel makes. If they stay faithful to God,

they'll be blessed. But if they're faithless, the results will be defeat, devastation,

...