Catholic Transcript Online

Rabbi Jacob Neusner

RHINEBECK, N.Y. – Rabbi Jacob Neusner grew up in West Hartford, corresponded with the Pope and spoke with Jesus after the Sermon on the Mount.

That last feat got everyone’s attention. Especially the Pope’s.

Rabbi Neusner is the author of A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, an imaginary but serious conversation with the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel. Originally published in 1993 by Doubleday, it caught the attention of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. In his 2007 book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict devotes 20 pages to a discussion of Rabbi Neusner’s book. Since then, Rabbi Neusner has been lightheartedly referred to as “the Pope’s rabbi.”

 Jacob Neusner was born in 1932 in Hartford. He grew up in West Hartford and graduated from William H. Hall High School there in 1950. In 1929, his father, Samuel Neusner, co-founded The Connecticut Jewish Ledger, a West Hartford-based newspaper that still publishes weekly. The paper remained in the Neusner family until the 1960s, when it was sold to Richard Greenfield.

 “I still keep in contact with Ricky Greenfield,” Rabbi Neusner said during an interview in his Hudson Valley home. “He’s really made something of that paper. It’s very professional.”

Before he wrote his book, Rabbi Neusner was working with the Community of Sant’Egidio, an interreligious group that the Vatican has recognized as a public lay association.

“I was working on the Jewish-Christian dialogue,” Rabbi Neusner said. “Most of the books that I read in the area were not very interested in the basis for disagreement. They were trying to gloss over truth claims and they were heading toward a relativism – I’m right for me and you’re right for you – and I decided that I would like to take Christianity seriously and deal with its truth claims.”

He chose Jesus’ claim, from Matthew 5:17, “Think not that I have come to abolish the Torah or the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus states repeatedly, “You have heard it said … but I say to you …” Each time, Rabbi Neusner said, Jesus refers to the Torah, the law Moses delivered to the Jews at Mount Sinai, and then Jesus expounds on it point by point. A Rabbi Talks with Jesus evaluates each of these truth claims. He ultimately concludes that much of what Jesus says goes against the Torah. “If I had heard what he said in the Sermon on the Mount, for good and substantive reasons I would not have followed him,” Rabbi Neusner writes in the book.

“Cardinal Ratzinger gave us a blurb for the book because he understood that it took seriously the truth claims of Christianity,” Rabbi Neusner said.

That in itself may not have been enough to draw widespread attention to the book. But in 2005 Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict. And last year, Pope Benedict published Jesus of Nazareth, which devotes more discussion to Rabbi Neusner than to any other living person.

“My book has just been translated into French,” Rabbi Neusner said, selecting the slim volume from a row of bookshelves. “It’s already been translated into German, Russian, Croatian, Italian and other languages.” One of the most published humanities scholars in the world, Rabbi Neusner said none of his other books – and there are hundreds – has been translated into so many languages.

All because of the Pope’s book?

“Absolutely,” he said.

In Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict acknowledges Rabbi Neusner’s respect and reverence for Jesus. But he argues that Jesus, who “sits on the Cathedra of Moses” on a mountain symbolizing “the new and definitive Sinai,” becomes “the greater Moses, who broadens the Covenant to include all nations” (p. 66).

The Pope writes from a strikingly different perspective from Rabbi Neusner’s. As a Catholic, the Pope accepts Jesus Christ as God. As a Jew, Rabbi Neusner does not and therefore maintains that the Torah of Moses is the last word, the ultimate authority.

But if Jesus is God, would his word become the new Torah?

“Exactly,” Rabbi Neusner conceded, though he does not accept that belief. “The Pope understood this to mean that Christianity is represented by Jesus and it’s not the invention of his followers.”

He said his book maintains that Jesus created Christianity and that that is what the Pope liked about it.

“The Sermon on the Mount, the most Jewish passage of the New Testament, is also the most Christian, because it makes the claim of Jesus to be Christ explicit through details of the law,” he said. “New Testament scholarship has tended to differentiate between Jesus the Jew and Christ the Christian, and they represent Christianity as the invention of the apostles. But I argue that Christianity is the creation of Jesus himself.”

Before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict, he and Rabbi Neusner corresponded frequently. “Since he was made Pope I haven’t had any exchange with him,” Rabbi Neusner said. “But his book came out, and that was like a personal letter to me.”

Rabbi Neusner teaches theology at Bard College in Annondale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where he holds an endowed chair in his name. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, a Master of Hebrew Letters from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a doctorate in religion from Columbia University. He holds nine honorary degrees and has lectured extensively.

Although he has been away from the Hartford area since 1950, Rabbi Neusner recalls it with fondness. “Growing up Jewish in West Hartford brought me into constant contact with Catholic fellow students,” he said. “This was before America became the tolerant society that it’s been for the past 50 years. But I always found Christian friends who were respectful of me as a Jew and who were encouraging.”

Now that a dialogue has opened up, is Rabbi Neusner considering another book in response to the Pope’s?

“What I’d like to write, along with scholars of Christianity,” he said in an e-mail, “is a work on concurrences between Catholic Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.”

He is working title is Common Ground: Where Judaism and Christianity Come Together.

Locals praise ‘Pope’s rabbi’

 WEST HARTFORD – Rabbi Nathan Hershfield of Temple Beth Israel and his wife, Lotte, remember Rabbi Jacob Neusner from more than four decades ago.

 We were both at his wedding,” Rabbi Hershfield said. That was in 1964, when Rabbi Neusner married Suzanne Richter. Rabbi Neusner was later to be celebrated for opening a dialogue among Jewish and Christian leaders.

 Even back then, Rabbi Hershfield said, Rabbi Neusner was known as a scholarly man. “I always respected his writing. His scholarship is profound,” Rabbi Hershfield said.

 Lotte Hershfield recalled that everyone in the Neusner family was bright. She said she knew his brother, the attorney Frederick Neusner, who remained in the area longer.

William C. Bieluch, a retired judge, said that Rabbi Neusner was associated with Mr. Bieluch’s alma mater, Brown University. (Rabbi Neusner taught at Brown from 1968 to 1990.)

“I knew his brother, attorney Frederick Neusner, who practiced law in Hartford,” Mr. Bieluch said. “[Rabbi Jacob Neusner] was a very prominent member of the Jewish community in the area.”

 Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler, rabbi emeritus at Beth El Temple, has known Rabbi Neusner for more than 50 years. “He was probably one of the most brilliant students and is one of the most prolific writers of Jewish theology,” said Rabbi Kessler, who is known for his involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Rabbi Kessler said that Rabbi Neusner ruffled some feathers in the Jewish community for his liberal views. “But he’s a gentleman in dealing with people, and his world outlook is one in which he is aware of how to relate to other religions and ways of life,” he said.