This week we celebrate the miracle around which Christian life revolves: the death and resurrection of Jesus. It makes me wonder if we jewish jesusare truly ready to embrace a Jewish Jesus.
Jesus is seen as a Jew in many pulpits and pews, but usually as an exception, an anomaly. In too many sermons, commentaries, and hymnals his teachings on love, inclusion, and forgiveness are set up as a contrast against the Jews and Judaism of his day. What makes him distinctive, we say, is that he's not like the other Jews. He reached people on the margins. He talked to women. He ate with sinners and tax collectors. But these characterizations of a Jewish Jesus are still distorted.
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