> Ernst Meyer, friend of Karl Jaspers was Jewish
> (his sister married Jaspers). You 
> didn't answer if you're related.

not to my knowledge.

> I couldn't understand from what you wrote
> if your said inability to distinguish 
> between the two faiths derives from unfamiliarity
> with Judaism (on a high level, 
> that is), or from a life-long comparing of the two,
> involving serious study of both.

I am very much a Protestant, in the sense that I
am my own rabbi, pastor and priest. 
I read the texts (scriptures) and they live
in my imagination. 
I do not consciously permit
conventional or authoritative interpretations
to affect my religious experiences or judgment;
rather such authorities themselves become the object of
inquiry and interpretation.

> Anyway, while I'm not sure about
> what you call "the essence of Judaism" 
> (that it is *the* essence, that is),
> it's a very good idea, if I may say so.

The essence of Judaism,
-or of anything else for that matter,
is the conception of it
from which thought processes arise as their origin
and to which they return as their conclusion:
The apparently fundamental, primary substance,
the Aristotelian arche, in this case, of the
religious experience.

As I said, the essence of Judaism for me is that
deity is (absolutely) intangible and its name
is (absolutely) unpronounceable. (unaussprechbar)
That is for me the essence of _all_ religiousness.

My interpretation has a powerful dialectic implication.
A god whom you don't see, whose name you may not mention,
who prohibits you from making a representation of him,
or for that matter of anything else,
for fear that the image might usurp
the function of deity, is, 
in the context of objectivity,
a non-god, an anti-god,
and liberates me from the bondage and idolatry
of visible gods, which, as you know, are a dime a dozen.

My Judaism frees me from the oppression of a deity
worshipped in public. My Judaism is all inwardness;
while the Judaism I perceive around me is all outwardness.
(The same is true, of course of the Christianity
that surrounds me.)

When I say, that my religious experience is rooted
in my own reading of the scriptures, I readily admit
that I am very eclectic; that I pick and choose what
suits my purposes, and what meets my needs,
the rest I either ignore, or, if necessary, disavow.

> As to Jesus, the "best" Jesus I've ever come across
> was the one in Salinger's _Franny and Zooey_
> (which is also my favorite book),
> where he is VERY human.
> But I think the sages in his time disapproved of him
> as a human as well (his full deity status 
> came a little later, I believe). 

The "Last Supper" (Abendmahl) of Christian theology,
I interpret as the epitome of the Jewish experience:
With the seders in which I have participated,
I have experienced a pale reflection of
the loneliness, the isolation,
the feeling of forlornness that is the fate
of the existing individual in social ceremony.
To be Jewish means to be different, to be lonely,
to be forsaken, despised, and perhaps - to be crucified,
but to be consummately reconciled with ones God.

The Jewish religious experience, as I have defined it,
is fundamental to Christianity; that is why I write of
a Judaic-Christian traditon (Ueberlieferung), and that
is why for me, there is no essential difference
between the two religions.  The life and death of Jesus
are the epitome of Jewishness.  Christianity itself,
like Judaism, is forever, as if by a law of nature,
degenerating into ritual and legality. Because
Judaism is fundamental to Christianity, Christian
reformers redefine Christianity by appealing to the
Jew's relationship to his God. Luther referred to this
relationship as "faith". Kierkegaard called it subjectivity.

> Tell me, now that the vast differences
> between Jesus and the Church are so apparent,
> does any Church deem it necessary to revise its teachings?

I think all "churches", Christian and Jewish alike,
labor under the same burden of presuming to represent objectively,
outwardly, publicly, what is - in essence - individual, inward,
subjective (religious) experience. In both the Christian
and the Jewish "church", so far as I can see, inwardness
becomes alienated esthetically as ritual and ethically as law.
In Judaism, the function of the church as socialized religion
is to corroborate and confirm the chosenness of God's people.
In Christendom, the function of the church as socialized religion
is to validate the idolatry of a human god in securing the worship
of him by all the world.

Ecclesiology is the technical term for the study of the
conflict (or reconciliation) of societal outwardness and
existential inwardness. The political scientists would
distinguish between secular and sacred society, between
the sanctorum communio and the communio peccatorum,
between church and state. But for the existing individual,
who cannot accept societal hegemony over his inwardness,
no such distinction exists; and indeed, history seems to
tell us that the distinction between church and state is
a pious wish and an illusion.

I hope I haven't offended you,
and if so, please forgive me.

Ernst Meyer
review@netcom.com