The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1913-06-13

depths of his own appreciation of Je-
sus, lest such appreciation token dis
loyalty to his deeply wronged people.
During the centuries that have passed
an ofttimes Christless Christendom
has made it impossible for the Jew
to look upon Jesus as a Jewish teach
er or as a Jewish prophet, for to the
Jews he could be little more than the
founder of Jewish heresy," which
resulted in infinite disaster to his own
people.
Even if Jesus had not been born
unto Israel, even if he had borne no
relation to the people of Israel, it be-
comes of Importance for Israel to de-
termine for itself what shall be its re-
lation to the man who has touched the
world for nea~!y two thousand year
as has no other single figure in his
tory.
What We think of Jesus we mus
say. not only because Of his positio.
in the world of religion. bu' becaus
he was a Jew. because Christianity is
an olfshoot of Judaism. The eterna
paradox of the Jew, g;yer of every.
thing keeper of little IT nothing. once
the giver of the gift of Jesus life and
teachings to the worlG. and now IN
der the need of declaring what is his
attitude toward him. who was not only
flesh of his flesh but very soul of his
soul, Neither Christian protest nor
Jewish lamentation can annu the
fact that Jesus was a Jew, an Hebrew
of the Hebrews.
Surely it is not wholly unfit that
Jesus be reclaimed by those who have
never unitedly or organizedly denied
him, though oft denied by his fol
lowers; that Jesus should not so much
be appropriated by us as assigned to
the place in Jewish life and Jewish
history which is rightfully his own.
Jesus was not only Jew, but he was
the Jew, the Jew of Jews, and it is
little less than tragic that, with re-
spect to Jesus, the world imagineS
that his life belongs to Christianity,
even as his death was due to Israel.
That Jesus was a Jew is only half adj
mitted, when not wholly denied; but
that Judas was a Jew is always affirm
ed without doubt or hesitation. What
ever the death of Jesus may have
been, we believe that his life was
Jewish, and we devoutly affirm that
Jewish were his teachings. In that
day when history shall be written in
the light of truth, the people of Israel
will be known not as the ChriSt-kill-
ers, but as the Christ-bearers not as
the God-slayers, but as the God-bring-
ers to the world.
The latest form of the higher anti
Semitism, which at its height is a very
low thing, denies that Jesus was a Sc.
mite, holding that Jesus was an Ar
yam. and perhaps ready to urge in the
near future that he was the leader of
the social-democratic, anti-Semitic,
Aryan political party in the Galilean
province of Palestine.
We need not consider in relation to
the life of Jesus the Jew certain be-
liefs and dogmas which have been suf-
fered to become central to the scheme
of organized Christianity. For we
know that they would be as remote
from the mind of Jesus as they are
unacceptable to us. his fellow-Jews, aft
er the lapse of nineteen centuries. We
may reclaim Jesus as our own, and
yet reject the dogmatic teachings of
Christianity organized by Paul and
later developed and elaborated into
the Christian scheme. through the
abatement of certain teachings of Je-
sus, which made Christianity tolera-
BILE and even acceptable to the pagan
world.
The present emphasis of Israel up
on the simple, primal teachings of Je-
sus rather than upon the creeds or
beliefs of Christendom, may further
the profoundly significant return of
Christianity in our time to Jesus.
Christendom. as perhaps never before
in eighteen hundred years, is crying
that it must go back to Jesus. Ecce
homo. Not only does truth demand
that we, his fellow-Jews, further this
quest for the teachings of Jesus which
are Enthusiastically his and our own,
but we have no right to keep alOOf
from that movement which seeks to
resurrect Jesus the man from the
tomb of Christian dogma. When the
processes of the resurrection of the
body Of the teachings of Jesus from
the tomb of dogmatic Christianity
4 @S4 1,<,