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Book Review: Surprised by Christ
How does a Hasidic Jew, the son, and grandson of rabbis, become an Orthodox Christian? The journey is a fascinating one, as A. James Bernstein relates in a book that is one part personal autobiography, and the other part his spiritual journey from the Judaism of his youth through what he describes as the return to the fulfillment of Judaism’s promise in the Orthodox Church. In his tale, Father Bernstein takes readers from his initial discovery of Christianity as a young man, through his years as an Evangelical street preacher in Berkley, and back to Israel both past and present as he seeks to re-find the ancient Jewish connection to Christianity.
Bernstein begins with a vivid recollection of when a drunk anti-semite threw a brick through his father’s storefront in the middle of the night in Queens, NY. Though James was born in the US during World War II, his parents had wed in the early 1930s, and had fled Jerusalem (where his father was from) for the US (his mother was from Pittsburgh) out of fear that the Muslim Mufti of the region would ally with the Nazis. The horrors of the war and the revelations of the Holocaust broke much of his father’s faith, and though trained as a Rabbi in his youth, in America he instead chose to run a candy store.
Bernstein describes much of growing up in New York City in the 1950s and ’60s as nearly idyllic, the brick-throwing aside, but he had a hunger for spiritual knowledge that led him into conversations with many of the other ethnic groups around him, and those conversations led him to read (in secret) the Christian Bible. What he found, and moreover whom he found he compared in detail to everything he had learned as a Jew, and in time, and at the cost of his relationship with his parents, he converted to Christianity. But of what sort?
To a convert, the variety of Christian denominations and their practices are bewildering, and Bernstein struggled at first to find an authentic expression, eventually finding his way into an Evangelical group in college in the late 1960s. From the time of his conversion, he was led to actively evangelize, whether by speaking, doing street theater performances, or distributing flyers. In that time he encountered other Jewish converts, including Moishe Rosen, who recruited him into what became Jews for Jesus (Bernstein takes some credit for coining the group’s name).
Bernstein narrates a rather active and enthusiastic life through this time as he and Rosen relocated to California and then began street preaching and theater on the Berkley campus, all against the backdrop of the other tumults of the time. At all times he followed where his faith pointed, but time and again his narrative returns to his fundamental concern: how does he maintain his Jewish identity as a Christian? As his preaching continued, and he found himself elevated to become a pastor at his church, he describes a related and growing concern too: if the early Christians were all Jews, where is Judaism within Christianity, and are there still Jewish Christians, living descendants of those early believers, to be found in the world (not just recent converts like himself)?
The story of his life is throughout intermingled with his unfolding of the Christian message itself. Each step in his discovery is described both in terms of his autobiography and in theological terms. Along the way, he narrates his own spiritual and familial struggles, his travels back to Israel, and movements and organizations he was involved in along the way. But his goal is always clear: to tell how he did, at last, find the living out of ancient Judaism within the Orthodox Christian Church, and how he, at last, became a priest therein.
As an adult convert to Christianity myself, I found his own struggles with modern expressions of Christianity rather familiar. Like him, I never really felt I fit in well with Evangelicalism, and I rather admired his persistence and intellectual curiosity to follow where history and his faith pointed. But the book is also fascinating in its explorations of the continuation of many Jewish beliefs, scriptural interpretations, and practices that are still alive within the Orthodox church. Rev. Bernstein gave up much by following Jesus but in the process, he also reconnected with the earliest followers, Jews all, whose descendants truly are still alive in the same lands they’ve always dwelt in.
The book was originally published in 2008 by what was then known as Conciliar Press, which is now known as Ancient Faith Publishing, and is available as a paperback, an e-book, and an audiobook. The unabridged audiobook, narrated by Father Bernstein himself, was just made available through Audible.com and runs about 16 hours.
The only criticism I would make of the audiobook format is that the author (likely at the behest of the audio producer) reads the book a bit slowly and with deliberation. This gives the impression of a less lively speaker than he is in real life. I’ve linked at the bottom of this post to a Youtube video of him giving a talk a few years ago, and he has been featured on a number of podcasts as well, so you can see that he is quite dynamic. But that is a minor quibble, and it is wonderful to hear Rev. Bernstein unfold his life and theology in his own voice and New York cadence.
In full disclosure, I was given a free copy of the audiobook by Ancient Faith Publishing in return for reviewing it.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
That’s been my understanding from what people say on podcasts.
That was the original Benedict, wasn’t it?
It is an essential part of Judaism that people must be free to choose to walk away. We have the story of a High Priest who, one day, did just that (though not for another faith, as far as I know).
And yet I view these stories with great sadness. Invariably the people who leave Judaism do so from ignorance about Judaism itself. I have taken it on myself to try to rectify this deficit, and @susanquinn is working with me on this.
To me the decision to leave one’s faith is a bit analogous to the decision to abort a child. If you really want to do it, please at least take a good look at what you have before rejecting it.
This is it: http://ricochet.com/570502/felix-fiction/
Thanks much, RH!
For the sake of argument: what if someone’s leaving their faith is not borne of ignorance, but of finding truth and / or direct revelation that they know as an extension and fulfillment of that very faith?
I do not doubt that there are those who walk away from Judaism out of genuine ignorance, but I would not say all are “invariably” out of ignorance. I know others who have walked into Judaism in the genuine belief (out of years of study) that they had found the truth (one of my wife’s cousins has done so). Would it be fair of me to say he walked out Christianity out of ignorance? I think he would dispute that, just as Bernstein here would dispute any charges of his ignorance being “invariable”.
Invincible?, Skip…
I firmly believe that people need the freedom to write their own stories, and that especially means religious freedom.
There really is a LOT of ignorance, especially among “cultural” Jews or even orthodox Jews who stop learning at relatively young ages.
But I freely admit that what I consider to be “knowledge” of Judaism is not common at all, even among many orthodox Jews. Which is why I write and try to explain it, primarily to Jewish audiences. So does @richardharvester using a very different medium but with many shared conclusions
Invincible ignorance is an entirely different matter, and one can encounter that pretty much anywhere. After all, there is a Flat Earth Society quite alive and
well(it would not do to call it “well” I think)… alive and active is probably the better description.I forgot to get back to this one.
It is the former, not the latter that Dreher is espousing: forming deliberate societies and support networks within the larger society. I may post a review here of the book once I finish it (which might be a while, given my backlog).
Knowledge can be a tricky thing to arrive at. Two people can be equally presented with the same facts, and be working from only marginally different biases and life experiences, and yet draw vastly different conclusions. And it may be that one of that pair has an additional piece of prior knowledge, or possesses an intuition more acute than the other.
In my pulling out of Protestantism, it was often said to me that I had not acquired enough knowledge to have made that decision, and some did accuse me of theological and historical ignorance. Could the charge have been valid? Perhaps so in that I have not read John Calvin in full at all (and certainly not in the original French), nor have I read Martin Luther in full (and certainly not in the original German), nor had I read John Wesley, RC Sproul, or a host of other Protestant scholars and apologists. Nor had I committed to memory vast reaches of scripture (that sort of memorization is not easy for me), which is considered very often de rigeur in such debates (proof-texting battles are a common occurrence). By those sorts of standards I suppose I could indeed be called ignorant.
However, were such examinations truly necessary to have made an informed decision? Not necessarily. We always build our knowledge within frameworks of other knowledge, putting things where they seem to fit best. If, as I had come to believe, that the fundamental basis of all those writers and scholars was itself sundered from the truth, then of what use would it have been to have read through them? Being logically and rhetorically internally consistent is only of use when the basis, the starting point of one’s thinking, is itself sound. Their knowledge and teaching, however much it fit within its own framework, was in a framework that ultimately did not fit as a unit within everything else I had come to know and understand. Studying them in detail would therefore be as useful to me as studying the geocentric model of the solar system. Yes I would remain ignorant of the finer workings out of that model, and all the mathematical and theological machinery therein, but in the light of the heliocentric model such a fine knowledge would be filed differently anyway.
Though I did not go into this in the OP, Bernstein does describe the process by which he came to be a Christian. Some of it was study. A great deal was prayer, and what decided him was revelation, what he described as a singular instance of the unmistakeable presence of the Divine. In the light of that moment, his path was set, and what he knew to be true was immutable. From that moment, he was working with a new framework, and any knowledge obtained from that moment would have judged accordingly.
It was Felix:
http://ricochet.com/570502/felix-fiction/
I do have to raise some points–politely, I hope. If I converted to Islam, I wouldn’t be an “Islamic Catholic”; I’d be a Muslim. Other Catholics would no longer consider me one of them, nor would they regard that conversion as a wonderful gift from God that improves or clarifies my faith.
I mention this because when Drew Klavan became a Christian, there were a couple of Ricochet commenters who seemed a little put out that Jews were indifferent or unenthusiastic about it, as if they were being churlish for not investigating Drew’s new lifestyle choice.
There’s no hint of that attitude in this thread, fortunately.
The relationship of the faiths to each other kind of makes a difference, doesn’t it?
Christianity is built on Judaism. Islam is nowhere related to Christianity. Islam and Judaism could be viewed as a lateral move, only because of the Ishmael vs Isaac bit, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
Judaism and Christianity aren’t really at odds with each other fundamentally (from the Christian perspective). Jesus made many claim on that and Paul went into depth on it.
I actually do have to pick on what I bolded above. Islam was viewed by Christians in its early centuries as a pretty wild Christian heresy, and with good reason. Contra what Islam says about itself today, the Koran did not arrive in its canonical form until well after Mohammed’s death, and when it did do so a lot of competing earlier versions were destroyed (sometimes along with the people holding on to them). As late as the 700s, St. John of Damascus, who was a clerk of the Muslim overlord of Damascus, and had lived all his life under Islamic rule, wrote multiple times that he considered Islam to be Christian heresy, and he knew first hand (there’s a pun in there, if you know where to look) of Islam’s scripture and practices of that time.
Islam makes definite statements about Jesus, and claims to be the succession to both Judaism and Christianity. To take Gary’s hypothetical, he would claim that his move from Rome to Mecca was likewise a fulfillment of a promise of Christianity (which is something Islam claims).
So, yes, the relationships between the faiths does make a difference on some points, but just as Islam and Christianity, or Islam and Judaism are at odds with each other, we should not claim that Judaism and Christianity are somehow not at odds with each other. They are at odds with each other, and we should be frank about that. Either Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy and the son of the Almighty, or he was not. What one believes about that claim is fundamental because the acceptance or rejection of that claim informs everything else. The claim is, moreover, binary in nature, not something one can accept or reject in part. And as 2000 years of history has shown, the two faiths have been “at odds” rather consistently – not in all matters, nor at all times, but the litany of pogroms, persecutions, and worse besides (no matter how spiritually and scripturally perverted the justifications) bear out how much at odds we have been.
I would add a further note of caution here too: many modern Christians love to say they “support” Israel, or “support” Jews, but I worry that such support, such as it is, is rather heavily based on certain eschatologies – specific beliefs about an immanent return of Jesus and an end of days. How will such support hold up should that “end of days” not come as or when expected? Will Christians turn on the Jews once again? Or what if the Christian influence on US policy continues to erode? How long will the US and Israel remain allied? Obama was decidedly unfriendly to Israel, what happens if we have a president who is outrightly hostile? We should never discount how, even if Christianity is theoretically not completely at odds with Judaism, Christians themselves have frequently and horribly been so, and may well turn that way again.
I touched on this idea in an earlier post of mine. It’s possible, also, if certain factors come together: actions by Israel and/ or other countries in the Middle East; the U.S. economy turning sour again (and at some point it likely will); anti-Semitism rises in its many forms and people come together. I think you make an excellent point, and I especially commend you, @skipsul, for keeping the discussion both deep and civil. Thanks!
Skip, I’ve often found the notion of Christians who refer to themselves as “Messianic Jews” quite puzzling, since both Jews and Christians await the Messiah: It seems a bit like having one’s cake and eating it, to me, somehow. I do enjoy learning about the resonances between Judaism and my Catholic faith – and becoming more literate in reading the Torah/Law/Prophets, thanks to friends here who indulge my theo-geekness. (You know who you are.) :-)
That’s right, Christianity is an outgrowth of Judaism. We didn’t reject the Old Testament. We added an addition to it. The Old Testament is the word of God, and we Christians see Christ as the Word of God. In effect we are reverencing the very same word. Now our cultural paths diverged, mostly after the fall of the Temple, but Christianity is still rooted in Judaism.
Islam is a completely different matter. Yes, Ishmael and Isaac both go Abraham, and so Islam is an “Abrahamic” religion. Frankly that’s superficial nonsense. Unlike Christianity Islam consciously rejected the Old Testament and they have rejected Christ’s divinity. Why? Because according to them Jews and Christians rejected and distorted the Koran before Mohammed was even born. Mohammed supposedly didn’t write the Koran, it was dictated from Allah, and that same Koran from the seventh century was dictated to Jews and Christians before our holy books were written. But supposedly Allah had dictated it to early Jews and they distorted it to create the Torah, and it was dictated again to Christians and it was distorted again to create the Gospels. This is part of the Islamic psychology of supremacy. They can’t even accept the fact that there were people before them that wrote their own holy books. They have to create this cockamamie myth that their book was here first. And this is not an innocuous detail. Altering the Koran is blasphemy, even if it happened before it was put on paper, and this is at the heart of their justifications for calling Jews and Christians pigs and monkeys. Islam is outside Judaeo-Christian tradition.
Muslims and Jews both regard Jesus as a historical figure, but regard claims that he was the divine Messiah to be dangerous heresy. It’s not a subtle point, and one that can’t be negotiated away.
I am enormously glad that today’s Christians do not, by and large, underestimate what role Judaism has played in mankind’s development. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that Christians and Jews are very likely to look at conversion issues differently.
Yes.
Maybe so. But let’s keep in mind that it does recognize Moosa, Daood, and Isa as holy messengers of G-d and prophets who gave us Holy Books. Idolatry is forbidden, polytheism is forbidden, and so on. There’s some common theology.
Well, not counting the likes of Paul and Bernstein as Jews, yes.
I’m not sure how accurate they regard the Old Testament figures but if it’s anything like how Isa is supposed to be Christ, it’s a joke. There are no similarities.
I wouldn’t put much stock in the name. Hebrew–>Greek–>Syrian–>Arabic isn’t much worse than Hebrew–>Greek–>Latin–>English. I’d rank Isa as closer to Iehsous than the “Jeezus” of north America.
Interestingly, that story from the Gnostic sources is about as strong a case for Jesus’ divinity as you could ask for: He makes clay live.
And he’s still a virgin-born holy prophet who gives us the Word of G-d.
But having noted that–yes, not that many similarities; and many differences.
My Messianic Jewish friends and colleagues in ministry do not call themselves Christians for historical reasons. The history of pogroms and persecution justified using deliberately selective and incorrect readings of the New Testament or excessively harsh readings of Augustine or correct readings of Chrysostom’s writings has poisoned the word for them and their families. Not all Christians from a Jewish background use the term, though. Our friend Hanna who worked with Operation Mobilization for years just calls herself “a Christian who is Jewish.”
Still rather mystifying, but, there you are…
I don’t think matters of faith are all about being fully informed. You spent more time than most in the domain of reason. I think God is so great and vast that we find different ways to him. You are walking your path, and own no human any explanation. Your path is with God.
I would only add to that the Almighty is beyond even what we could consider reason. When one encounters the miraculous, and recognizes it for what it is, it is often well outside the bounds of reason entirely.
One may start the journey with signposts offered by investigation and reason, but belonging/relationship are in the realm of pure Love and Awe.
I figured “Messianic Jew” was a Jew who believes there to be a promised Messiah and that he has come (as Jesus) (basically Jews for Christ or Judaic Christian).
Reading iWe and some other orthodox Judaism posts around here, I get the impression (possibly false) that the expectation of a messiah is not a universal belief among godly Jews.
“Jews for Christ” are…Wait for it…Christians; at least in our day and time, whatever label they may choose. Don’t want to beat this senseless, or detract from Skip’s lovely book review, so…I’m out. :-)
Maybe I’m a bit more willing to accept the distinction because as a gentile Christian, I don’t have the same underlying cultural heritage that ties to my faith the same way.
In some ways, I’d consider myself a dog eating the scraps that the Master has left for me under the table while Christian Jews are the Master’s children. Or the prodigal son to the Oldest son.
I don’t think they’d see me that way, but I think it matters more than you give it credit, even if we all end up in the same place a.la. Galatians.