Another reviewer here wrote of "A Rabbi Talks to Jesus" that the writer's style is one of "grandiose prose and excessive verbiage" and I would have to agree. Another wrote that "the book is 161 pages long and Neusner takes 36 pages to tell us what he's going to [say and why]" and that is certainly true; I kept thinking, please get on with it! But even so, I appreciated Rabbi Neusner's book and his thoughts and felt that his desire to release each practitioner, Jew or Christian, to pursue the knowledge and presence of God in his or her own way was very sincere. The Rabbi basically says, "let us agree to disagree, respectfully".

I felt a sense of relief and gratitude for the Rabbi's having stated in this book that it is time to stop trying to pretend that Judaism and Christianity are very much the same; they are not and this fallacy serves neither Christianity nor Judaism. Though there are some commonalities (as there may be found among all religions), the values, ethics, and worldviews of Judaism and Christianity are very different in some critical ways. As Rabbi Neusner says in his book, "Jews and Christians have avoided meeting heads-on the points of substantial difference between us..."

How much confusion has come in trying to satisfy the both? For example, in calling our country, and Western civilization in general, Judeo-Christian, what do we do when Christianity teaches "turn the other cheek" and "offer no resistance to one who is evil" (Matthew 5:38-39) and Judaism sees such a practice as "giving into evil" and, as Rabbi Neusner states, "Torah expects Israel [the Jewish people]to struggle for God's purpose, and in light of that cause, sanctions warfare? When Christians aspire to (if not always succeed in the practice of) perfect forgiveness and love of not only one's friends, but one's enemies while Jewish groups hound a now 89-year old alleged Nazi war criminal for 32 years in the name of justice?(This is a story that has been in the news this past week in the U.S.) How do we respond when we come from such different perspectives on what is right and wrong, and what is the definition of goodness and what we perceive as "the will of God"? I don't suggest that I have any answers to those questions, but I do believe that it is important to address this incongruence that has been set up so that we can get straight on just what our values truly are. I think Rabbi Neusner would agree.

It was refreshing to have a Rabbi state clearly and without apology the distinctions between what Jesus was teaching and what the Torah states. Jesus was teaching something radically different in many ways from Judaism (the religion of Judea) of his time. Disentangling Christianity from Judaism would also free the field for exploration into other possible roots of and influences on Jesus' teachings and on the development of the religion we now know as Christianity. Through such explorations we may even come to a deeper, more profound understanding of Christ's teachings.

Three stars for the book "A Rabbi Talks With Jesus", points taken off due to the inelegance of the writing, but four stars for the refreshing and LIBERATING ideas within!

I am coming back to this review sometime later to suggest a book which I have just finished reading and which I ma finding very interesting and relevant to the material here. I hope that other readers may be interested as well. The book is "The Jesus Mysteries". I am not suggesting it is true or not true, but the authors make a very interesting case for their thesis. The material would be interesting to Jews and to Christians and I hope Rabbi Neusner gets a chance to read it! It offers so many clues to the breakdown of what's Christian, what's Jewish. In short, Paul may have been saying that the Law is fulfilled when one enters into the next level of initiation into the "Mysteries". That ritual, dogma, all that Literalism has a purpose but that it is no longer required after a certain level of spiritual growth and attainment. Believe me, this is threatening, blasphemous, offensive,and has been judged "elitist" before, but it may explain what was happening among the early Jewish Christians such as Paul. I highly recommend reading the book, but be ready to have your beliefs and views challenged--Jew or Christian!

Unfortunately, like his disappointing attack on Rabbi Steinsaltz, Mr Neussner tries to be controversial (and therefore jack up his book sales) by setting up a straw man -in this case the Sermon on the Mount- and declares Y'shua's Torah to be insufficient. Alas, he could have actually chosen to look at all of Jesus' reported words as a body of work, rather than peering through a keyhole (of a single short collection of teachings) and declaring that only what he saw was all there is. Neussner's technique seems to repeat itself endlessly from Steinsaltz to Jesus, and therefore relieves me of any desire to read a single word more in any further books he might ever write.

I thought the book was a neat idea. Let's go back in time and hang out with the Master as he teaches the Sermon on the Mount and other assorted lessons.

The book is 161 pages long, and Neusner takes 36 pages to tell us what he's going to do and why he didn't focus on the other gospels and on other teachings and stories of Jesus. Obviously, this is necessary, but I felt it took too much space and too much time. Moreover, I had some issues with some of the things Dr. Neusner shared in this section. He mentioned that he couldn't bring himself to dialogue with the Jesus of John's Gospel because John and the Johannine Jesus abhorred the Jews.

But it could be possible to see John's Gospel as reflecting a "sharp family disagreement" between the Jewish Jesus and Jewish leaders. The books division of Jesus' ministry according to the Jewish calendar is strange indeed for a supposedly anti-Jewish work. The same goes for the sharp disagreements the Matthaen Jesus has with the Scribes and with the Pharisees.

When we get into the book proper, we see that Neusner agrees with many of Jesus' teachings. The stuff he really struggles with are the teachings which showcase the authority of Jesus, like when Jesus says "You have heard that it has been said, but I say to you," or when he says "Leave everything and follow me," or when He says "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath," or when He says "Something greater than the temple is here." Neusner cannot envision anything greater than the Torah given by God on Mount Sinai, and so he is great puzzled by Jesus' unique authority.

At this point, I wanted to say "Nu? Is not the uniqueness of Jesus Christ the main theme of Matthew's Gospel? We see this right from the get-go: His unique genealogy, His unique conception, His unique birth narrative, His unique baptism, His unique encounter with the devil, His unique teachings, and yes, His unique authority.

Neusner also struggles to grasp how Jesus can declare all foods clean when we have the food laws in Leviticus and Numbers. It goes back to the main issue: The unique authority and person of Jesus.

Dr. Neusner also wishes that Jesus would have used the plural form of "you" more often. He wanted Jesus to speak to Israel corporately and not just to individual people within the community. In fact, this is one of the other big reasons why Neusner chooses not to follow Jesus.

I would say that everything written in the Scriptures has implications for our individual lives and our corporate lives and while there is a lot of eschatological teaching directed at the individual, there are texts where Jesus does address the community (Luke 19:19-43 for instance), and he does this without rehashing and reprising all that was written in the Torah (Exodus 21-24).

I couldn't help but think of how Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3 that even when Moses is read in the shuls, a veil covers the hearts of those who hear, and only in Christ is the veil taken away. I realize some may cry "foul" at this, but I couldn't get that scripture text out of my head as I read Neusner's book. I feel sheepish, because the truth is that I deeply respect him as a careful scholar of Judaism and writer and editor of over 900 books. He is a wise and learned man.

I recommend this book and thank Dr. Neusner for writing it.

I heard of this book reading the book "Jesus of Nazareth" by the Pope Benedict XVI. He quotes it with a lot of praise, in more than 20 pages of his own book. And there is no doubt that the actual Pope is a very knowledgeable person on all of these topics.
It is an outstanding book for ecumenical dialog: intelligent, respectful and attractive. Of course, depending on your Faith, you will agree with the Author or not, but if you read the book, you will learn a lot.

Jacob Neusner's exceptional book, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, gets at the heart of why Jews struggle to accept the entirety of Jesus' teachings. While avoiding new age relativist methodologies in dialogue, Neusner capitalizes on the reality that differences in belief do exist between Christians and Jews, and only by understanding these differences, can one truly engage in dialogue. Making it, as Pope Benedict the 16th compelling stated, "...the most important book in Jewish-Christian dialogue in the last decade."

In the opening lines, Neusner candidly explains that if he would have been a Jew in first century Palestine, he would not have joined the circle of Jesus' disciples. Even more, he writes that, "If I heard what ... [Jesus] said in the Sermon on the Mount, for good and substantive reasons I would not have followed him." Throughout the book Neusner envisions himself talking with Jesus and sincerely provides cogent reasons as to why he would have found it difficult to accept what Jesus had to say. However, Neusner's objective is neither proselytism nor apprizing Christians as to why their claims about Jesus are erroneous, rather it is to delineate some of the essential issues that divide Christians and Jews. While doing this, Neusner shows the utmost respect for Christian beliefs and takes seriously the teachings of Jesus, which is an essential ingredient for religious dialogue. For that reason, reading this book not only provides the reader with a deeper understanding of Judaism but also becomes a model for how to engage in religious dialogue.

The heart of Neusner's argument is based on the Jewish belief that the Torah gives the necessary guidelines for how to live in God's kingdom and according to Neusner, "by the truth of the Torah, much that Jesus said is wrong." Neusner proves this by envisioning himself responding to Jesus' teachings in the context of a Jew who saw Israel's religion as genuine and faithful, in comparison to a religion that needed reform and renewal. Yet at the same time, Neusner takes to heart what Jesus preached and finds some things very appealing, but he significantly struggles with the nuances of Jesus' teachings, because he believes that if examined closely, it is incongruent with the Torah.

Thus, Neusner begins vicariously placing himself amongst an intrigued crowd who are listening attentively to Jesus preaching what will become known as the Sermon on the Mount. Neuser is at first impressed with Jesus' moving proclamation of the beatitudes' and finds it compatible with the Torah; nonetheless, Neusner's positive reaction suddenly changes as Jesus continues with his sermon: "You have heard that it was said, `An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil" (MT 5:38-39). Jesus' shocking words leave Neusner bewildered as he struggles to find parallels between resisting one who is evil and "an eye for an eye," but even more, to find parallels between what Jesus said and what the Torah teaches.

Stepping out of the first century and into the present, Nuesner explains that from a Jewish perspective "it is a religious duty to resist evil, to struggle for good, to love God, and to fight against those who make themselves into enemies of God." He goes on to mention that the Torah says nothing about resisting evil and actually looks down on those who behave cowardly and submit. In fact, the Torah expects Israel to always struggle for God's purpose, and in light of that cause, sanctions warfare. Sardonically, Neusner writes how amazing he found "...Jesus' statements that it is a religious duty to fold before evil." Neusner does, however, acknowledge the twenty-fifth proverb which stresses the importance of providing good, ethical treatment for one's enemies, but "not resisting one who is evil" is a completely different concept than fair treatment of one's enemies, and more importantly, it opposes the Torah. Neusner also argues that Jesus' teachings address a group of disciples and not internal Israel. "Jesus has spoken only about how I, in particular, can do what God wants of me. In the shift from the "us" of Sinai to the "I" of the torah of the Galilean sage Jesus takes an important step - in the wrong direction. And If I had been there, I would have wondered what he had to say to not me but to us: all Israel, assembled, that day, in the persons present, before him to hear his torah." This issue over addressing the "I" vs. "us" is a major problem for Nuesner, and he continues to point out throughout his book how Jesus neglects to address Israel as a whole and only concentrates on the individual.

In an another context of Neusner's book, he argues that Jesus is teaching people to violate some of the Ten Commandments, in particular, "take care to keep holy the Sabbath day." Neusner's allegations are based on Matthew 12:1-8, where Jesus and his disciples pluck ears of grain and eat them on the Sabbath. When Pharisees accuse Jesus of `doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath,' Jesus refers to the great King David who did similar unlawful acts and then declares that he, the Son of man, is lord of the Sabbath. Jesus then enters a synagogue, where he continues the debate with a parable, and in conclusion avers that "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" (MT 12:12).

According to Neusner, Jews do on the Sabbath what God did on the seventh day of creation, and keeping the Sabbath "...is not about doing good or not doing good; the issue of the Sabbath is holiness, and in the Torah, to be holy is to be like God." Keeping all of the laws centered on the Torah may seem senseless to non-Jews, but Neusner points out that "Israel is Israel on the Sabbath" by living out those seemingly senseless Sabbath rules. Hence, Neusner doesn't see how Jesus' teachings on the Sabbath relate to him as "a member of a family, on the one side, and as part of a community, sharing in the social order of the holy people, on the other?" Furthermore, Neusner affirms that "only God is lord of the Sabbath" and that "the Torah teaches me to rest on the Sabbath, because that is how I learn to act like God." Thus, for Neusner, not only is it obvious that Jesus has violated the commandment to "keep holy the Sabbath" and taught others to do so, but just as in the previous example, Jesus continues to address only the individual instead of the community as a whole.
These two examples capitalize on Neusner's central points that, firstly, Jesus was not harmonious with the teachings of the Torah: "the Torah had told me things about God's kingdom that Jesus neglected, and Jesus had told me things about God's kingdom that the Torah had not affirmed," and secondly, Jesus' teachings tended to address the individual, neglecting the community or Israel as a people: "he has spoken to me, but not to us." Overall, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, coherently and concisely facilitates Jewish reasoning for not being able to accept the teachings of Jesus. Even more, it challenges readers to step away from post-modern relativist approaches of dialogue and instead lay claim to the truth that defines one's own religion.

Throughout the past few centuries, religious dialogue has taken on new shapes and forms as nascent views have immerged arguing that one cannot determine which religion holds "the truth" or is "the best." Thus, there is no objective truth to religion and each religion is true to the one holding it. This post-modern view differs significantly with medieval times when disputing the truth-claims of religion took center stage. One actually believed that their religion was the truth and having dialogue meant to engage in polemics. However, this medieval modus operandi diminished as the ideals of the Enlightenment led many to become indifferent to the truth-claims of religion. What soon emerged was a general toleration and respect for all religions. And the differences between religions were dismissed as trivial and unimportant. These fundamental ideas and concepts of the Enlightenment have continued to affect the West up to the present where now relativistic approaches to dialogue with other religions has led many westerners to believe that fundamentally all religions are relatively true for the beholder. Furthermore, the only way to have authentic dialogue would be to suppose, in principle, that the other can be as right, or more right than your beliefs. In light of this ideology, Pope Benedict the 16th wrote an extensive essay titled Relativism: the Central Problem for Faith Today. In this essay he explicates the perils of engaging in religious dialogue from a relativist perspective and states that it would seem as if it is a miracle that religions in general still exist. It is no surprise then that Benedict favored Neusner's approach, in A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, for they both have asserted the many differences that exist between Christianity and Judaism and believe that is through coming to a better understanding of these differences that one can have true religious dialogue. This contrasts significantly with a relativistic approach to dialogue which does not necessarily seek religious inquiry, but emphasizes, for the most part, that it doesn't matter what one believes to be true just as long as they seek to be good people.

At any rate, Neusner's book, under the auspices of Pope Benedict, challenges the Western world to not only strive to respect and develop a better understanding for other religions but to identify itself and be an apologist to whatever truth that their religion claims. This book definitely gave me a new perspective on why Jews struggle to accept the teachings of Jesus but also challenged me to not only strive to truly understand the differences and similarities amongst other religions but to identify and lay-claim to the truths of my particular religion.