Pope & Prime Minister Don’t Argue, Which is Better News Than You Thought

The pope and the prime minister weren’t fighting about what language Jesus spoke, explains The Tablet, though several major newspapers reported they had. The article includes the video, which shows an exchange that ” which to a normal observer would appear to be an amiable conversation between friends (albeit one mediated by a translator).”

“But the real shame here is not that the media got something wrong,” continues the story.

It is that they missed the powerful and poignant significance of this unscripted moment between Israel’s leader and the Pope.

Throughout Jewish history, there have been profoundly consequential public disputations between renowned Jewish thinkers and Catholic interlocutors, most famously in Paris(1240), Barcelona (1263), and Tortosa (1413-14). Typically, these debates were rigged, with the Jew forced to participate and preordained to lose. And if the Jew performed too well in representing Judaism, they sometimes had to flee the country afterwards for their safety. Other dire consequences for Jews and their communities were common – after the Disputation of Paris, for instance, in which the Jew was tasked with “defending” the Talmud from charges of blasphemy, thousands of copies of the Jewish text were seized and publicly burned.