Speaking to Jews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Do not ask someone who might be Jewish if he's "a Jew." I would have thought that obvious but apparently it isn't, according to Stuff Christians Say that\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/2014\/12\/speaking-to-jews\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Speaking to Jews\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do not ask someone who might be Jewish if he's "a Jew." 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{"id":1553,"date":"2014-12-19T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T12:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/?p=1553"},"modified":"2014-12-19T12:13:11","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T16:13:11","slug":"speaking-to-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/2014\/12\/speaking-to-jews\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking to Jews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When that term is used to label someone, my mind conjures up images of surly Dickensian characters like\u00a0Oliver Twist\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Fagin. Pejorative references throughout history have loaded this word with too much baggage. Calling someone a \u201cJew\u201d or \u201cJewess\u201d is like calling someone a \u201cPolack\u201d or a \u201cChinaman.\u201d Is this appropriate? But, being called \u201cJewish\u201d is different. Like \u201cChinese\u201d or \u201cAfrican,\u201d it is an ethnic designation. If you must ask (perhaps first take a moment to make sure it\u2019s appropriate to ask at\u00a0all<\/em>), try, \u201cAre you Jewish?\u201d not, \u201cAre you a Jew?\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Christians, he suggests, are sadly oblivious to the Christians\u2019 long mistreatment of Jews and why some tact and reticence on the part of Christians is required. He includes three other terms and some other Christian actions\u00a0that make Jews cringe. It\u2019s all very helpful but with one I have some problem. He objects to the use of \u201cOld Testament. It is, he says, not so much<\/p>\n

offensive as it is loaded. Most Jewish people do not believe in the Old and New Testament. The scriptures contained within the Old Testament comprise their entire holy book. So labeling it \u201cold\u201d makes it sound, well, antiquated. Replaced. Pass\u00e9. More appropriate terms to use would be \u201cTanach\u201d (an acronym of the first Hebrew letters of: Torah or law, Nevi\u2019im or prophets, and Ketuvim or writings), \u201cHebrew Bible\u201d (even though Daniel is partially in Aramaic), or even, simply, \u201cJewish scriptures.\u201d Using one of these terms not only shows respect, but cultural awareness.<\/p>\n

I see the point but I don\u2019t see that we have an alternative. All three terms, especially the first two,\u00a0imply that the books are not our Scriptures too.\u00a0We have the New Testament and no one seriously proposes renaming it. If you have a New Testament you have by definition an Old Testament. The relation of new to old is not just accidental or chronological, the way New York is related\u00a0to York, but significant and symbolic, the way the New Jerusalem is related to Jerusalem. You could call the Old Testament the Hebrew Bible<\/em>, the\u00a0Jewish Scriptures<\/em>, or\u00a0the\u00a0Tanakh<\/em>, but as soon as you say \u201cthe\u00a0Tanakh<\/em> and the New Testament\u201d you\u2019ve admitted that \u201cTanakh<\/em>\u201d is only a euphemism.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not entirely sure about this, however and would be grateful for responses.<\/p>\n

In any case, the problem is that Christians believe that after the Hebrew Scriptures were written man was given a further revelation, one that provides the way of reading the first. If I were Jewish, I\u2019d find this very annoying. It would feel as if\u00a0my heritage was being appropriated without my permission, like finding someone calling himself \u201cDavid Mills 2\u201d and helping himself to my bank account. But we\u2019re stuck with it. The way to what friendship can be had, and very, very much can be had, is through that problem, not around it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"