March 22, 2010 - Thought for the Day

The relationship of Christianity to Judaism is similar to that which Rita Nakashima Brock describes in her article on Interstitial Integrity regarding the relationship between Asian Pacific Americans to both America and Asia. Christianity is like the immigrant trying to find a home, realizing that it has left the land of Judaism, but is now trying to find a way to honour its roots. It is no longer Jewish, but it can never leave Judaism behind. Nevertheless, when it tries to return to Judaism to start a conversation, it finds that the community it finds now is not the same as the community it left. Immigrants who leave their "home country" and return later, find that it, and they, have changed, and not in the same ways. They have problems integrating into their left-behind culture, sometimes in painful ways. But the interstitial nature of their relationship with their home community accounts for both the past incarnation (as it were) of the community that they left, along with its current incarnation. This kind of understanding can allow Christianity to take account of previous, historical formations of Judaism, as well as contemporary Judaism. (Of course, the danger is that this type of immigrant understanding of Christianity's roots can too easily support a "ways that parted" model. But this isn't a necessity - it doesn't have to look that way.)
Clearly, I need to develop this more clearly before it can form any part of an exam. But there is an idea here.