I hope you liked my description of encampment in last week's letter. Since then, I got a copy of the picture we took, which I'm attaching to this week's letter. The non-green guy is my son, Emil. Have you ever seen a group of more beautiful children?

Anyway, there's a different topic I want to write about this week. For the last few months, I've been spending the last few weeks reading the oddest collection of books. As some of you know, I teach every year in the Herbert Tarr Institute, a community-wide adult education initiative that moves from year to year to different locales. A few years ago it was held at Shelter Rock, but this year it is at the Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation (21 Old Westbury Road in Old Westbury) and, especially if you haven't attended in the past, I'd like to encourage you to consider attending this year. You should all have received introductory brochures in the mail by now. If you haven't, send me an e-mail or call me and I'll make sure one gets to you.

I always try to teach something interesting, something at least slightly intriguing or provocative. This year, I've chosen to give three talks on the way a rabbi might read the passion narratives in the New Testament. At first, that must seem like a very odd topic for a rabbi such as myself to undertake. But it's not that odd at all...and I thought I'd take this opportunity to explain why.

The question of what happened at the end of Jesus' life is the core issue that has traditionally effected the course of Christian-Jewish relations. Mel Gibson's movie of a few years ago chose to take the testimony of one of the gospels as though it were literal truth and placed the blame squarely on the Jews of ancient Jerusalem...and especially on the High Priest and less high priests who served in the ancient Temple. But there are alternate accounts in the New Testament...and none of them accords precisely with what we know of ancient Jewish legal procedures. Nor is the portrait of the High Priest in sync with what our own source teach us was his role and the extent of his authority. The more pressing question is whether the Gospels are reasonably to be taken as historical documents at all.

One of my favorite authors on the topic, himself a Catholic priest and a professor of theology at Notre Dame, has written unambiguously that he considers the Gospels accounts of the trial and crucifixion to be mere legends presented in the guise of historical narrative. And Haim Cohn, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, wrote a very interesting book in which he finds most of the "details" connected with the trial as presented in the New Testament to be without any echo or foundation in contemporary Jewish sources. So these are not details we're debating here, but questions of profound importance. Are these stories reasonably to be taken as historical records? Is there a kernel of historical truth that rests behind the extended narrative even if some details were fabricated? Or are these basically legendary accounts concocted by Gentile authors in ancient times to "prove" that the founder of Christianity was the messiah whose arrival the Jews of antiquity so eagerly awaited? I've always been fascinated by these questions. One of the minor areas of specialization I completed in the course of my doctoral studies was the history of the early Christian church, and almost all of my work in ancient Greek was focused on the texts of the New Testament. So I've been circling around these questions for a long time...and I continue to find them interesting and important. If Jews and Christians are going to find common ground and move forward in a productive, friendly way, these issues can't only be studied from one direction and reflect the assumptions of one side. The events that led to the birth of Christianity ended up having a profound impact on the history of Judaism and the Jewish people. That being the case, I don't think it would be possible to devote too much time to understanding them well, only to spend too little time carefully considering them for our opinion to matter much. So I've continued my work and my reading, and I'm looking forward to presenting the fruits of that work in the course of my three evenings teaching at the Tarr Institute. I'd love to see lots of you there!

Cordially, Rabbi Martin S. Cohen