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The Christian & the Pharisee

Reviewed by Alun Brookfield.

This is an unusual book, consisting as it does of letters exchanged between the two authors during 2004-05. The Revd Dr R T Kendall, an evangelical Christian, was minister of Westminster Chapel for 25 years and now lives back in his home country of USA. Rabbi David Rosen, formerly Chief Rabbi of Ireland, is a Pharisaic Orthodox Jew who lives in Jerusalem and is active in the field of interfaith discussions.

It is obvious from the outset that the two men share a strong friendship and a deep appreciation of each other’s scholarship. The friendship began over a Shabbat meal in Jerusalem at which RT (as he is known to almost everyone) discovered that Rabbi Rosen thinks of himself as an inheritor of the Pharisaic tradition of Judaism. Given that ‘Pharisee’ is a term of insult in the Christian community, a friendly controversy began that evening which later led to the sequence of letters which form the heart of this book.

The letters are indeed fascinating, ranging over a wide variety of subjects from divorce to the place of tradition in Christianity and Judaism, from the interpretation of Scripture to the person of Jesus Christ. Not surprisingly, these two friends disagree at almost every point! But that is not the point of the book’s publication. Rather it is twofold: first, to demonstrate that people of opposing religious views can hold those views sincerely while strengthening and deepening their friendship; and second, to help Christians in particular to understand better where Jews are coming from. Almost as a side issue, reading this book totally transformed my ‘traditional’ view of Pharisees from being the ‘bad guys’ to being those who upheld a true Jewish tradition, even if there were some (just as there are some Christians) who go overboard on the legalistic approach to faith.

Perhaps not an essential book for the personal library, but especially useful to any who work in areas with a significant Jewish population, and also to those of us who are serious about understanding Scripture first as it was understood by its first readers before we try to re-interpret it for our present circumstances.