Becoming the Rav of Bangalore…
Teaching for me has always been a means of finding new relationships and of risking new ideas about old topics. The classes and meeting I had at UTC were all exceptional experiences in which there was little I could really prepare for the questions and surprises. I spent a great deal of working with the actual Hebrew text, trying to help students see what the text REALLY says.
I explained to everyone in as many ways as I could, that I understand why they choose to use the term, Old Testament, but if they are serious about Jewish/Christian Dialogue, I would prefer Hebrew Bible. By the end of the week, both faculty and students were using the term, correcting each other and promising me that they would continue after I left. It’s a small beginning…who knows maybe they will go out to their churches and say Hebrew Bible and then have to explain it.
My two special lectures went very well…at least from my sense of peoples’ reactions. I was fortunate to find a student from Hamburg, a woman studying in a Lutheran seminary who is at UTC for a semester. I asked her to come to the session during my Luther paper she agreed. During the paper, I suggested that the issue of Luther’s anti-Semitism is actually not a Jewish issue, but a Christian burden especially at the largest liberal Protestant seminary in India. Then I asked Ann if as a 25 year old Lutheran Christian she lived with the burden of these writings…yes, of course, our seminary acknowledges them but refuses to ever read or discuss them which she felt was worse than denying their existence. No one in a room of about 35 students, clergy and professors had ever read Luther on the Jews. I was pleased but did not smile, really, I promise I did not smile…much!
Friday late afternoon I gave my “public” lecture on Finding God in Between: Jewish-Christian Dialogue. More than 125 people came, I was very surprised and exceptionally pleased. I had a great time…lots of people ‘laughed’ and interacted with my shtick..and I taught them by doing a Midrash…taking three texts and opening them and working them the text…back and forth. Several professors told me that they loved it and had always wondered what rabbis did…I explained not to judge the rabbinate by me!
Friday evening I ate at the home of one of my hosts, a professor from the Biblical Studies dept who did graduate work at St Andrews in Scotland and wrote an exceptional article on the Midrash on Psalm 22, comparing Esther to the Dahlits in rural India. So imagine my surprise when I sat down at the table with he and his son and asked where his wife was sitting…he looked at me and said, wives serve meals to their men, it is their honor, they eat later! WOW! I tried to imagine our Shabbat table…ONLY men…Yeah, right!
Even sophisticated and highly educated people follow cultures that simply don’t fit. At the end of the meal, Jesuthram asked if I would bless David, since I was not home to bless my children…it was very touching. David, 16, asked if he could call me Rabbi Joseph instead of Dr. Joseph…it was a great Friday
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