Tilting Eastwards: The Jewish-Christian Encounter and Theologies of Land, Palestinian Christian Thought, Zionist Political Theologies and the ecclesial perspective of Fr. David M.Neuhaus SJ, with specific reference to the Holy Land as the renewed Context for the Theological Turn in Jewish-Christian Dialogue

This thesis posits that there has been a fundamental re-positioning of the Jewish-Christian Encounter: an “Easterly Tilt” that has been brought about by geo-political realities whereby “land” becomes a critical dimension to both Jewish and Christian self-understanding. These realities in particular concern the establishment of the State of Israel as a national homeland for the Jews and the displacement of Palestinians.

Jewish-Christian dialogue has hitherto been forged out of a European context of Western ecclesial hegemony accompanied by an anti-Judaic theology. Political antisemitism, culminated in the Holocaust, has led to a theological reappraisal within Christianity regarding the understanding of and relationship to the Jewish people. This has sought to shed ideas of theological contempt and replacement, instead looking to regard the Jewish tradition as complementary.

However, there has been a “theological turn” in Jewish self-understanding whereby the Land of Israel has, since the Holocaust, become central to how Jews comprehend their place in the contemporary world and how the bringing together of a political emancipatory philosophy of Zionism and the land of ancient yearning has brought about a theological turn in Jewish thought. This is explored through the compelling narrative of ancient Masada and the response to it in the form of Levantinism in the work of Jacqueline Kahanoff and David Ohana.

Concomitantly, there has recently been an “ecclesial turn” in Christian self-understanding whereby Eastern Christianity (that is the churches of what is commonly referred to as “the Middle East”) is taken more seriously, particularly in terms of its religious and political displacement in the Holy Land. The focus is Palestinian Christianity, both in its historical context, where Islam has been its “primary religious other”, and its contemporary ecclesial challenges in the face of occupation, and how contextual theologies of land inform contemporary ecclesial thought, especially in the work of Palestinian Lutheran theologian, Mitri Raheb.

As a result of this reality, many of the essential ingredients of the Jewish-Christian encounter have changed in the light of these geo-political realities. The work of Israeli Jesuit priest Fr David Neuhaus SJ offers insights into this emerging dialogical space in the Middle East: how his pastoral and theological work has brought him into direct relationship with Israelis and Palestinians, with Christians, Jews and Muslims, and how his writings point to the future shaping of the Jewish-Christian dialogue in its Eastern context, in particular how the imperative to repair the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people is to relate to the obligations of justice of Palestinians.