It is hard to conceive of Judaism existing in a vacuum. For the great length of most of our past we have been subsumed under power more vast than our own. One of the more difficult objectives for Jews and Christians alike is to grow beyond history, to not be limited by it.
“We know what the figure of Christ has meant to the art, music and literature of the west…. It is much harder to say what Torah would have meant to creative arts, the course of relations among nations and men, the hopes and aspirations of ordinary folk. For between Christ, universally known and triumphant, and Torah, the spiritual treasure of a tiny, harassed, abused people, seldom fully known and never victorious, stands the abyss…” - Jacob Neusner, There We Sat Down
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