By Rabbi Fred Morgan AM
Hon President CCJ (Vic), Emeritus Rabbi Temple Beth Israel, St Kilda, Melbourne; formerly Professorial Fellow in Jewish-Christian Relations, ACU Melbourne
26 December 2025
The Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) disparagingly says, “of the making of books there is no end.” But some books are worth writing, especially those that promote dialogue and understanding between faith communities. The publication under review contributes to these ends by opening up the world of Judaism to Christians. In particular, the aim is to help Christians reconstruct their relationship with Judaism by demythologising some of the historical misunderstandings that have contributed to a fraught and combative relationship in the past.
The booklet is published in the “Friendly Guide” series which is designed to introduce basic themes and literature of Christianity to a lay Christian audience. Each of the booklets is written by an expert in the field, and they are sumptuously illustrated and formatted for easy reading. This is Mary Reaburn’s second contribution to the series. She also prepared the volume on the Book of Psalms.
Mary, a senior figure among the Sisters of Sion, is a treasured member of the CCJ, and this booklet shows why. Her dedication to interfaith dialogue, respect for other people’s beliefs and traditions, recognition of the need to redress cascading historical wrongs between Jews and Christians, and acknowledgement of the dignity of all people what their beliefs shine through. It is praiseworthy that the editors of the Friendly Guide series have sought fit to include a booklet on Jewish-Christian relations in their list. As Mary makes clear, that would not have happened prior to the Second Vatican Council and the release of Nostra Aetate in 1965. The Holocaust, its causes, its nature and its impact on Jewish-Christian relations, including its place in the genesis of Nostra Aetate, is one of the major topics dealt with here.
Emphasis is everything in a brief exposition like this. Mary puts great emphasis on the religious life that Jesus would have experienced as someone living in Judea 2000 years ago, making clear why it is important to understand Jesus in his particularity as a Jew alongside the divine universality that typifies Christian thinking. This discussion is clearly directed to a Christian audience and, from the way Mary presents it, I imagine that much of what she says would be news to many in the Christian world. She also says quite a bit about the “parting of the ways” between Rabbinic Judaism and the early Christian Church.
Late antiquity, the medieval and the Renaissance periods receive little attention apart from a few general statements. For example, the Expulsion from Spain in 1492, which is a major event in the Jewish narrative of Jewish-Christian relations, gets only a single line of reference in a “time frame of significant events” that covers two millennia. Brevity is of course a necessary virtue in a guide such as this but, given the large number of pages devoted to the Holocaust and its aftermath, including biographies of several significant figures (Australia’s own Aboriginal leader William Cooper makes a welcome appearance), the balance is not necessarily what a Jewish reader might have proposed.
For example, I would have liked to see more on the positive late 20th-21st century manifestations of Judaism that form the basis of Jewish-Christian relations today. Within the Jewish community the recent trend has been to focus less on the “lachrymose” approach to Jewish history and more on the hope-instilling, dynamic features of Jewish experience, that is, to pin down how it is that Jews continue to find sustenance in their religion. Mary rightly speaks about how important it is for Christians to form personal relationships and “come to know Jews.” She includes some engaging material on leading Jewish Australians and on areas of common interest between Christians and Jews in Australia. This leads me to wonder whether it would have been possible to hear more of a Jewish voice in the book. Maybe this could form a future volume in the Friendly Guide series. Mary is a wise and discerning guide, but it is only her voice we hear.
The weighty emphasis on the Holocaust leads me to the elephant in the room: Zionism and the State of Israel. The re-establishment of the Jewish homeland after 2000 years of dispossession and displacement was the other formative Jewish event in the 20th century. Apart from the booklet’s account of Biblical times and one passing reference to the tragic events of 7 October 2023 and their aftermath, I could find no reference to Israel whether as the land or as the State. There is little indication in the booklet that the land of Israel has been a central feature of Jewish longing throughout Diaspora history, or that the State of Israel is of overwhelming concern to Jews today.
I am aware that the Jewish attachment to Israel continues to be problematic in Catholic theology. There are other expressions of Christianity that for their own theological reasons are eager to acknowledge the Jewish connection to the land. But none of this debate appears in the booklet. Religious and racial manifestations of antisemitism are undoubtedly important themes to be addressed under the rubric of Jewish-Christian relations and Mary has excelled in covering these. But what of anti-Zionism as a viral mutation of antisemitism, a point that Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has cogently and insistently argued? (This question is especially pressing now after the massacre of Jews at the Chanuka celebration on Bondi beach in Sydney.) How the Churches deal with Israel, the land and the State, and with Zionism as the modern expression of the longing for the Jewish homeland in Israel, is also crucial for Jewish-Christian relations today.
I have a few quibbles about the editing of the book. Sometimes the photos, as beautiful as they are, don’t add much to the contents. There are several repetitious passages, for example, the accounts of the Temple in Jerusalem. Though repetition is a key pedagogical device, it needs to be handled carefully in a book that is so brief. The glossary entry on “rabbi” is much more about “priest”. The actual way Judaism was re-imagined by the early Rabbis through the “Oral Torah” is not explained, so Mary’s later mention of the historical changes in the meaning of the Jewish festivals lacks context. If I were a Christian I might find the description of the Jewish festivals confusing.
But these quibbles in no way detract from the value of having such a booklet to guide Christians, in a friendly way, to enter into dialogue with Judaism, and so to accomplish Mary’s aims, which are “to rectify a tragic history” and to build new relationships “for the sake of society and our planet Earth.”