Anti-Semitism in the New Testament

FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE: Why a book on this topic? And why does a Jew write such a book? A focused study of the straightforward question that comprises the title has become increasingly imperative. It has been forced upon our time by the searching desire for a basic understanding of anti-Semitism that has been the unabated concern of religious communities since the Holocaust-the destruction of the Jews of Europe by Hitler -though the need for objective inquiry of course predates our present decades. My embarking on this book is not the result of my own initiation, nor a response to timeliness, but rather a response to urgent proposals and suggestions coming even more frequently from Christians than from Jews. In writing it, I have two primary loyalties. One is to objective scholarship; the other is to my Jewish background. I am a rabbi. My life's work has been the study of early Christianity; in this study my teachers have been not Jews but Christians. In my books I have sought to understand and thus portray Christianity with the measure of sympathy and critical admiration that is my genuine conviction.