Ear­li­er this week, Julie Baretz wrote about why she decid­ed to make aliyah. Her book, The Bible on Loca­tion: Off the Beat­en Path in Ancient and Mod­ern Israel, is now avail­able. She will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

A man once got on a bus I was rid­ing in Israel. He greet­ed the dri­ver and a con­ver­sa­tion ensued. Rapid­ly, how­ev­er, the tones esca­lat­ed until the two gen­tle­men were bel­low­ing at each oth­er. I didn’t speak much Hebrew at the time, but it looked like the pas­sen­ger was about to sock the dri­ver in the teeth. Yet, when we reached the next stop the ten­sion evap­o­rat­ed as quick­ly as it had mate­ri­al­ized. The dri­ver opened the door, the two men shook hands and the pas­sen­ger alight­ed with an ami­ca­ble wave. I then real­ized I had just wit­nessed a thrilling round of Israel’s favorite nation­al sport – the friend­ly argument.

A major impe­tus for writ­ing my book, The Bible on Loca­tion, has been my work guid­ing Chris­t­ian pil­grims in Israel. Chris­tians who come to expe­ri­ence the Holy Land and walk in the foot­steps of Jesus com­prise about 70 per­cent of incom­ing tourism — bread and but­ter for Jew­ish tour guides. I work fre­quent­ly with Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals; they are fer­vent­ly inter­est­ed in the con­text of Chris­t­ian scrip­ture and any­thing that will shed light on the Israel and the Judaism that Jesus knew. But their inter­est is not lim­it­ed to the Gospels; they are just as pas­sion­ate about Hebrew scrip­ture. Most of them know the Tanakh very, very well; way bet­ter, in fact, then most Jews. Many of them have read it numer­ous times from cov­er-to-cov­er and almost all of them attend Bible study groups at their churches. 

Jor­dan Riv­er Bap­tismal Site

How embar­rass­ing it was, then, for me to real­ize that my Jew­ish smarts didn’t count for bup­kis if I was only super­fi­cial­ly acquaint­ed with my own fam­i­ly his­to­ry, the same one which the gen­tiles had so warm­ly adopt­ed as their own. Seri­ous study was in order, so I found myself a rab­bi and togeth­er we dove deeply into the bib­li­cal texts. I was so intrigued by the time­less­ness of the bib­li­cal char­ac­ters and by the end­less asso­cia­tive mod­ern par­al­lels, that ear­ly on in the study process I knew I want­ed to share my dis­cov­er­ies by writ­ing a book. Mean­while, I honed my com­men­tary on my Chris­t­ian pilgrims.

It’s been said that for Chris­tians the Bible is the last word, while for Jews it’s the first. Jews like to ques­tion, to decon­struct, to dis­sect the bib­li­cal per­son­al­i­ties, to up-end assump­tions. In the attempt to crack the true mean­ing of a text we rel­ish a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion and delight in debate. The smart aleck is king and there’s noth­ing we love more than a good argu­ment l’shem shamaim, for heaven’s sake. But before I can spin an irrev­er­ent riff on Eli­jah the over-zeal­ous prophet or the con­niv­ing, skirt-chas­ing mur­der­er King David, I must first expound on the roots of our tra­di­tion to my gen­tile audi­ence. That’s when I call on the unde­feat­ed cham­pi­on of chal­lenge, the super-hero of squab­ble, the Hebrew ham­mer of hag­gling: Abraham.

Abra­ham was fear­less. When God threat­ened to destroy the wicked peo­ple of Sodom and Gomor­rah in Gen­e­sis 18, Abra­ham called him on it. ​“What if there are fifty right­eous peo­ple there – will you sweep away the inno­cent with the guilty?” God con­ced­ed and Abra­ham bold­ly bar­gained Him down to a far bet­ter deal, con­vinc­ing Him to save the two cor­rupt cities for the sake of a mere ten right­eous peo­ple. This well-known and beloved sto­ry helps to explain that when jus­tice is at stake, not only are we per­mit­ted to argue with the Cre­ator, but we are oblig­at­ed to do so. Hence our Jew­ish pen­chant for noisy dis­agree­ment. It’s help­ful to point out that Jesus was a man of this cul­ture; liv­ing at a time when Jew­ish law had not yet been final­ized, he took an active part in the nation­al dis­cus­sion on how to inter­pret and under­stand the Torah. 

After giv­ing this expla­na­tion about Jews and argu­ing recent­ly, a young pas­tor approached me with a con­cerned look on his face. It seemed he had some­thing impor­tant to say. He took me aside. ​“Julie,” he said. ​“I think my wife is Jewish.”

Julie Baretz received her license from the Israel Gov­ern­ment Tour Guides train­ing pro­gram in 1987. Since then she has guid­ed thou­sands of Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian vis­i­tors to sites all around the coun­try. Read more about her and her work here.

Relat­ed Content:

• Dig­ging Through the Bible: Under­stand­ing Bib­li­cal Peo­ple, Places, and Con­tro­ver­sies Through Archae­ol­o­gy by Richard A. Freund
• A Match Made in Heav­en: Amer­i­can Jews, Chris­t­ian Zion­ists, and One Man’s Explo­ration of the Weird and Won­der­ful Judeo-Evan­gel­i­cal Alliance by Zev Chafetz
• A Lit­er­ary Bible: An Orig­i­nal Trans­la­tion by David Rosenberg