Last night I went to see Mary Blye Howe discuss her book "A Baptist Among the Jews" at the local JCC. I had read the book when it came out a couple of months ago and was intrigued by the insights that someone would have learning about Judaism not only from scratch, but with a previously held negative viewpoint.

What I found most interesting were her comments about how in many conservative Baptist churches, Jesus' break with the Pharisees and elders is taught as Jesus the Christian vs. the whole of the Jewish community as opposed to a Jew and his friends disagreeing with other Jews - therefore the thing about "all of us" killing Christ.

There was one woman in the audience who had the most obnoxious question of the night, basically accusing the author of not being able to love both the good in her Christian heritage and her newfound Judaism-based spirituality - telling her she had to choose one or the other but shouldn't claim to be able to enjoy the benefits of both. A lot of dirty looks followed, but no hissing. Mrs. Howe commented basically by saying that acceptance and sorting out of many ideas was better than rejecting everything outside of one's own immediate belief system regardless of what one believes.

In addition, I asked her what I could say to an evangelical Christian to get them to recognize me as a person practicing a valid religion instead of a target for conversion, and she said you can't do anything - they're to set in their ways like machines. That was very disheartening, but she herself had a very difficult time breaking away from that tradition herself and is still ostracized by a large segment of her own community outside of her particular church which is relatively liberal.

The best comment from the audience came when someone said that we should give the book to Children so that they can have a "Jew Among the Jews" experience since so few of us ever explore the various branches of our own faith.

There's a lot to learn here and it will reinforce your love and knowledge for the basic tenets of the religion as practiced by all Jews.