Jezus i chrześcijaństwo w prasie hebrajskiej i żydowskiej na początku XX wieku. Casus Brennera

The Jewish research about Jesus in the beginning of the 20th century was characterized by the efforts to find some parallels between the Gospel and Rabbinic literature. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century,The Liberal Judaism movement tried to describe Jesus as a person who understood the essence of Judaism putting at its center the prophetic and moral component while it considered the Jewish Law and cult as secondary. This emphatic approach of Liberal Jews towards Jesus was severely criticized by figures of the Orthodox Judaism. Other critics came from the Zionist circles. An article by the renowned Hebrew writer, intellectual and journalist Yossef Haim Brenner published on 24 November 1910 in the Hebrew Labor movement journal of Palestine “Ha-Poel Ha-Tzair”, on the problem of conversions and Jewish relations with Christianity created an unprecedented debate in the Jewish world which lasted not less than three years. Brenner argued that conversion to Christianity does not threat the future of the Jewish people because most of the youth are not addicts of the “nonsense of theology”, Jewish or Christian. But the controversy awaked from his attitude to the New Testament. As an atheist, Brenner denies to the New Testament its sacred status, but he still thinks that “this book is a bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh”. Moreover, he says, that even if he does not tend to idealize the figure of “that Galilean young man” – Jesus – he does not consider him, however, as a” useless, unproductive vagabond, full of pride and laughable” but as a composed, complicated figure: “Anyway, he was not one man, he hesitated very much, was full of controversy and doubts about his role, changed from day to day and concentrated on different aspects, tragic as well as comic …” Brenner was fiercely attacked by the leading Zionist intellectual Ahad Haam, but defended, for instance, by his friend, journalist and future creator and Prime minister of the State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, the renovator of the Hebrew language Eliezer Ben Yehuda or the Labor movement leader and intellectual A.D. Gordon. “The Brenner Case” debate took place in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian in about twenty newspapers published in ten countries. As Brenner was denounced by the Jerusalemite Sephardi-rightist ‘Ha-Herut” and the “Committee of Zion Lovers” in Odessa cancelled its financial support to “Ha-Poel Ha-Tzair” and asked to change the editorial staff- the “Brenner Case” turned