New Year's Day +1

U2 sang "all is quiet New Year's Day" and that was indeed the case - the freezing rain that coated roads with ice on New Year's Eve melted in the sun, so the only sound was melted icewater dripping from the roof. I watched Super Size Me and was thankful that I have not eaten at a McDonald's in years.

I met Amy-Jill Levine at a conference in October. Her book The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus is reviewed at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/books/01gala.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. She criticizes liberation theologians who "invent a bad Judaism" so they can portray Jesus as a rebel against this system. I have struggled with this too; how can the liberation Jesus represents be proclaimed without making depictions of the Jewish political-religious authorities reflect on Judaism as a whole? I tend to concentrate on Jesus' opposition to the abuses of the Temple hierarchy and the wealthy aristocratic, land-holding class who collaborated with the Roman occupiers, and describe Jesus as thoroughly Jewish and preaching a purer Judaism (much like the prophets 500 to 700 years before). This is an issue which needs constant attention and reflection.