Jews and the New Testament

In the preface to his book A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament (Jewish Lights Publishing), Rabbi Samuel Sandmel wrote:

American Jews, by and large, know the New Testament today only from oblique and random contacts - a quotation here, a verse there, a chapter read in a literature course, a portion heard at a Christian wedding or funeral. With the physical isolation of the European ghetto far behind us, and with our intellectual homogeneity with fellow Americans taken for granted, our very modern generation of Jews is virtually as sealed off, whether through inertia or a vestigial sense of taboo from a real knowledge of the New Testament as our forefathers traditionally have been.

This quote is as true today as it was when Rabbi Sandmel first published these thoughts in the 1950s. Though many congregations (including Temple Shalom) engage in interfaith bible study, the majority of Jews have only a passing familiarity with the Christian Scriptures. The tenants of Judaism are based on the scripture of the Hebrew Bible which is distinct from the New Testament. By and large, Jews read the New Testament as a comparative exercise in order to understand our own religion in light of the holy text of others.