Jesus and Menachem

Description:
Jesus and Menachem places Jesus (Jeshua) in the historical context of the Roman occupation of Judea Second Temple period The fictional character of Menachem is introduced to deepen and clarify the relationship between Jesus, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Zealots, and Rome.

In a1949 review in Commentary magazine, this book is compared favorably to The Nazarene by Sholem Asch. Menachem fights the Romans at the side of the Zealot Ben-Necher, killing them as he murmurs "thou shalt not kill." He loves Jesus, but does not believe in him as Jesus would have him believe. He is not a Pharisee, and yet cannot be against the Pharisees. When Pontius Pilate offers the Jews a choice between Barabbas the "robber" and Jesus the "negator of God," he refuses to choose, for Barabbas is not a robber but a Zealot, and Jesus not a negator of God but perhaps a Messiah. Van Praag has painted Palestine with a simplicity, containing nothing unnecessary or barbarous, with a palpable mellowness which can be touched, inhaled, heard on every page.


Endorsements:
"This is an engaging, psycho-spiritual story of the life of Yeshua (Jesus). It is set in the realistic and sensitive narrative of everyday life in Palestine during late Second Temple Judaism. The dramatic quality of this work depicts the heightened spiritual awareness of a thoroughly Jewish Jesus, in keeping with the witness of the New Testament, while underplaying the hysteria of rampant apocalypticism in many of the forms of Judaism at that time, evident, for example, in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The storyline unfolds believably and draws the reader into page-turning identification with the main characters. . . .Van Praag's characterization of the main figures in the story is vivid, and one quickly gets the impression of being exposed to truth and reality, rather than just a staged drama."
--J. Harold Ellens, author of Honest Faith for Our Time: Truth-Telling about the Bible, the Creed, and the Church



About the Contributor(s):
Siegfried Emanuel van Praag was a prolific Dutch Jewish writer of over sixty books. The rise of Nazism considerably impacted his life and provoked a consequent preoccupation with Jewish culture and identity--specifically Dutch Jewish culture and the newly formed country of Israel.

Lewis C. Kaplan was a Chicago-born historian, writer, and published translator with a gift for languages (including Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Yiddish) and an interest in Jewish history and biblical Israel.