How to cite this article: David Flusser, “Mary and Israel,” trans., Xavier John Seubert, O.F.M., Jerusalem Perspective (2025) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/31129/].[1]
What I write here is to be taken as meditation of a human being who has once again been chosen and condemned to play on the Jewish fiddle in the three tones of Catholic-Protestant-Jew.[2] But within this ecumenical prison in which I am forced to sit, no one can deny me the right to sing a proper song of praise to the Jewish Mary, even when I run the danger of being fruitfully or fearfully misunderstood by those who will pass by my golden latticework. This is not going to be a pastoral idyll on the Jewish mother Mary, for her life was certainly not idyllic—not according to the version of any confession! It is clear to me that I owe Mary a meditation and one that is independent of the dogmatic developments of the different denominations and perhaps unimpaired by dogmatic positions.
As a Jew, I find myself in a paradoxical situation in comparison to most Protestants. In connection with Mary, I am not in danger of having to react automatically with compulsive resentment. I understand how such a cramped reaction to Mary originated among the “separated brethren.” There were, and are even to this day, many exaggerations and even blunders within the devotion to Mary. Erasmus of Rotterdam had already taken those to task who “rely more on the virgin Mother of God than on her Son” (The Praise of Folly, chap. 40).
The second reason for the tension in relation to Mary is the Protestant criticism of the ecclesial tradition and of the binding validity of the dogmatic decisions of the old and new councils. Protestants can all the more easily criticize devotion to Mary because they hold that the New Testament alone is binding and they find there scant basis for a Mariology.
But there is a third reason for the Protestant sort of negative reaction to devotion to Mary. This reason is, at least for me, the least defensible. There developed among Protestants a long time ago an almost superstitious fear with regard to holiness and sanctification. This fear has occurred because they see the danger of an alleged holiness and sanctification turning out to be a pagan superstition. In itself, this is a justifiable attitude, but it can easily cause one to fall into the opposite extreme. One could, so to speak, be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and authentic holiness and sanctification could fall under suspicion as a result. In the Catholic church and related churches, Mary is understood as the vessel of holiness because she is the mother of Jesus. The thoroughgoing fear of an inauthentic holiness that can lead to idol worship is the third reason so many—including many Catholics—shrink away from the high regard in which Mary is held.
For Judaism of all times and types, holiness is bound to a place and to a definite time and is called forth through a definite activity; it is an integral part of the Jewish religious system. A Jew is capable of experiencing holiness. For that reason it seems to me that a Jew does not labor under the same inhibitions in developing an appreciation for the holiness of Mary in the church which makes it difficult for many a Christian to understand the devotion to Mary that is maintained by his or her Catholic counterpart. On the other hand, I must admit that, whether one is a Jew or a non-Jew, it is not easy to develop an appreciation of the devotion to Mary when one has not been raised on it as has the Catholic child who is initiated into this devotion at its mother’s breast. One should not criticize Jews or Protestants because of that.
A Woman of Flesh and Blood
I have simply expressed some theoretical presuppositions necessary to set the tone for developing the basic meaning and explanation of Mary. In the course of our considerations we should not forget that we are speaking of a real, actually living, Jewish woman. This fact at least should arouse in everyone a semblance of respect for the historical foundations in Mary’s regard. Another theoretical consideration: both Judaism and Christianity are ways of faith whose points of departure are historical facts. And there is, as we know, no way without a starting point. For that reason, the historicity of Mary and the reality of her glory and her suffering are the foundation of her devotion among Christians. And the tragedy of this Jewish woman is an aspect of the uninterrupted way of suffering of her own people, the Jews.
As we shall see, Mary can be understood as a symbol for the church and also for her own people. But one should never forget that this woman once walked the earth—this mother of sorrows. The Mater Dolorosa is not a theological concept or an overpowering experience of the archetypal but primarily a real person who was inspired by her joy and never defeated by her unspeakable pain.
Muslims, Jews, Christians of every camp, liberals and conservatives, even atheists, all who accept the existence of Jesus, will admit that Mary, his mother, connects him with the Jewish people. In other words, the mother of Jesus was a Jewess and lived a Jewish life. And as we learn from Luke, she lived that life according to the Jewish religious tradition. I have also neither read nor heard that it has occurred to anyone that Mary could have been critical of the Jewish way of life of her time or that to some extent she did not observe the law of Moses. Whether justifiable or not, this tension was reserved for her Son. But I don’t want to go into that here, because I see ever more clearly how deeply ingrained is the attitude of many Christians that there is a tension between Jesus and Judaism. The tension is an indispensable, sacred prerequisite for the Christianity of quite a few Christians—theologians and faithful.
With one very important exception, about which I will have something to say later, I have also never heard it concocted that an aspect of the devotion to Mary is to believe that she in her incalculable pain and anger spoke of the Jews as God-murderers. It would apparently have been thought a profaning of the suffering of Mary to utter such an accusation. However it may be, for all those who know something of Christianity, Mary is the Jewish mother of Christ.
The mother of Jesus was called Miriam—a most typical name for a Jewish woman of that time. The name appears often in the writings of the famed Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. This was also the name of the beloved wife of the evil Herod, who, cruel as he was, finally had her executed. Friedrich Hebbel has devoted a well-known play to this tragedy. In this piece the queen is called Mariamne. This is an old mistake in transcription for the original Mariamme. Mariamme is an elegant form of Mariam. The mother of Jesus is also called this in the New Testament. At that time the name Mariam was pronounced as Miriam. Our common, contemporary form of Maria is another adaptation to Greek (and Latin). For our part, we will also continue using the name Mary for the mother of Jesus, since this form has been made venerable through long use.
We should, however, still take note of the fact that the mother of Jesus was called Miriam like so many of her Jewish contemporaries. At that time, the name was so popular because the first Miriam, the biblical sister of Moses and Aaron, had been so named. It is wonderful that the name at that time was experiencing such extensive usage. It was providential that the mother of Jesus bore the same as many Jewish women; it is a symbol of her connection with them. It is also fortunate for the reason that, as we know, it indicated Jesus’ bond with his people.
And something else. In antiquity and also in the Middle Ages among both Jews and non-Jews, for example, the Greeks—we know of many men whose wives, sisters, and mothers were nameless. In relation to Jesus himself, we know the names of the brothers of the Lord, but we only know that sisters existed. This insufficient attention to the names of women in antiquity is especially painful to me; I would very much like to know the names of Peter’s mother-in-law and wife, because it is clear from the New Testament that Peter lived in an exemplary marriage. On the other hand, a proportionately large number of the names of the women who belonged to the followers of Jesus have been handed down. And other women who belonged to the oldest Christian communities are mentioned by name. This great significance of women in early Christianity is certainly to be seen in connection with the high regard Jesus himself afforded women, as we learn from the Gospels. The important position of women since Jesus throws additional clear light on the devotion of Mary in the church.
The Jewish Atmosphere
The Jewish atmosphere in which the life of Mary and the child Jesus were embedded is lovingly portrayed in Luke. This Jewish atmosphere is poetically expanded in the noncanonical Protogospel of James. We know today that this was written no later than the second Christian century. But let us stay with the canonical Gospel of Luke! There we read, among other things: “And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him…” (Luke 2:22-24).[3] If we read the entire pericope in Luke, it becomes clear (what we already know) that Jesus was Mary’s firstborn son. But there is another fact that follows from the whole section and that for the most part is unknown, although it has far-reaching consequences for Mariology. According to the law of Moses, the sacrifice for the firstborn male is prescribed only for those children of Israel who are not of the tribe of Levi or are not the priestly descendants of Aaron.
The Levites and Aaronic priests are expressly exempted from this obligation, and this is true for both the fathers and mothers of the firstborn child. As we learn from the New Testament, Joseph was of the line of David, and I see no reason to doubt this, as there were many who were of the Davidic dynasty. But Joseph was neither a Levite nor a priest. Mary was also not of the priestly line. In any case, her father, who is called Joachim in the Protogospel of James, was neither a Levite nor an Aaronic priest, or no sacrifice would have been brought for the child Jesus.
On the other hand, we learn from Luke 1:36 that Mary was related to Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and from Luke 1:5 that both parents of the Baptist—Zechariah as well as Elizabeth—belonged to the Aaronic priestly families. We don’t know the exact nature of the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth, but it is certain that we may not conclude from the relationship between them that Mary’s father had been an Aaronic priest. In this case, Mary would not have brought an offering for Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem. One must proceed cautiously and not give too much theological significance to the conclusion of the ancient church fathers that since Mary and Elizabeth were related, Mary was descended both from the House of David and from the priestly family of Aaron. It is quite possible that Mary, although related to Elizabeth, was not of the Aaronic line. As is often the case, it is helpful for us to employ a Jewish understanding of the facts in order to make better historical sense of the stories in the Gospels.
In the same Gospel of Luke and simultaneously with the joyful excitement of the childhood pericopes, the tragic motif of the sorrowful mother is intoned. The ancient Simeon announces to Mary in the temple of God at Jerusalem that “a sword will pierce through your own soul” (Luke 2:35).[4] In Matthew, in another episode that is closely connected with the birth of Jesus, we also hear that heart-rending theme of the terrible suffering of the Jewish mothers whose innocent children were cruelly murdered (and this continues to happen). When King Herod learned that the Messiah was born in Bethlehem, “he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under” (Matt. 2:16). In my opinion, it would not be difficult to show that this story has a historical element to it. But that is not our present concern.
What is important for us is what is next said: “Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more’” (Matt. 2:17-8). Rachel, the mother of the Old Covenant, is certainly depicted here as a representative figure for the perhaps millions of Jewish mothers whose little children were murdered on a mass scale and who cry and sob and will not be consoled because their beloved children are no more. In a medieval Easter play Rachel enters speaking, and at the end the children who were murdered by Herod are raised to life. In Matthew, Rachel is a symbolic figure for the suffering mother, in this case for the suffering Jewish mother. And Rachels pain for the dead children is also symbolic of the suffering of Mary in relation to her illustrious son.
Mary and Jewish Martyrdom
I have already remarked that Mary must be seen in the context of Jewish suffering. That must naturally be pointed out to Christian readers since such an explanation will appear unusual to them. I am not role-playing a Jew here, I am one. To bolster my particular point of view, I can point to the fact that it is widely discussed among very faithful Christians who are in no way Jews that Jesus was nailed to the cross not by Jews but rather by the Roman occupation forces. This is witnessed to in the Gospels themselves, and crucifixion was a Roman death penalty. I know that many consider it inappropriate to compare the death of Jesus with the dying of others. But I cannot ignore the fact that Jesus was not the only Jew who was crucified. He suffered and died in a context of Jewish suffering and death.[5] The inscription on the cross was a proclamation of his alleged crime. King of the Jews: with this inscription the Romans wanted to strike cruelly at the heart of the Jewish hope in the coming of salvation through the royal messiah. The crucifixion of Jesus was, among other things, a manifestation of Roman anti-Semitism, which is also indisputably documented in Roman literature. Even then anti-Semitism occasionally resulted in murder.
It is reported that as Pope John XXIII viewed a film on Auschwitz, he said at the scene of the murdered Jews, “Hoc est corpus Christi” (“This is the body of Christ”). I would tend to view this report as historical because the words, spoken intuitively, express a good and deep—almost primordially deep—Christology. Each martyrdom—including the unspeakably terrible recent Jewish martyrdom—is a part of Christ’s death on the cross. This aspect of the corpus mysticum—of the mystical body of Christ—should not be forgotten. And it requires of us all, both Christians and non-Christians, that we engage in a productive process of discernment.
I hope I have shown how the cross of Jesus belongs both to Christology and to Jewish martyrdom. Through this line of thought, a new and mostly unperceived dimension accrues to the sorrowful Mary. As we will further clarify, the real Mary is a symbol for the church as well as for the Jewish community into which she was born and of which she had been a part. From a purely human point of view, Mary is a suffering Jewish mother. It ennobles rather than profanes her memory if the many Jewish mothers who have similarly experienced suffering recognize her simply and concretely as a worried and suffering Jewish mother.
One should not simply dismiss out of hand a Jew’s ability to intuit feelingly how the Jewish mother Mary was concerned—and rightly so—as Jesus left her to devote himself to a dangerous way of life. And who is not deeply moved to read in John 19:26-27 concerning Jesus on the cross: “When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his home.” Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not remain alone; she lived together with the apostles and the women (Acts 1:14). According to church tradition, she was also present at the miracle of Pentecost. This is an elevated destiny for a Jewish mother and it is good that the memory of this destiny is preserved in the Sacred Scripture of Christianity. If I have convinced only a few of my Christian readers of the Jewish paradigm in the life and suffering of Mary, it is an advance for the human understanding of the Jewish drama, which is temporally bound at the same time that it possesses transcendental worth.
Mary as a Spokesperson
of Anti-Semitism
I now come to the point I have occasionally mentioned. As many know, the Passion of Jesus has in the course of time frequently led to a not entirely appropriate tension with his Jewish brothers in the flesh. Among others, the Second Vatican Council has articulated the danger of anti-Semitism in relation to the Passion of Jesus. I personally can understand that the crucifixion, which was carried out by the Romans, could lead to a distorted understanding and a tension with Judaism. But it is especially remarkable that this tension could find expression in a medieval accusation placed in the mouth of the sorrowful mother of Jesus under the cross. How is it possible to have read such a thing into this grief of the mother? But this is exactly what happened in the amazing Latin accusation of Mary. It was written by Gottfried of Saint Victor (d. c. 1194). It can be found in the bilingual edition of the Carmina Burana (Munich, 1974), 736-43.
This splendid poem belongs among the highpoints of the Latin hymnody of the Middle Ages. It begins with the words “Planctus ante nescia” (“Complaint was unknown to me”). According to this poem, Mary blames the envious Jewish people for causing the death of Jesus. Their wild “conservatives” nailed him to the cross.
What crime, what indignity
this harsh people has perpetrated
chains, whip, wounds
nails, thorns, a cross’s death
he acquired with no fault.
And Mary prophesies to her own people, the Jews:
Hunger, death blow, every need
you experience yet what it means
that you saw your Jesus dead
and Barabbas living on.
Many a Christian will not even notice that this is a threatening and aggressive attitude against an entire group of human beings. After being heard for generations, these tones have become familiar. And I personally do not wish to contribute to the evil in the world by an aggressive critique of this attitude. But I would like to mention one thing in all of this that does not please me, namely, that such a verse was placed in the mouth of a sorrowful and accusing Mary under the cross. According to the following verses, there is a way out for the Jews—the baptism that is offered to them:
People, so blind, so wretched
be tutored in penance and contrition
even now avail yourselves
of the grace of Jesus newly given you.
Many of my Christian readers would approve of this sentiment. However, no more about that! According to a medieval legend, Mary herself had dictated this lamentation to a monk because only she could adequately express her grievances.
Mary as Symbol of Motherhood, the Church, and the Jewish People
We want, however, to pick up on the more human, warm tones of the Christian devotion to Mary. We do not need depth psychology in order to comprehend this devotion but need only an understanding human heart. Because of Christian belief in Jesus, his mother was elevated to the sphere of holiness. She became, so to speak, the vessel of holiness. For the believing Christian, Jesus is divine and his holiness is supernatural. For that reason, the mother of Jesus in being fully human is much more accessible and comprehensible to a Christian who is stunned by the holiness. And because she was elevated to the sphere of holiness, Mary also became for the believing Christian a paradigm and exemplar of what Christians could become. The more Mary was understood to be human, the more she became a model for them. The belief in her virginity need not lead to an unnatural asceticism but can protect the believer from unchasteness and lead toward a spotless and shining purity.
Mary became simultaneously symbolic of the pure mother and through devotion to her one can understand and preserve the divine element in the birth of every child. If the devotion to Mary is supposed to contribute to the betterment of humanity, then one should also understand her sorrow for her dead, murdered, and faultless Son in terms of his being a model for and representative of all human suffering, and especially for a mother’s pain.
And, as a Jew, I cannot avoid seeing Mary as the sorrowful, Jewish mother whose guiltless Son became the sacrifice of hatred for Jews. Especially today, after the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust, this aspect of the so-called Mariology could heal many wounds and lead to a more sympathetic attitude toward the people who are of the same race as Mary. We pray that the faithful Christian devotion to Mary might bear such fruit.
Mary, the woman and mother who actually lived, has been understood as a symbol for the church since the time of the church fathers. In the Old as well as the New Testament there are symbolic feminine figures who are supposed to embody a community, a people. As early as the Old Testament prophets, we see Israel presented in the symbol of a woman. What John on the island of Patmos reports to us in the twelfth chapter of his Revelation is especially important for the visionary, allegorical symbol of Mary as church. There the seer speaks: “And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.” The woman is pursued by the devil in the form of a dragon and she gives birth to a son. We can’t relate here the entire content of the sublime vision. A lot has been written on it and since the time of the church fathers it has been variously interpreted. More than once parallels that have been drawn from the Essene book of hymns from Qumran have clarified the mysteries of the vision.
But one thing was clear: the son to whom the woman gave birth is the Messiah. For that reason, the pregnant woman was seen to be a cosmic symbol for Mary, and the vision in the twelfth chapter of the Revelation of John is reflected in many Marian images. At the same time, it is without doubt that the woman in the revelation is a symbol for the community of the faithful and of the martyrs—for the church. On this basis the connection was developed between Mary and her importance as symbol for the church. And I presume that other explanations of Mary in terms of the holy community of the faithful have been a consequence of the vision in the twelfth chapter of the Revelation of John.
The attempt has often been made to uncover the prehistory of the vision of the pregnant woman in Revelation. It has often been ventured that the woman had originally been a feminine symbolic figure for the people Israel, who in messianic labor gave birth to the Messiah. In my opinion, this surmise is not beside the point. Could it possibly be that in the representation of the woman on Patmos, John had in mind the community of the Christian faithful and at the same time the holy community of Israel? That would not be a misrepresentation of the ecclesial vision of the composer of Revelation. It is difficult to determine to what extent he had thought of Mary in the vision of the pregnant woman who gave birth to the Messiah. But the thought of the historical mother of Jesus asserts itself. In any case, Christian theologians and thinkers were justified in interpreting the woman of the twelfth chapter of Revelation as Mary.
Conclusion
It is a shame that this is not the place to meditate further on this exciting material. We have reached one conclusion: on the level of symbol, we were able to discover a connection between Mary, the church, and the people Israel. That opens new horizons that will perhaps prove to be fruitful. But we should not ascend into the rarefied air of symbolism in order to discover in Mary that which is exemplarily Jewish. As we have already seen, it is incontestable that, historically speaking, Mary is the certain link between Jesus and the Jewish people. The Savior of the Christian faith was born of a Jewish woman named Mary. The Romans crucified him as king of the Jews. I hope that it will be properly understood when I say that, humanly speaking, Jesus was one among countless Jewish men who traveled the road of death to martyrdom. That is unfortunately especially clear in our day. For that reason, Mary also belongs to the countless Jewish mothers who lament their cruelly murdered Jewish children. I personally know such Jewish mothers who exist here and now and are not some abstraction. They have lost their children in the great mass murder in Europe. But there are also those who here in the land of Mary lament their children in appeasable pain—their sons who here and now have lost their lives because of a blind hatred of Jews. As I see it, it would not be such a bad Mariology that did not forget these sisters of Mary in the flesh.
The Jewish aspect of the figure of Mary is outlined both by her Jewish descent and by her typically Jewish fate. But we also by no means wish to lose sight of the universal human validity of Mary. In the Christian faith she was exalted among women in order that she might in turn exalt all women, and especially mothers. Through her sufferings, human suffering is made holy. If this is the direction in which Mary is valued, then this feeling crosses over all confessional boundaries. Then the remembrance of the pure mother of Jesus can at least in some way remove the defilement of modern humanity.
- [1] Republished here with permission from Verlag Herder (see below). ↩
- [2] This article originally appeared in the volume Die Gestalt der Mutter Jesu in jüdischer und christlicher Sicht (Verlag Herder Frieburg im Breisgau, 1985), which contained articles on Mary by David Flusser, Jaroslav Pelican, and Justin Lang. The volume was translated into English and published as Images of the Mother of Jesus in Jewish and Christian Perspectives (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1986). Rights have subsequently reverted to Herder, and it is with Herder’s kind permission that this article now appears on Jerusalem Perspective—JP. ↩
- [3] On the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple, see Shmuel Safrai, “The Role of Women in the Temple,” Jerusalem Perspective 21 (1989): 5-6 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2376/]; Chana Safrai, “Jesus’ Devout Jewish Parents and Their Child Prodigy,” Jerusalem Perspective 40 (1993): 10-11, 14-15 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2673/]—JP. ↩
- [4] On Simeon’s blessing, see Randall Buth, “What Kind of Blessing Is That?” Jerusalem Perspective 26 (1990): 7-10 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2479/]—JP. ↩
- [5] See R. Steven Notley, “The Cross and the Jewish People,” Jerusalem Perspective (2003) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/6275/]—JP. ↩
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