Jewish Christianity in Russia after the six-day war: Israeli factor, eschatology and Nostra Aetate

The phenomenon of Jewish Christianity in Russia in the last third of the 20^th century has only recently become the subject of scholarly investigation. This article highlights a further, previously overlooked, aspect of this phenomenon. It is suggested that some notions or, one may say, myths of Jewish national revival exercised a considerable influence on the thought patterns of Jewish Christians of the post-1967 period. The discussion focuses on the inner logic of Jewish Christianity's "Israeli component," its distinctive agenda and its historical Zionist optimism - and thus "less than acute" eschatology. The article also addresses a variety of reactions to Jewish Christianity - by the general Jewish movement in Russia, on the one hand, and by representatives of the Russian orthodoxy, on the other. It is suggested that the harshness of the latter reflected not only displeasure with Jewish Christian "heresy" on the fringes of the Russian Orthodox Church, but also a polemical stance vis-à-vis certain contemporaneous innovative tendencies in the Christian West, of which Nostra Aetate was undoubtedly the prime example.