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Chosen by Giles Fraser review – confessions of a priest

In October 2011, Giles Fraser became front-page news. St Paul’s Cathedral was surrounded by scores of Occupy demonstrators. The City of London wanted to evict them but as it was uncertain whether the land belonged to them or the cathedral, they sought the permission of the dean and canons. The chapter were divided but the casting vote of the dean led to the eviction of the demonstrators. Giles Fraser resigned on the grounds that the church should not use force to defend its buildings, especially when the cause of the protesters was such a just one.

Fraser then went into a deep depression, his marriage of 20 years fell apart and he seriously contemplated taking his own life. By chance, on the way to be interviewed for a new job as dean of Liverpool, he decided to look in on the synagogue on Princes Road of which his great uncle had been rabbi. It was a moment that started a long process of healing. It led him to explore his Jewish roots, about which he knew nothing. The family had come from the Russian Pale of Settlement in the early 19th century and joined other very poor Jews making cheap clothes for sailors in Portsmouth. Eventually, one member of the family, his great-uncle, got an education and became a successful and loved rabbi. But as Jewry as a whole in the 19th century assimilated and adopted the style and pattern of Anglicanism, so his own family became so assimilated that his father was baptised, though apparently without the least religious conviction. In due course, Fraser himself developed a deep Christian conviction and became ordained.

This highly personal story is followed in his new book by some serious history on how Christianity and Judaism not only grew apart and went their separate ways but came to define themselves in contradistinction to each other.

What Giles Fraser can teach all of us is how enriching it can be to look at the world through the eyes of others

During the Occupy protest a mentally ill lady defecated in the Cathedral. For some of the team reporting to the chapter on the situation, this was the final straw. For Fraser, it is the opportunity to explore in depth the role of church buildings, and the temple in particular, and how they embody ritual purity. For him they should be places that, while they symbolise the holy, also accommodate the messy, impure world of which they are a part.

The personal story continues with Fraser falling in love with and marrying an Israeli and being welcomed into her family in Israel. He has not ceased to be a priest and is the vicar of a parish in south London near Elephant and Castle, but is bringing up his young son to speak Hebrew. Somehow the loss of Jewishness in his family by their assimilation has been reclaimed in his person.

Fraser draws on two figures of particular interest to make his argument for the healing power of theology across religious divides. One is Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known to many as the Lubavitcher Rebbe or simply as the Rebbe. As leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, he is probably the most influential rabbi of the 20th century. During his lifetime, expectation grew around him that he was the long-expected messiah, and when he died in 2004, some of his followers refused to accept that he was dead. Today the movement is divided between those who believe he is the messiah who is still alive, and those who accept his death. Both groups are regarded as authentic Jews. Fraser draws a parallel with the first Christians, who were Jews who thought Jesus was the messiah. The point he draws from this is that it should be possible today to be a follower of Jesus as the messiah and still be regarded as an authentic Jew.

The other figure is Oswald Rufeisen, a Polish Jew who was swept up in the Nazi horror but managed to play a heroic role sheltering other Jews and helping many to escape. Rufeisen became ordained as a Roman Catholic priest and went to live in Israel, where he was warmly welcomed by some of those whose lives he had saved. But he found that though you have the right of return as a Jew if you are a Jewish atheist or a Jewish Buddhist, this right was denied to him as a follower of Jesus both by the government and the Supreme Court of Israel, though he later acquired citizenship through naturalisation. From these and other examples, Fraser argues for a much less tight and controlling definition of what it is to be a Christian and what it is to be a Jew. As someone who has reclaimed his Jewish heritage, he wants to be Jewish. He is also a Christian priest.

One of the problems Fraser faces is that there is a significant movement of Messianic Jews who have converted to Christianity, from whom he wants to distance himself. This is because they target Jews for conversion in a way that is resented by the Jewish community, and because the kind of Jewish Christian he has in mind are those who existed before the split with the synagogue in the closing years of the first century – in other words, they predated the solidification of the two religions in opposition to one another.

Fraser’s personal story is fascinating and the thesis arising from it an arresting one. But it is obviously special to him. Most Christians have to face the fact that the two religions have developed in antipathy to one another over 1900 years. The task now is not to get back to a Christianity of the early period, much as we continue to learn from it, but to rethink our whole attitude to Judaism in the light of the terrible history of the “teaching of contempt” and all that this led to in the way of Jewish suffering. This means seeing Judaism as a religion in its own right with its own riches to share with the world. What Giles Fraser can teach all of us, however, whatever our beliefs or lack of them, is how enriching it can be to look at the world through the eyes of others. What is it for me to look at life through Jewish, Muslim or atheist eyes, or for others to see the world in Christian terms?

Richard Harries is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of more than 30 books including After the Evil: Christianity and Judaism in the Shadow of the Holocaust (OUP)

• Chosen: Lost and Found Between Christianity and Judaism by Giles Fraser is published by Allen Lane (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply