MyShtetl.co.za's weekly Parsha commentator and columnist Josh Hovsha reflects on an issue that troubles him:

I am a product of my age. I readily confess my portion in post-modern man. Indeed this has so often been a cause of great pride to me. Yet to deny the dilemma of my very being would be an unforgivable oversight. For I too am a Jew; a member of a people whose existence is routed in the conscious of all human history and all great human destiny. To say conflict does not exist would be a grave untruth.

Yet, through cathartic self-examination, I have found my ontological axiom. It declares: I am a better Jew because of my humanity, and am a more effective part of humanity because I am a Jew. Indeed there is conflict, but I have always believed that we are the more for the fight.

This I need you to understand as I explain the dilemma which Easter places before me. I subscribe passionately to the belief that truth may be found in all religion. thus as a product of this Western world I eagerly turn to this ancient day with interest and respect.

However, at my core, I am deeply discomforted by it.

A Year ago, within the context of this dichotomy, I was asked by a friend to join him in spending Easter Sunday in the the Christian quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. As a religious Jew, the notion of stepping into a church poses many halakhic problems.

As a member of post-modernity the opportunity present is great. I have never deceived myself into believing that my path in this world would not lead me to questions.

So how does one reconcile Western beliefs with an ancient creed? My answer was found not in the writings of my people's case law. Rather revelation this time was found within the deeper recesses of my conscious soul. Ultimately I needed to be reminded of my core values. It was the writings of Eliezer Berkovitz, the legendary Jewish Philosopher of the last generation, who brought me to this state. These are his words:

"What is the weight of one sacrifice compared to the myriads of sacrifices of Israel? what its one crucifixion beside a whole people crucified through centuries? But it is maintained, the one crucified was a god, whereas the untold millions of Jewish men, women, and children were only human beings.

Human Beings only!

As if the murder of an innocent human being were a lesser crime than the killing of a god. A god after all does not have to die If he is killed it is because he offers himself freely as a sacrifice. A god chooses to be killed; he knows what he is doing and why he is doing it. And when he dies, he does not suffer as a god.

As a "very man" he suffers the agony of a single man. but the little boy who at the door of a gas chamber says to his mother: "But, Mama,I was a good boy!" That is something quite different. That is crucifixion! Such is crucifixion. And it has been suffered not by gods, but by human beings, endured again and again on innumerable occasions all through Jewish history in Christian lands. That deicide is the greatest of human crimes is among the most dangerous fallacies ever taught to man.

The truth is that the capital crime of man is not deicide, but homicide.

To torture and to kill one innocent child is a crime infinitely more abominable than the killing of any god. Had Christianity, instead of being preoccupied with what it believed to have been a deicide, concentrated its educative attention on the human crime of homicide, mankind would have been spared much horror and tragedy.

There would have been much less suffering and much less sorrow among all men; nor could the have been either Auschwitz or Treblinka. Unfortunately, the teaching of deicide became an excuse, and often a license, for homicide. Pity any god thus caricatured by his devotees!

God suffers not on account of what man does to him. What could man do to God? He suffers because of what man does to himself and his brother. He suffers the suffering of his servant, the agony of the guiltless. In all their affliction he is afflicted.

In the liturgy of the High holy Days, God is referred to as the one who suffers, as he averts his eyes from rebelliousness. He is long-suffering with man and suffers with the victims of man who carry the burden of his long-suffering patience and mercy. How he must love those who suffer innocently because he cannot but bear even with those of his creatures who have failed him! God's servant carries upon his shoulders God's dilemma with man through history. God's people share in all the fortunes of God's dilemma as man is bungling his way through toward messianic realization.

The status of the dilemma at any one moment in history is revealed by the condition of Israel at that moment.

God's people is God's challenge to man. God, who leads man "without might and without power" sent his people into the world without the might of power. This is the essence of the confrontation between Israel and the world. It was in this confrontation that Western man had to prove himself.

God has pushed Israel right across the path of Christianity. Israel was God's question of destiny to Christendom. In its answer, the Christian world failed him tragically. Through Israel God tested Western man and found him wanting. This gruesome failure of Christianity has led the Western world to the greatest moral debacle of any civilization-the holocaust." (Eliezer Berkovitz, Faith after the Holocaust.)

These words ring with too much truth to be ignored.

My discomfort at Easter, is not a result of religious alienation. Rather I consider this festival an affront to my essential humanistic hope.

From the moment Christianity sold its soul to the sword of Constantine, it became but another regime of power. 1600 years have passed since that faithful day in Rome and with them so much pain and loss.

In truth Christianity may no longer claim to be a testimony to God. Rather it stands as an eternal witness to the might and cruelty of human power and indifference. It is only now at its downfall that the church calls for pluralism and acceptance. We cannot overlook the present irony, as those same ideals met there greatest challenge under Christian rule.

I may accept the merits that Christianity stands upon. However, as a human being I cannot tolerate the cruelty of Christendom.

Thus last Easter Sunday I did not set foot into the old churches of Jerusalem. I respect the Christian right to worship, but as a Jew I cannot overlook my own people's tragic pain. As a member of humanity I too cry for Jesus. But more than this I cry for every ounce of blood and humanity lost in his name.

This is a day that we as members of mankind cannot ignore. It calls to us through time and history, it challenges our belief, our core values. Have we not yet learned? can mankind still not be ready?

I turn in hope to a better time, where man might truly realize his humanity. A time when mortal anguish is seen to be every bit as intolerable as divine sacrifice. I turn to the messianic age of human responsibility. It cannot be far, for we have such little time left.