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Christmas and Passover are the most interfaith friendly holidays in the calendar of sacred time. Passover is about freedom for all people and Christmas is about hope for all people. Although there are of course sectarian meanings in each holy day they both reach out their message to all who are in need of salvation because it is impossible to live without freedom and hope.

Christmas for Christians is the birth of their savior. However, the only way to know definitively that Jesus was the Christ at the beginning of his life was to witness his death and resurrection at the end of his life. This means that Christmas is unadulterated hope and joy fueled by belief. Easter is a deep mixture of despair and joy and that makes it a mixed blessing. Perhaps this is the reason that Christmas is more filled with music and lights than Easter and its somber undertones. Christmas is simply joyous and wonderful in every way. Among all the religious holidays of the peoples of the earth, Christmas is supreme. On the popular level it comes down to this: Santa is better than the Easter Bunny. So I wish all my Christian friends and readers a most joyous Noel and thanks for bringing the greatest story of hope to the world.

While Christmas is a foundational story for Christians it is also a most important story for Jews in a way that has not ever been acknowledged. The simple fact is that without Christianity and its origin story of Christmas the covenant between God and my people is a lie.

This is the problem. God promises Abraham at the beginning of the first covenant between the Jewish people and God that God will make the seed of Abraham “As numerous as the stars in heaven and the sands that are on the shore.” (Genesis 22:17) The problem is that this promise was never fulfilled.

There are more than eight billion people on earth and under 16 million Jews which constitutes just .2 percent of the total population and truth be told I believe the actual number is closer to 12 million. In any case, this number of Jews does not come close to that promised in the covenant between God and Abraham. We Jews are actually only as numerous as the sand on a very, very small beach or the stars you can see on a very, very cloudy night. So the covenant with God, which is a central belief of Judaism, has not ever panned out.

However, this is where Christianity and Islam come in to save the day. Both Christianity and Islam believe that the Hebrew Bible is God’s word and both faiths link their beliefs to it and the covenant. Islam marks its origins from Ishmael, the son of Abraham, and Christianity believes in the covenant and in Jesus’ continuation of it. So if you add in Christians that is 31.5 percent of the world added onto the massive .2 percent of the world you have roughly a third of the world’s population who believe in God’s covenant with Abraham – a much bigger sandy beach. But wait there’s more. If you add in the 1.9 billion Muslims in the world, which is another 24.1 percent of the world’s population, then you have a grand total of covenant-believing people in the world of more than 50 percent. Now that is a very big beach.

So Jews need Christianity to make our belief in the covenant true. It is not true because of Jews. It is true because of Jews, and Christians and Muslims together. That is why what Tommy and I said in every one of our lectures is also true: the ways we are different are just not as important as the ways we are all the same.

I pray that this holy season will give us a chance to find each other and to walk together on a long, sandy beach under the star-filled sky. Nothing else matters to me more.

Merry Christmas

Happy Hanukah

Ramadan mubarak

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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