Jesus and the Christians in the Jewish tradition in the context of the contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue

The study concerns the image of Jesus and Christians as supplied by three groups of Jews: messianic, anti-messianic and Jewish intellectuals. The paper also deals with the semantic meanders of "dialogue" in the context of Jewish-Christian relations. A narrow understanding of the term (equivalent to the process of reciprocal and multi-dimensional acquaintance) is supplied. The figure of Jesus, as presented by both messianic and anti-messianic Jews, appears to be inhibiting the contemporary Jewish-Christian relations, being the flash point of dispute. Jewish intellectual’s perception of Jesus as a rich and meaningful metaphor facilitates the dialogue as a tool of reciprocal understanding.