Dialogue with Christians

This decade's spirit of ecumenism, until now limited to cooperation among Christians, is reaching out to Jews as well. Building on the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Non-Christian Religions and similar brotherly statements by the World Council of Churches, Christian leaders are eager to bring Judaism into interfaith explorations. Last year one such friendly dialogue, involving 26 Catholic and Jewish scholars, took place at St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa. Lutherans have held four theological discussions with Jewish scholars at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Harvard Divinity School is planning a symposium in October on Jewish- Christian dialogue for its 150th anniversary this year.

But ecumenical discussion raises sharp questions among Jews, many of whom find it hard to forgive the centuries in which churches did little or nothing to discourage antiSemitism. Thus the Jewish community is bitterly divided about whether to accept the challenge of theological interchange, and what the talk should be about.

Ending Hostility. Strongest advocates of Jewish-Christian cooperation are Jewish service agencies in the U.S., such as B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish Committee, which discreetly but effectively lobbied in Rome for passage of Vatican II's condemnation of antiSemitism. Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the A.J.C., for example, believes that neither side is ready yet to talk theology, but sees no reason for Jews to fear that the dialogue with Christianity will involve a disguised attempt at conversion. On the contrary, he argues, it represents a "chance to change a relationship which has lasted two millennia" and is based on mutual hostility and ignorance.

Columnist Harry Golden once jokingly suggested that Jewish leaders gather in Jerusalem to issue a declaration exonerating Christians from their crimes against Judaism. More seriously, Rabbi Arthur Gilbert of B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League feels that Jews must indeed be prepared to recognize that neither all Christians nor Christianity itself is responsible for the anti-Semitism of the past. He also warns that a condition of true dialogue is for Christians to forsake their "patronizing attitude" that the Jews are "a fossilized people who now must wander through time awaiting that moment at God's discretion when, in order to achieve the fullness of religious life, they will accept Jesus as the Christ."

Many Orthodox Jews are convinced that Christians cannot abandon this idea: implicit in Christianity is the belief that Jesus supplanted the law of Moses, and that the churches represent a new Israel. In the current issue of the quarterly Judaism, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits of Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Ill., bluntly argues that theological discourse is meaningless, since "Judaism is Judaism because it rejects Christianity, and Christianity is Christianity because it rejects Judaism." Even though the two faiths have a Bible to share, Berkovits notes, it means something entirely different to each. For the Jew, the Hebrew Bible is complete in itself; for the Christian, the Bible must have the New Testament to be the final revelation of God in Christ.

A Private Faith. A more cautious opponent of dialogue is the foremost U.S. interpreter of Orthodox Judaism, Boston's Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, whose followers reverentially refer to him simply as "the Rav" (teacher). Soloveitchik believes that, while Christians and Jews can cooperate on political and social issues, theology is another matter. Any discussion centered on faith, he argues, is futile, and threatens to place Judaism in the untenable position of being "an object of observation, judgment and evaluation" by Christianity. Besides, he says, the Jewish faith is something too private and sacred to be debated.

Soloveitchik's view on Christian-Jewish dialogue has been formally endorsed by the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America. By and large, the leaders of Reform Judaism seem more open to the possibility of theological discussion; this month, for example, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which unites Reform synagogues, is sponsoring a symposium on the question of God, featuring Christian and Jewish theologians. Spokesmen for Conservative Judaism, which bridges the gap between Reform and Orthodoxy, are deeply worried that Jews may be assimilated into a predominantly Christian culture, but they too are prepared to risk theological conversations. On balance, U.S. Judaism appears willing to answer Christianity's R.S.V.P. with a cautious yes.

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