Lecture of
Daniel Rossing, Director
Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations
April 2004
The unprecedented meeting of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land today is unique in several respects. It involves the encounter of a young modern-day Jewish nation state in the ancient homeland of the Jewish people and venerable local Churches and ecclesiastical institutions whose history in the Holy Land stretches back to the earliest centuries of Christianity. For the first time in two millennia, an empowered Jewish majority comes face to face with Christian communities who share a long history as minorities. The encounter presents Israeli Jews with a special challenge, for the quality of pluralism and democracy can be most accurately measured by examining how the dominant group regards and relates to the smallest minorities and by how secure, free and comfortable these minorities feel.
The challenge of our encounter is compounded by the fact that the Christian minorities in the Holy Land are intimately linked by religion with Christian majorities that, in other lands and times, were the scourge of the Jewish people. There is a marked tendency in Israeli-Jewish society – which is reinforced by what is taught in our schools – to focus solely on the negative aspects of the history of Jewish-Christian relations in the West. Thus, the local Churches find it necessary to remind Israeli Jews that they did not historically participate in the persecution of Jews, and that they themselves were frequently victims of intolerance and persecution. In his address at a recent conference on antisemitism held in Jerusalem, His Eminence Archbishop Aristarchos observed that antisemitism and the persecution of Jews was most prevalent in the Western world, particularly in those periods and places in which the Church abandoned its divine calling as a suffering servant, which it shares with the Jewish people, and donned the mantle of a triumphant temporal power. He stressed that the Church in the East more faithfully and fully preserved the ethos of the downtrodden and persecuted that nurtured the original Church and linked it with the Jewish people. Similar observations are contained in a document entitled “Reflections on the Presence of the Church in the Holy Land,” which was recently issued by His Beatitude Patriarch Michel Sabbah and the theological commission of the Latin Patriarchate. In the section on “Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel,” it is noted that: “Unlike our Christian brothers and sisters in Europe, in the Holy Land our history as Christians has been the history of a minority community (a status that we shared with the Jews in the Middle East) in the midst of a civilization that is predominantly Muslim. For many centuries we have not been a dominant majority in relation to the Jewish people as was the case in the West.”
The encounter of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land is further complicated by the fact that most local Christians are linked by language and culture with the vast Arab world and most closely with the Palestinian people, with which the Jewish State is in conflict. The Latin Patriarchate’s abovementioned document rightly notes that “the ongoing conflict between the State of Israel and the Arab world, and in particular between Israelis and Palestinians, means that the national identity of the majority of [local Christians] is locked in conflict with the national identity of the majority of the Jews.” As Rabbi David Rosen observed last week at the Annual General meeting of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, we find ourselves today in a situation in which every group in this land feels injured and vulnerable. Clearly this is true for the local Christian communities as well.
A new and challenging development concerns the arrival in the past decade of new immigrants and foreign workers who are Christians. Their total number now exceeds that of the indigenous Christians. The State has assisted or allowed their entry into the country for political or economic reasons, but at best ignores and at worst resents at worst their special needs as Christians, thus leaving them in a kind of religious-cultural limbo. The ramifications of this development for the future relations of Jews and Christians in the Holy Land have not yet been studied or addressed.
Finally, our relations are burdened by the fact that the eyes of the world are constantly focused on us. The negative impact of this reality is that both Jews and Christians in this land invest an excessive amount of time and energy in trying to win the favor of foreign audiences, and especially the Western Christian world, at the clear expense of talking with one another. We regularly dispatch to distant places spokespersons and passionate appeals in polished English, but we seldom take time to address a kind word in Hebrew or Arabic to a Jew or Christian living just a stone’s throw away. The foreign audiences, on their part, quickly become polarized and divide into Christian Zionist and pro-Palestinian camps that only further exacerbate the relations of Jews and Christians in this land. The positive side of the way in which we are scrutinized by the world is the potential to give universal significance to the particular features of our local Jewish-Christian relations. Thus, for example, the reversal of minority-majority roles in Jewish-Christian relations in the Holy Land can provide a vital compliment to Jewish-Christian dialogue and relations in the West.
The Limits of Existing Jewish-Christian Dialogue
During the past forty years, a number of interfaith groups have nurtured a fruitful dialogue between Jews and Christians in Israel. Among organizations of special note are the Israel Interfaith Association (1957), Jerusalem Rainbow Group (1965), Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity (1966), Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (1991), Elijah School (1996), and the recently founded Interfaith Encounter Association (2001). Numerous Christian institutions and organizations in the country have made a major contribution to deepening understanding of Jews and Judaism among Christians from abroad, and several Jewish institutions of higher learning offer Christian scholars and clergy further opportunities for interfaith discovery.
Until recently these interfaith endeavors followed the prevailing patterns and paradigms of interreligious dialogue in the West. To turn the words of the medieval Jewish philosopher Yehuda Halevy on end: We are in the East, but our (interfaith) hearts (and minds) are in the West. Jewish-Christian dialogue in Israel has been conducted mainly between ex-patriot Christian theologians and clergy living in the Holy Land and a small group of Jewish scholars, nearly all of them of western background. During the last decade and a half, the dialogue has been enriched by the active participation of an increasing number of Orthodox Jews. Most recently, formal conversations have been initiated between a delegation of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and representatives of the Holy See from Israel and abroad.
Few representatives and members of the local Christian communities participate in existing frameworks and forums for Jewish-Christian dialogue. The three Christians on the present panel are outstanding exceptions to this general observation. The vast majority of Israeli-Jews has no significant contact with local Christians, or any awareness of the revolutionary changes in the Churches in the West as regards attitudes towards Jews and Judaism. In showing near total disinterest in anyone outside the dominant community, the Jewish majority is obviously behaving like any other majority. Minority status and the realities of the Diaspora appear to be more conducive to awareness of the Other and of the need for dialogue.
In Galilee, where a majority of the Christians in the land live alongside a minority of the Jews in the land, there are contacts, both in daily life and through the many organizations that promote Arab-Jewish co-existence. There is also fruitful cooperation between the personnel of the scores of Christian educational, medical and social welfare institutions throughout the country and Israeli-Jews working in these fields. However, these contacts have been characterized by, indeed often premised on, a conspiracy of silence regarding anything that touches upon religious faith and identity and thus cannot be counted as interfaith dialogue.
Preparing the Way for an Indigenous Jewish-Christian Dialogue
Why has this land remained so underdeveloped relative to the advances in Jewish-Christian interfaith relations in other countries? Certainly the prolonged political hostilities and the absence of a shared language and culture have been major stumbling blocks to dialogue between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arab Christians. But even Israeli Jews who are aware of the unprecedented changes in the Western Churches and are committed to interfaith endeavors have yet to enter into earnest dialogue with local Christians. Initiatives have been sporadic and involve only a few individuals. We Israeli Jews often blame the indigenous Christians for the dearth of interfaith dialogue, accusing them of lacking a notion of pluralism or faulting them for “politicizing” relations. When it comes to the Christian communities, even those of us with years of experience in interfaith relations seem to forget the most elementary rule of authentic dialogue and true pluralism: The Other, and particularly the Other who is the weaker partner, must be allowed to define himself or herself.
Let us recall that the key factor that produced the turnabout in Jewish-Christian relations in the West was a fundamental change of heart and attitude on the part of the majority faith community. Christians stopped judging Jews and Judaism according to exclusive Christian criteria, and endeavored to learn by what essential traits Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience. The course of this revolutionary change, culminating in the historic visit of the Pope to the Holy Land in 2000, is traced in the film “I am Joseph Your Brother,” produced by the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel in cooperation with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
I believe that there will be no significant breakthrough in this land in the area of local Jewish-Christian relations until there is a similar rethinking and reaching out on the part of the dominant Jewish community. In an article on the encounter of Jews and Christians in the West published in 1964 under the title "Confrontation," the late Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik expressed the hope and prayer “that our friends in the community of the many will sustain their liberal convictions and humanitarian ideals by articulating their position on the right of the community of the few to live, create, and worship God in its own way, in freedom and with dignity.” Indeed, I would argue that affirming and ensuring the dignity of the other is the heart and core of interfaith dialogue and relations.
In this land, we Jews must bear the burden of the community of the many to ensure that the Christian minorities can indeed live, create and worship in their own way in freedom and dignity. Here, I would like to reiterate a number of practical steps that I first enumerated in 1997 at a public symposium in Jerusalem on “The Future of Jewish-Catholic Relations in the World and in Israel/the Holy Land,” sponsored by the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel. These steps reflect similar steps taken by the Christian Churches in the West in order to pave the way for constructive dialogue and positive relations with Jews and Judaism.
First, we must study in depth the particular historic experience of the Christian communities in Holy Land. Israeli Jews are familiar with some details of the history of Christianity in the West, but know nothing about the radically different historic experience of the local Christian communities. Since the 7th century, Christians in the Middle East have lived as dwindling minorities on the margins of the dominant Arab Muslim society, valiantly struggling for linguistic, cultural, religious and, in more recent centuries, even physical survival. Some Israeli Jews have heard of the genocide that decimated a significant portion of the Armenian people in the early part of the 20th century, but hardly anyone is aware of the various massacres that were perpetrated against other Christian groups in our area in the modern era, the memory of which is buried deep within the souls of many local Christians. The discovery of the remarkable parallels between our respective histories should suffice to make clear that the paradigms and agenda of Jewish-Christian dialogue in the West are inappropriate to the pursuit of better Jewish-Christian relations in the Holy Land.
Second, we Israeli Jews must be sensitive to that which offends or threatens local Christians. The temptation will be great to focus on our own deep pain, or to enumerate the injuries caused to Christians by Muslims, rather than to honestly confront the ways in which we insult or wound Christians. We must scrutinize the subtle anti-Christian terminology and practices that became engraved in our tradition in the course of, and in reaction to, the long centuries of Christian teaching of contempt. We need to research, record and react to anti-Christian incidents, which are all too frequent. We need to carefully examine what is, and especially what is not, taught about Christians and Christianity in Israeli schools.
Third, we should appreciate the manifest plurality that characterizes the Christian presence in this land. To dismiss this plurality as nothing more than the product of petty pre-modern squabbles does injustice to the rich diversity of Christian communities, which confronts us with a type of pluralism that might raise questions about some of our cherished western notions and norms of pluralism. If, for example, we measure the quality of pluralism by how smoothly things are going, then indeed the interaction of the six different Christian groups in the close quarters of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher might not always receive high marks. However, if we judge pluralism by how fully each unique group is able to preserve its particularities, then the situation in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher will score as high, if not higher, than much of what passes for multi-culturalism in modern enlightened western society.
Fourth, Israeli-Jews must recognize that the local Christian communities struggle daily to discern their path in a complex maze of relationships—with the Islamic world, with the western Christian world, with Jews in the context of a sovereign Jewish State, with a biblical heritage that is often confusing for them in a setting in which the Bible is sometimes used to buttress political arguments. The different Catholic and Protestant communities additionally have their relationships with one another and with the various Orthodox Churches in the Holy Land. Local Christians face a mind-boggling six-dimensional chess game in which a wise move in one dimension can spell defeat, or even disaster, in another dimension.
Fifth, we have to realize that in such circumstances Christian identity will of necessity always be a complex and fluid composite of diverse elements. Israeli Jews must allow Christians to define the various components of their identity and to decide which element or elements to stress. If, for example, they choose to emphasize their intimate attachment to a particular land that is for them a kind of “fifth gospel,” or to emphasize a national component in their identity, we must respect this in the same way that we expect others to accept and understand similar components in our identity.
The above steps are preliminary and preparatory in nature and should be viewed as a mandatory cleansing of the heart and mind before entering the sacred space of dialogue. They will hopefully benefit the local Christian minorities, but we Israeli Jews must undertake them principally for our own spiritual and moral well being as an empowered majority.
Local Christians, on their part, need to recognize that a total reversal of minority-majority roles relative to Jewish-Christian relations in the West is not possible. Although there are elements of a ‘teaching of contempt’ in our tradition, we Israeli Jews do not bear the burden of centuries of persecuting Christians. Furthermore, Israeli Jews also struggle on multiple fronts. We are the majority in Israel, but on all other fronts—in the region and worldwide—we, like the local Christian communities, are a tiny minority that is dependent on the understanding and good will of dominant majorities, most especially the Christian majorities of the world, who collectively make up one third of the global population.
Our dialogue with the Churches in the West takes place against the backdrop of a history of contempt and conflict, which has dictated the main themes of that dialogue: antisemitism and its theological roots, the legacy of the Holocaust, God’s continuing covenant with the Jewish people, the Jewish roots of Christianity and the Jewishness of Jesus, the significance of Jewish peoplehood, the centrality of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel in Jewish collective memory and of the State of Israel for the Jewish people today.
The Christian minorities in the Holy Land should note the importance of that dialogue and its agenda for both Jews and the worldwide Church. Keeping abreast of developments in the dialogue in the West will help them to better understand us in the context of our struggle to secure a place among the faiths, cultures and nations of the world. It will also help to explain why it has been difficult for us to reach out to the local Christian communities.
More significantly, studying the Jewish-Christian dialogue in the West might help the Churches in the Holy Land avoid the grave errors of the past that produced the tragic history of Christian demonization of Jews. That sad story had its beginnings in the early centuries of Christianity, when Christians were a persecuted minority enmeshed in a struggle for identity and survival in the midst of a then dominant Greco-Roman religious-cultural-political worldview that had little tolerance for Christians and Christianity. In the course of that struggle, early Christians slowly distanced themselves from Judaism and increasingly demonized Jews. The anti-Jewish theological tenets that were formulated in the early centuries of the Church were carried over into a polity in which Christianity was the majority faith, which had dire consequences for Jews and for Christianity.
In many respects, Christians in the Middle East, and particularly in the Holy Land, find themselves today in a situation similar to that of the Christians in the first centuries of the Christian era. The Greco-Roman world has been replaced in the region by a Muslim-Arab religious-cultural-political worldview within which Christians struggle as minorities, as they have for centuries, to secure their place. Recently, a Jewish-Israeli religious-cultural-political worldview has re-established a presence on the local scene. As Palestinian Arab Christians write their theologies, they should follow closely the western Jewish-Christian dialogue, so that, with the benefit of its findings, they might have the strength and wisdom to avoid the direction taken by early Christians in the formulation of their theological views on Jews and Judaism.
Moving into the Future: Pioneering Efforts
A number of pioneering initiatives in recent years, and especially in the last year, enhance hopes that a unique indigenous Jewish-Christian dialogue might finally blossom in the Holy Land. The signing of the First Alexandria joint declaration in January 2002 marked a significant breakthrough in interfaith relations in the Holy Land. Some of the individuals on this panel have been involved in that undertaking and its follow up. There is an urgent need to build on the accomplishments to date of the Alexandria Process, inter alia by creating carefully planned frameworks and forums through which Israeli Jews of all backgrounds and outlooks and members of the full range of Christian communities can encounter one another in creative and constructive ways.
In May 2003, Archimandrite Emile Shoufani led a group of 150 Israeli Arabs and 150 Israeli Jews on an historic joint pilgrimage to Auschwitz. This widely-publicized journey initiated by a prominent local Arab Greek (Melkite) Catholic priest has opened the hearts and minds of many Israeli Jews and aroused a healthy curiosity about the man and his community, which is the largest Christian community in Galilee today.
In December 2003, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, whose faithful include a majority of Arab Catholics and smaller numbers of Hebrew-speaking and expatriate Catholics, issued the document entitled “Reflections on the Presence of the Church in the Holy Land,” to which I have already referred. The section on “Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel” affirms that the official teaching of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church regarding Jews and Judaism is also the teaching of the Patriarchate, noting, however, that this teaching has to be applied and lived in the unique contemporary circumstances of the Holy Land. The authors express regret for “the attitudes of contempt, the conflicts and the hostility that have marked the history of Jewish-Christian relations” and look forward, as I do, to the “fraternal dialogue that can and must develop between Jews and Christians in the Holy Land within the specific context we share.”
Finally, I wish to conclude with some remarks regarding the new Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations (JCJCR), with which I personally am involved and which is sponsoring today\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s symposium. JCJCR has been set up to respond to the challenges of the unique and complex encounter of Israeli Jews and indigenous Christians about which I have spoken. The Center will work with all segments of Israeli-Jewish society and the full range of Christian communities in the Holy Land to combat ignorance and prejudice and to foster understanding and empathy between the Jewish majority and the local Christian minorities. The Center will strive to impact on five spheres of society: the general public and media; formal and informal educational systems; political and civil service echelons; security, military and police forces; and academia. JCJCR will initially focus on four core activities: carefully planned specialized encounter groups; educational programs and materials; research on Jewish Christian relations in the Holy Land; and information services.
As part of a networking and strategic planning process of JCJCR, I have met personally over the past six months with several hundred Jewish and Christian religious and communal leaders and educators, relevant officials in the political and civil service echelons, and representatives of the media and academia. Everyone has been most cooperative and encouraging.
In January, JCJCR sponsored a two-day Jewish-Christian consultation at Nes Ammim near Akko in which some 30 invited Jewish and Christian religious leaders and educators from throughout Galilee participated. The first day of the conference focused on the major issues of identity facing Israeli-Jewish and Israeli Arab-Christian societies respectively. On the second day, participants discussed possible projects and activities that can contribute to better understanding and relations between Jews and Christians Galilee.
Earlier today, here at Tantur, the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations brought together ranking representatives of all of the historic Christian communities in the Holy Land and representatives of Jewish organizations that are concerned with human rights, social justice and co-existence between the three faiths and two peoples who inhabit this land. The consultation focused on major problems currently confronting the local Christian communities and institutions, such as the long-standing visa problem, anti-Christian incidents and the emigration of Christians from the Holy Land.
JCJCR is currently organizing a number of ongoing specialized encounter groups, including two in Galilee – one focusing on prayer in Jewish and Christian tradition and the other around the sensitive topic of memory and pain in our respective societies. JCJCR will continue to coordinate together with Bishop Marcuzzo a Jewish-Christian dialogue group that has been meeting in Galilee for the last couple years under the auspices of ICCI. At its last meeting held at the Latin Vicariate in Nazareth earlier this month, that group set up a small working committee to begin brainstorming regarding educational materials and programs that must be developed in order to promote better Jewish-Christian understanding locally. In Jerusalem we are in the process of setting up an encounter group of Israeli-Jews and Palestinian Christians which will focus on “Studying the Bible in the Land of the Bible.” Recently, funding has been secured for the development of a data base and an appropriate web site in Arabic, Hebrew and English, as well as for research on aspects of Jewish-Christian relations in this land, including recording and reporting incidents of defamation or desecration. It is my hope that these efforts will bear fruit and contribute to better Jewish-Christian relations in this land for the benefit of all.
I want to end with words of thanks. First, I wish to thank the Director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, Dr. Ron Kronish, and the Executive Board of ICCI for agreeing to have ICCI serve as an “incubator” for the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations for a period of up to three years. This formal arrangement and the practical advice and assistance that I have received from ICCI have been critical to getting this project off the ground. Second, I wish to thank the heads of the Christian communities for all their encouragement and cooperation to date. Most particularly, I wish through their representatives on this panel to thank the three Patriarchs of Jerusalem for providing or helping to secure abroad financial support for JCJCR. Finally, I wish to thank all of you here today, as well as the many other Jews and Christians in this land and abroad with whom I have met over the recent months. Your suggestions, encouragement, and above all, your many expressions of friendship energize me to pursue the JCJCR project with a passion.
