"On Jewish Christian Dialogue"
by John Barich

      The following thoughts are personal in nature and should not be taken to represent any official or institutional point of view. They were born out of my desire to articulate what I want to teach my children. The issue of Jewish/Christian dialogue is of the utmost importance to me and is not merely an academic debate carried on at the seminaries across the land. Ecumenical dialogue is very personal, and very real, and the results profoundly effect the way I live and relate to my family. However, I would hope these thoughts generate honest discussion between Jews and Christians, and work to promote understanding and reconciliation between the these two great religious traditions.

      There are two areas I think that are fruitful for dialogue between Jews and Christians. First, I think Jewish/Christian notions of God will demonstrate commonality between the traditions and second, I think it is important to examine the role of historical memory as it relates to religious dialogue: there is no way honest dialogue may take place unless Christians understand and accept their anti-Semitic history, although this recollection of historical memory must not limit Christians (and Jews) from responding to the profound moral and ethical issues of the day.

Jews, Christians, and God

      The great Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote and spoke eloquently on the topic of ecumenism between Jews and Christians. Heschel observed that while dogma and tradition separate Jews and Christians, both traditions believe in the God of Abraham. Heschel asked Christians to take a theocentric approach to theology as opposed to a christocentric approach. And I believe taking the God of Abraham as the point of departure for an ecumenical theology opens a myriad of possibilities for dialogue.

      Jews and Christians, for instance, subscribe to the idea that God is the creator of heaven and of earth. The universe and human existence are not meaningless, empty phenomena devoid of purpose and reason. Rather, they are replete with meaning because they are created by God who possessed a specific design and intent when fashioning creation out of nothing. Creation is seen as neither random nor as the product of impersonal forces. Human persons, moreover, are viewed as sacred and as possessing an inherent dignity because they are created in the image of God.

      This notion that God creates the universe and the world with a specific purpose has implications for both Jews and Christians. Both traditions believe that God demands particular forms of behavior (both personal and social) as a way of living out one's faith and of demonstrating one's fidelity to God. On the individual level, this means treating others fairly and respecting the inherent dignity of the people we encounter daily. It means adhering faithfully to the commandments, of living a faith-life where our lives embody the aspirations of the religious language we use in prayer and liturgy. We speak of God as the ultimate reality conferring both rights and obligations upon us. We are expected to love the Lord God with all our heart and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Love, though, is not an emotion nor does it refer to the idea that we like everyone whom we love (I think this is an impossible demand). Rather, Jewish/Christian theology demands an external comportment and an internal sense of responsibility and obligation when dealing with our neighbors. You may not like the grimy, dirty homeless person on the street but your are obligated to feed him. I think both traditions would agree that love is action. Not emotion. Not sentiment.

      It would seem that Jews and Christians could agree that the God of Abraham expects, no demands, particular ethical actions on the individual level. These demands, these ethical patterns of behavior, are meant to be implemented on the social level as well. The God of Abraham expects society to be arranged to insure justice for all citizens. The Biblical injunctions on this matter are quite clear. We are told to care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. To abdicate this duty is to offend God and defile His image.

      I think both Jews and Christians could agree that God abhors injustice and demands we work to rectify social injustice. In the book of Exodus, we read of God freeing the Jewish people from the bondage of oppression. Taking this story as a paradigm we may say --as have many liberation theologians have said -- that God sides with the poor, with the oppressed, and that God --through human action -- will free those who have been enslaved.

      Thus, Jews and Christians, despite our differences, may agree with a few of the principles set forth -- that God, the Creator of the universe, demands we engage in particular forms of ethical and social behavior, and that God will liberate those who are oppressed -- sensitive is He to the suffering and anguish of the oppressed, and demanding we work to create a world that is more just and humane.

Christians, Anti-Semitism, and the Ossification of Memory

      When entering ecumenical dialogue with Jews, Christian need to be aware of their history, and be cognizant of the anti-Judaism and anti-Semitisim which is endemic to the Christian tradition and has been the legacy of Christianity for almost two thousand years. Much has been written on this topic and so I will summarize a few themes to make my point clear.

      Christians, until recently, have persecuted Jews throughout their history. Starting with the conflict between synagogue and Church which began with the emergence of the Christian tradition in the first century, Christians have held distorted views of Jews and Judaism. The Gospel of John, for instance, is filled with anti-Jewish invectives, and one wonders if John forgot that Jesus whom Christians claim is the Messiah was in fact a Jew. These anti-Jewish notions made their way into the writings of the Church Fathers and were encapsulated in what is called an adversus Judaeos literature. One popular idea propagated by such literature was called the "teaching of contempt." Basically, this notion asserted that the Jewish people were forced to wander the earth after the destruction of the Second Temple because they had rejected Jesus Christ; their degraded position in Christian society attested to the supremacy of Christianity over Judaism. Such bizarre and insidious ideas became problematic for Jews when Christianity ascended to power in the Roman Empire under Constantine. Jews suffered terribly under the yolk of their Christian oppressors. Jews were demonized in the minds of Christians. In the middle ages, they were accused of spreading the black death, of perpetrating the blood libel, of committing every evil imaginable. Such ideas lead the breaking of Jewish bodies and the spilling of Jewish blood -- to ghetoization and expulsion -- to forced conversions and degrading indignities. Hitler, when he came to power in Germany, played on such anti-Semitic notions embedded in the collective psyche of Christian.

      And one might argue that Auschwtiz is the final result of Christian anti-Semitism.

      Thus, if Christians want to enter into authentic dialogue with Jews, they need to be aware of their history and how their rhetoric and theology has lead to the persecution of Jews. Christians must accept responsibility for their history, and critique their theology in light of their history. Christians cannot confine their history to a box and pretend that it never happened. Because sadly, Christians have perpetrated the most terrible of atrocities in the name of God and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Simply:

• For Jews, the legacy of Christianity has been an eternal night.
• Christians must accept this legacy.
• Now, history is the burden Christians must bear.
• For Jews, the language of Christianity has been the language of evil, of oppression.
• For Christians, religious statements are empty if they perpetuate anti-Semitisim and barbarism.

      However, while Christians must be aware of their anti-Semitic history, Jewish/Christian dialogue cannot stop at Auschwitz. Unfortunately, history has moved on since the Holocaust, and we are confronted by the continued reality of genocide, violence, war, oppression, and injustice. New atrocities have been perpetrated since Auschwitz. For our dialogue to mean any thing, we must confront these issues without forgetting what has come before. Moving forwards does not mean forgetting the past, but of learning from the past and of carrying these lessons into the present. The collective memory of Jews and Christians must inspire action, action that is a confrontation with evil in the world, or memory is a valueless relic of events we cannot change. Auschwitz happened. And I am sickened by it. That it happened will haunt me the rest of my life. I will pass this horrible memory on to my children, who will in turn pass it on to their children. The memory, though, will eventually begin to fad -- as does all memory. The world may not forget entirely, but the power of historical memory which once compelled action will eventually dissipate. While the trauma of the Holocaust may always be present in the memory of survivors and their descendants, it will eventually lose is power to drive, to galvanize....

      I want more for my children than the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. I want them to be faithful to their people and partake in the liturgy of destruction (as the recitation of Jewish history has been called), but I want to forge a new world for them. I want to transform the liturgy of destruction into a liturgy of creation which realistically confronts the past while searching for a new future. I abhor anti-Semitism. I am embarrassed by my Church's actions during the Second World War, but I know my children will need more than the Holocaust as a reason to continue being Jewish.

      The danger of Jews and Christians discussing the history of anti-Semitism without critically reflecting on present day reality is that our memories will become ossified. We will forget we are living in the present -- and that we possess a limited capacity to change the world for the better. We will succumb to the despair that is Auschwitz, abdicate the freedom God has given us to re-make our lives, and lose ourselves in pain and suffering which is not really ours. Worse still, we will fail in our duty to create a legacy worthy of our children.

      The choice is ours to make. As I've asked before, what will our legacy be?