IS JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE IN DANGER?
When Jews and Christians who live out their religion to the full compare the basis of their day-to-day life and hope, they have to give meaning to their differences. It would be unhealthy for them to remain in a state of comfortable syncretism (“Deep down, we all think, say and hope the same thing”).
Tensions are unavoidable: we discuss them, each from our own tradition, we note the commonalities and we envisage new analytical approaches that may reveal unexpected points of meeting.
This is the role of the machloket, which has forged habits of behaviour that have been so fruitful when the Jewish people and their sons have had to express themselves about the world’s business: their contribution to modernity has shown itself unequalled.
But when it is not a matter of thinking about the world, but rather a dialogue between individuals, some basic rules need to be respected, and one of these is respect.
No one has forgotten the Synagogue with blindfolded eyes, its spear broken, looked down on condescendingly by a triumphant Church holding chalice and banner, and positioning itself as a substitute (“Verus Israel”) of the fallen Jewish people, because blinded to the message of Christ. What a contrast between these medieval sculptures and the words of Cardinal Decourtray to a group of Jews who had come to visit him: “Be real Jews, that will help me be a real Christian!”
The Seelisberg meeting, an exchange between Jules Isaac and John XX, Vatican II and Nostra Aetate, the spectacular gestures by John Paul II: the “fallen” people have become the “older brother” of the Church.
Above all, there is no longer talk of deicide, the terrible accusation which provided such a convenient pretext for the stake fires, the massacres, the hatred which marked the destiny of Jews in Europe and weakened the moral guard against Nazi extermination policy. Has the accusation disappeared? No, says Father Patrick Desbois, not in Ukraine and possibly other countries of Eastern and Central Europe, where the Vatican’s message has not got through. A dangerous accusation if ever there was one, capable of reigniting the old fires of hatred against the Jews.
But what should be said when the man who lights the deicide fuse is himself an Orthodox Jew? He claims the halakhic legitimacy of Jesus’ murder by the Jews? Sure, it isn’t a deicide for him, as the divinity of Jesus is not recognised by the Jews. But how can a Christian, whose faith and hope is defined by Jesus, enter into sincere dialogue with a Jew, if the latter says that Jesus was legitimately put to death?
Others, more competent than I, have refuted the Talmudic claims contained in the text of this recent pamphlet. There is no doubt that such views are marginal.
My goal is not to stoke such exegesis. As President of CRIF and former CRIF staff member in charge of Jewish-Christian relations, my task is to recall that the nature of these relations is not merely religious or theological: they also have a political dimension. Political inasmuch as the history of these relations has for two thousand years weighed heavily on Jewish destiny in the Christian world, political inasmuch as many of the advances in the dialogue have been stimulated by men who were not “theologians”, political, because in the world in which we live, the understanding that the Judeo-Christian foundation of common beliefs and shared values on which a large part of the modern world was built is one of the keys for an acceptable common future resisting the assaults of radical Islamism.
Jewish-Christian dialogue and more particularly its Jewish-Roman Catholic expression have found France to be a choice environment: it has been enriched by friendly, indeed truly fraternal relations. One needs only to think of the Drancy Declaration, a model of its kind, adopted by the French bishops ten years ago and representing a huge effort by the bishops’ college to reflect on the actions of the Roman Catholic Church toward the Jews down the centuries.
Some feared that this dialogue would encourage conversions and accentuate the demographic losses of the Jewish people. This has not been the case, on the contrary, and for the first time in two thousand years there have been conversions which have encouraged the dialogue…
To live isolated, denying history and its evolutions, convinced of being in the truth and that all the others are in error and any compromise is to be rejected, is a frequent but dangerous fascination that threatens Jews and non-Jews alike. One may – and this is a good thing for freedom of expression in our country – insult Jesus, Mahomet or Moses; but we must draw the consequences when we seek at the same time to meet with Christians, Muslims or Jews.
With our hands steeped in the grime of history, we have the duty to listen to each other and to create richness from our differences.
We should not believe that Jewish-Christian dialogue, whose novelty and importance is not measured by the younger generations, comes naturally and will naturally endure. But we will make it live, despite the blows it is receiving!
Richard Prasquier
President of CRIF
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