Beliefs; Ten carefully worded paragraphs encourage Jews to consider a thoughtful response to changes in the relationship between Christianity and Judaism
By Peter Steinfels
Published: September 23, 2000
If there were a religious equivalent to low-level environmental pollution, a major offender might be well-meaning but ultimately platitudinous statements by religious leaders about interfaith understanding.
But the statement ''Dabru Emet,'' published in The New York Times on Sept. 10 as an advertisement, is not one of them. Its Hebrew title comes from the biblical phrase, ''speak the truth to one another.'' It is only 10 paragraphs, and every paragraph has been carefully forged.
The opening sentence speaks of ''a dramatic and unprecedented shift in Jewish and Christian relations.'' After nearly two millenniums of dismissing or denigrating Judaism, in the decades since the Holocaust, church after church has publicly expressed remorse and pledged to acknowledge in its preaching and teaching ''God's enduring covenant with the Jewish people'' and ''the contribution of Judaism to world civilization and to Christian faith.''
''These changes merit a thoughtful Jewish response,'' the second paragraph said. ''It is time for Jews to learn about the efforts of Christians to honor Judaism.''
What followed were eight brief statements about how Jews might now view the relationship of Judaism and Christianity. The first stated that both faiths worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and that ''through Christianity, hundreds of millions of people have entered into relationship with the God of Israel.''
Other paragraphs addressed Jewish and Christian concerns with the authority of the Bible, with the land of Israel, with the moral principles of Torah and with justice and peace.
One paragraph advised that ''the humanly irreconcilable difference between Jews and Christians will not be settled until God redeems the entire world as promised in Scripture;'' meanwhile, Scripture-based polemics, political pressures or proselytizing will be destructive and futile.
The next paragraph claimed that an improved relationship between Jews and Christians will not weaken Jewish practice, accelerate the ''religious assimilation that Jews rightly fear'' or encourage intermarriage, conversion to Christianity or a false blending of faiths.
A crucial paragraph dealt with the Holocaust. ''Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon,'' it stated, but added that ''without the long history of Christian anti-Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out.''
''Too many Christians participated in, or were sympathetic to, Nazi atrocities against Jews,'' the paragraph continued. ''Other Christians did not protest sufficiently against these atrocities. But Nazism itself was not an inevitable outcome of Christianity.''
The paragraph also expressed gratitude for Christians who had risked themselves to save Jews and for those who have struggled for an unequivocal repudiation of any contempt for Jews and Judaism in Christian teaching or practice.
''Dabru Emet'' was signed by more than 150 rabbis and Jewish scholars. They came from all branches of Judaism -- Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist -- although they did not claim to speak for anyone but themselves.
Four Jewish scholars of different viewpoints -- Dr. Tikva Frymer-Kensky of the University of Chicago Divinity School, Dr. David Novak of the University of Toronto, Dr. Peter W. Ochs of the University of Virginia and Dr. Michael A. Signer of the University of Notre Dame -- met for over a year (indeed, some conversations went back five years) to hammer out the wording.
As evidence that the drafters were tangling with substantial matters, one observer recalled ''hot and heavy arguments,'' people ''storming out of the room'' and then cheerfully getting back to work.
''To this Presbyterian, the crafting of this document was nothing short of miraculous'' said the observer, the Rev. Christopher Leighton, executive director of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore where the drafters met.
As Rabbi Novak recalled: ''It was a question not only of getting four Jews to agree but four theologians as well.'' Many of the stumbling points, of course, had less to do with differences between Jews and Christians than differences among different strands of Judaism.
But evidence that the statement is substantial has also been supplied by the criticism it has garnered. Rabbi A. James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser of the American Jewish Committee, complained that the paragraph on the Holocaust fell short in emphasizing Christian responsibility and the need for churches to continue re-examining their histories.
The drafters surely knew that no single paragraph on the Holocaust would be beyond criticism. (One Jewish historian who signed the statement reportedly hesitated because he found the language about the Holocaust and Nazism overstated in the other direction.)
The essential point, Rabbi Novak said in a telephone conversation yesterday, was that Nazism was not an inevitable product of Christianity. ''If you look upon Christians as potential Nazis by the very fact of their Christianity, you cannot really have a relationship,'' he said, unless you ask them to renounce their faith.
That this paragraph should be the focus of criticism was inevitable and understandable.
But that could obscure some other very substantial aspects of the statement. For one, it implicitly criticized the Jewish community for being uninformed about or indifferent to major developments in Christianity.
By underlining points of intersection between Judaism and Christianity while affirming an ''irreconcilable difference,'' the statement suggested that Jews will understand that difference only as they plumb their own tradition and not simply because they reject the other tradition.
''Dabru Emet'' implicitly challenged Jews who, as Rabbi Novak had written, ''seem to think not being a Christian is all they need to do to retain a Jewish identity.''
The statement is one of several efforts to widen the Jewish-Christian encounter from a focus on community protection to one on theology. Its drafters were convinced that understanding what the two faiths have in common and what differentiates them would lead Jews to a renewed commitment to be fully Jewish.
Some people have assumed that ''Dabru Emet'' was written in response to Pope John Paul II's trip to Israel. A few have suspected it of being released to ride on the coattails of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate. Not so, in either case. The statement has been years in germination, and it was released two weeks ago because of the approaching Jewish holy days.
''We're insisting that Jews speak theologically in public,'' Rabbi Novak said. ''And if theology can't be discussed from pulpits where can it be?''