Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

October 17, 2000

by Harold M. Schulweis

“Jews can't take 'yes' for an answer.” This quip attributed to the Israeli statesman Abba Eban is usually met with a smile of recognition. But what stands in the way of an affirmative acceptance of good news? Why such reluctance bordering on negativity toward the outstretched hand?

I have in mind the reluctant reaction of many Jewish leaders and organizations to the bold efforts of the Catholic Church, which for two and a half decades and particularly under the reign of Pope John Paul II, has called for a reconstruction of the Church's relationship to Judaism and the Jewish people. The traditional “displacement theology” of the Church that viewed Christianity as a faith that supersedes Judaism has been replaced with a positive appreciation of the relevance and vitality of Judaism. Its adherents are now addressed by the Pope as “our dearly beloved brothers,” indeed “our elder brothers.” The multiple calls by the Vatican for the “sinful sons and daughters of the Church” to purify their hearts in repentance of past errors and infidelities so as to “help heal the wounds of past injustice” has met with tepid, and even negative, response.

No less a strong advocate of Jewish-Catholic rapprochement than Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the head of the Pontifical Commission For Religious Relations With The Jews, has publicly stated that the Church's effort for reconciliation is being “undermined” by leaders of Jewish organizations. He finds the Jewish reaction “often so negative that some [in the Church] now hesitate to do anything at all for fear of making the situation worse.” Further, an exasperated Cardinal Cassidy declares that “We expect and hope that the Jewish partners will at least show us respect. You can hardly claim to respect someone if every possible opportunity you are ready to criticize the person, even without making a real effort to understand and appreciate the position of the other person.” This is a charge more serious than not being able to take “yes” for an answer. The virtual collapse of the IJCIC, the International Jewish Committee For Interreligious Consultation, which was created with joyful anticipation some thirty years ago signifies a serious breakdown. It will require our earnest attention and moral statesmanship to repair the breach.

No one, of course, could or should expect a quick and easy reconciliation between two communities of faith whose history has been savaged by Crusades, Inquisitions, accusations of blood libel and the grotesque charge of deicide. No one should expect a relentlessly battered people to emerge unscathed from centuries of insult and threat to the integrity of an abused people. No one could expect an easy and enthusiastic acceptance of the first invitation to sup at the table of the adversary. The cautionary cynicism of Ecclesiastes whispers into the eager ear of the credulous: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” The wounds and memories run deep along thinly formed scabs.

But Ecclesiastes is not a reliable guide for these times. From the years of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II in 1965 to the leadership of Pope John Paul II, the Church has undergone a revolution of attitude and deeds that is incontrovertible. There is much that is new under the sun.

Things change. People change. Prelates change. Institutions change. Doctrines change. Liturgies change. Consider the relationship of the Church toward the State of Israel. Only yesterday at the turn of our century, Theodore Herzl called on Pope Pius X to support the cause of Zionism, the return of a homeless people to Zion. Pius X responded to Herzl's pleas with the classic diction of Church theology “We are unfavorable to the movement. We cannot prevent Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we can never sanction it....The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.” Should the Jews manage to set foot on the once promised old-new land, the missionaries of the Church would stand prepared to baptize them.

But in our times, this Pope, John Paul II on December 30, 1993, against the internal opposition from right wing Catholics and Arab states, and over the objection of the Church's Secretariat of State, established full diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, exchanged ambassadors and put an end to the Church's condemnation of the Jewish people as the eternally uprooted wandering Jew.

Ecclesiastes offers dangerously misleading counsel. The core belief of the Jewish faith community is rooted in the transformative power of tshuvah, prayer and acts of goodness. The capacity to change lies at the heart of our High Holyday prayers. T’shuvah is the marrow of our faith. T’shuvah is a practice based on belief in the possibilities of change within, between and among God's children.

T’shuvah is not a passive faith. When the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel flew to Rome to meet with Cardinal Bea and Pope Paul VI concerning Vatican II's Schema on the Jews, he was chided and severely criticized by leading rabbinic Jewish leaders. Among other disparagements, they said,. “We do not believe you will succeed.” Heschel's response was strong and to the point “And because you do not believe, therefore we should not try?” When a preliminary statement came out of the Ecumenical Council expressing the hope that Jews would eventually join the Church, Heschel responded “I would rather go to Auschwitz than give up my religion.” It was Heschel in Rome who persuaded Pope Paul VI to cross out a paragraph in which there was a reference to the conversion of the Jew.

Changes are difficult and complex, and require patience and wisdom. But changes are real. In 1960, the Jewish historian Jules Isaac was received by John Paul XXIII at which time he presented the Pope with a document on the Church's involvement in promoting the contempt of the Jews. Isaac urged the Pope to remove the anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic passages from Catholic liturgy and text books. The Pope kept him in the Vatican for three days during which they engaged in deep conversation. Finally, Jules Isaac asked the Pope, “Can I leave with hope?” The Pope replied, “You are entitled to more than hope.”

Jules Isaac's book , published as The Contempt of the Jews, and his conversation moved the Pope. It was instrumental in his calling for a subcommission to study the Jewish question which eventually was incorporated in the deliberations of Vatican II.

There are those who find the statements of the church's reflection on the Shoah disappointing, inadequate, incomplete. They want a fuller, more explicit apologia. There are some who are unhappy with the choice of those whom the Church would canonize. There are those who find fault with almost every effort of the Church to rectify its attitude toward Jews and Judaism. But the resolve to re-examine the tragic relationship of the two faith communities should not be expected to be complete with one declaration or one commission. Any authentic dialogue on this long and complex history must be welcome as an ongoing process. The Pope's call to his followers for an “examination of conscience” calls for patience, encouragement and more statesmanship on their part and our own.

It is nothing less than heroic for any faith to enter its darker side. How many moments in history, if any, has any faith confessed publicly the transgressions of its believers and urged them to engage in an agonizing re-appraisal of its words and deeds toward another people and faith?

Encouragement of t’shuvah is essential for renewal.

In such matters, Judaism offers wiser counsel than Ecclesiastes' cynicism. We can turn to the Talmud for its moral insight. In the Mishnah (Gittin 5:5) the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel debate a law concerning a man who has stolen a beam of wood and built it into his own house. The man admits his guilt. The House of Shammai demands that the very beam that he has stolen must be returned, even if it calls for the demolishment of his own house to retrieve it. Even if a man has to travel to Media, he must personally return the beam to the owner and not send it with an agent, not even his son. That is the law. But the House of Hillel rules differently. Let the man return the monetary value of the stolen beam and let him not demolish his own house. Hillel's rabbinic ruling is called “takkanat ha-shavim,” the extension of the law for the sake of encouraging those who would repent. For the goal, the House of Hillel reminds us, is not to place obstacles before the penitent but to strengthen his heart and make it easier for him to turn his ways. The true aim is not simply to elicit a mea culpa but to change the future action of the penitent. The genuiness of t’shuvah is measured by the future moral activism of those who set their mind and heart to turn. As the Rabbi of Ger preached on the Day of Atonement: “What would you? Rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way. It will still remain muck. What does heaven get out of it? In the time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of heaven.”

It is not easy to ask forgiveness nor is it easy to accept forgiveness. Our tradition counsels “It is forbidden to be obdurate and not to allow yourself to be appeased.” (Maimonides, The Law of Repentance 2:3) A theological revolution has taken place before our eyes and we must not lose the opportunity to seize hold the new promise. Ecclesiastes casts us into the vicious cycle of return. Inadvertently it immortalizes anti-Semitism, its cynicism smothers the breath of t’shuvah.

The revolutionary changes within the Church must filter down to the people, to Christians and to Jews alike. It is disturbing to learn from Rabbi Ron Kronish, Director of Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel of the mis-education in Israeli schools that ignore the decades of profound transformation in the Church's attitude toward Jews. On March 19, 2000 the reporter of the New York Times, Deborah Sontag reports that the Israeli textbooks' presentation of Catholicism leaves off more than thirty-five years ago, before Vatican II discarded the dogma that blamed Jews for the death of Jesus. The curriculum ends with Pope Pius XII's failure to speak out publicly against the Holocaust. Such an amputated history is not fair to the Church nor is it fair to our children or theirs. Our task is to report history, the whole history and not to arrest it at the darkest period alone.

T’shuvah is not masochism nor sadism. T’shuvah requires going through the past but its goal is to enter the future renewed. Cicero taught, “Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child.” But to focus only on the sour fruits and pass over the sweet fruits is to falsify reality and embitter the future. We enter a new century in a world of new possibilities, in a season of ‘shuvah. Yitzhak Rabin in his first speech to the Knesset following his election in July 1992, recognized the need for a new heart and a new mind in a new era “No longer are we necessarily 'a people that dwells alone' and no longer is it true that 'the whole world is against us'. We must overcome this sense of isolation that has held us in its thrall for almost half a century, we must join the international movement toward peace, reconciliation, and cooperation that is spreading over the entire globe these days -- lest we be the last to remain, all alone in the station.”

This augury holds for our secular and spiritual life, for us and our children. It is no blessing to live alone.

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