Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

An Evening of Understanding and Hope with Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis & Cardinal Roger Mahony, September 29, 1999

by Harold M. Schulweis

Your Eminence, distinguished members of the panel, members and friends of the Catholic and Jewish communities -- There is a stained glass window above the entrance of our synagogue greets you with the biblical verse that binds us. If you step up close to the window, you will see that each letter is filled with the figures of different races and ethnicities. From Leviticus "Love thy neighbor as thyself.” On this verse a Chasidic tale comments with a story of two peasants:

The First Peasant complains to the other: You don't love me?
The Second Peasant answers: How do you know I don't love you?
The First Peasant continues: If you loved me, you would know what hurts me.
The Second Peasant responds: But you never tell me what hurts you. Is that not a sign that you don't love me?

There must be no silence between us.

True love begins with an honest exchange and a confession of hurt. That exchange began 1965 with a historic meeting between Professor Jules Isaac and Pope John XXIII and around Isaac's book, The Contempt of the Jews. It led to the convening of Vatican II by Pope John XXIII. That process of exchange continues with the blessings of Pope John Paul II. And this evening it continues here and now with our two great communities of faith. We gather together to recover the past so as to enter more wisely into the future.

We are not here for mutual refutation or mutual flattery. We are not here to win arguments or to offer refutations. We are not here for conversion. We are here to continue the momentous dialogue which began with Pope John XXIII's call for "aggiornamento.”

Who, are we who have come together? We do not share the same theology, the same dogmas or the same doctrines. But we share the same tears. We share the same fears. We share the same hopes.

We are here because the God we worship will not be segregated. The God we pray to will not be isolated in heaven. The God we revere is on earth as in heaven. God calls upon us to join hearts, hands and minds to protect our loved ones from the threat of haters whose venom poisons the air we breathe and who seek only to divide, to spoil, to set us apart.

But we are here not only to rehearse the past, but to confront the past for the sake of the future. We come through the Shoah, knowing full well, that while we cannot reverse the tragedy of yesterday we can create a nobler future for their and our children and children's children. We are here to seize the day, to open a new era at the birth of a new century.

We are here not only to hear history, but to make history.

What have we to do? In a remarkable address by Pope John Paul II on January 29, 1995, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of prisoners from the concentration camp at Auschwitz: The Pope speaking in St. Peter's Basilica spoke to the future. "Unfortunately, our days continue to be marked by great violence. God forbid that tomorrow we will have to weep over other Auschwitz's of our time. Let us pray and work that this may not happen. Never again anti-semitism. Never again the arrogance of nations. Never again genocide. May the third millennium usher in a season of peace and mutual respect among peoples."

Our century needs and welcomes the spiritual courage of mea culpa. Without confession there is no redemption. We honor the church for it's courage. No institution, no individual is free of transgression. Have we not learned from our Holy Scripture "There is no righteous person who has done good and who has not transgressed.”

Still, as indispensable as is the need to work through our tshuvah, it is not enough to stop with repentance, and it is not enough to stop with ourselves. The fist with which we beat our chest in contrition on the Day of Atonement must be opened to clasp the hands of our neighbors together to raise up the fallen, to free the pariahs of our society from the fetters of their alienation, to raise up our voice in defense of voiceless. History has taught us. Anti-Black, anti-Hispanic, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant prejudices all have one common target: to diminish the tzelem, to desecrate the Image of God within every single child born into this world.

We are here because history demonstrates the fatal interdependence of all human action. Hatred is lethal. Bigotry is contagious. Xenophobia is cancerous. It must be aggressively excised from the psyche of the body politic.

As I see it, this pioneering evening is not only for this moment and not only on behalf of Jews and Catholics. It is an unending process. The spirit begins here, but it must not end here; it begins with us, but its direction is to embrace the diverse faiths, ethnicities, races of our entire community.

Our collective memory is holy. We must not waste the memory of the past. We must seize the opportunities of this day for the future. It was on the very site of the Mathausen concentration camp on June 24, 1985 that Pope John Paul II raised a serious series of questions to the survivors which address our agenda. In the words of the Pope, "You people of yesterday and you people of today, if the system of extermination continues somewhere in the world even today -- what message can our century convey to the next?

Tell us, in our great hurry, haven't we forgotten your hell? Aren't we extinguishing traces of great crimes in our memories and consciences?

Tell us, what direction should Europe and humanity follow "after Auschwitz" and "after Mathausen"?

Speak, you have the right to do so, you who have suffered and lost your lives. We have the duty to listen to your testimony."

Dear colleagues and friends, our sacred memory serves as a warning call to all humanity. What is our remembrance for the future? What can we do today for tomorrow?

We can sensitize our collective conscience. We can protect each other, shield each other from the twisted souls whose violence threatens our children.

We can teach our children by enlivening our own love for each other. Love will prevail over hate.

We can tell our children where we were tonight and why. What impulse draws us to a sanctuary of hope, why tomorrow must be better than yesterday? We can teach them one of major lessons of the Shoah; the opposite of goodness is not evil, but indifference. Indifference is tantamount to consent.

We must hold fast to a double memory: Remember the evil but do not forget the good.

In the context of the Shoah, the children of all faiths must be taught the record of those Christians who risked their lives to protect our persecuted people from the killers of the dream. Goodness must be raised from the ashes of crematoria. Remember those priests and nuns and lay rescuers who in the lands of the Nazi predators lived the words of the prophet Isaiah, "turned themselves into hiding places from the wind and sheltered innocence from the tempests."

We call to memory the righteous of the world. Them we will not forget. They offer the world flesh and blood evidence of the reality of Godliness in our universe and the spirit that binds us.

They teach us the meaning of Jewish and Christian altruism. They teach us an immortal lesson. There was and always is an alternative to passive complicity with totalitarianism and repression.

Cardinal Mahoney you have been with us before and in this very sanctuary around the festival of Chanukkah (1993) to commemorate the Vatican's recognition of the State of Israel. Tonight we meet during the festival of Sukkoth, thankful for the benevolence and security of our homes and sanctuaries. Yet on Sukkot we are bidden to leave the solidity of our citadels to enter into a frail temporary hut, to remind ourselves of our fragility, our vulnerability and our dependence upon each other. The walls and roofs of our tents shield us from the winds and the sun. But we are reminded to look up through the thatches on the roof our huts and see the stars. They remind us that we are not alone in this universe. Heaven does not want us to be alone. We need each other.

Martin Buber wrote that "all real life is meeting.” This meeting tonight is an homage to real life. It calls for a classic Jewish benediction: "Blessed art Thou O Lord our God, King of the universe who has enabled us to live with our brothers and sisters to celebrate our sacred promise to unite heaven and earth. Bless our uniqueness and bless our oneness.

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