Benedict XVI’s new book and Jewish-Christian relations SIMON ROCKER


Week, praising his “clarity and courage”. Extracts officially released ahead of the pub- lication were chosen to highlight the book’s contribution to Jewish-Christian relations. To me, they represent an act of theological dis- armament, reinterpreting certain passages in the gospels that had in the past buttressed anti-Jewish teachings and made the New Testament, in the eyes of the twentieth-century Orthodox Jewish theologian Eliezer Berkovits, “the most dangerous anti-Semitic tract in his- tory”. Nowhere is Benedict’s exegetical creativity


Models of faith L


ast week Israeli premier Binyamin Netanyahu led a chorus of Jewish welcome for Pope Benedict XVI’s new work, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy


more evident than in his understanding of the people’s cry in Matthew, “his blood be on us and our children”, as a kind of invocation of salvation rather than a pretext for vengeance. His work of biblical commentary follows in the path of reconciliation opened by the Catholic Church’s ground-breaking Nostra Aetate declaration of 1965, which removed the taint of collective responsibility for the death of Jesus from the Jewish people and asserted that God holds them “most dear”, and subsequently advanced by John Paul II, whose pilgrimage to Israel in 2000 gave Christian-Jewish rapprochement its most iconic image – his prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Major American-Jewish organisations issued statements to acclaim the new book, while Andrei Glotser, spokesman for the Russian Jewish Communities Federation, commented; “The Pope’s position will play an essential role in fighting anti-Semitism.” What has impressed Jewish observers is that, whereas Nostra Aetate represented a statement of principles, Jesus of Nazareth offers an authoritative guide to laymen on how to read Scripture in the light of those principles. There is another aspect of the book that has gone little noticed, probably because it did not emerge in the pre-publication extracts. According to the launch publicity, it will also contain “radical theological reasons why Christians should not seek the conversion of the Jews”. This will be important for Jews, who regard missionary approaches as simply adding insult to the injury of past persecution. However, it will be fascinating to see how the book’s argument squares with the Pope’s con- troversial restoration of the Tridentine Mass and its prayer for converting the Jews.


Pope Benedict XVI meets Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks. Photo: CNS/Toby Melville, Reuters


Ronald Lauder, the president of the World


Jewish Congress, while recognising the book as “an important marker against anti- Semitism in the Church”, nevertheless felt it would probably not be enough unless accom- panied by efforts to make it official doctrine “from top to bottom”. In this, he raises the obvious challenge for interfaith progress: how to filter new ideas down from a clerical elite to the congregational rank and file. But equally the question could be posed to Lauder and other Jewish leaders: what is being done to make ordinary Jews aware of the changes in Christian teaching that have taken place since the Second World War?


Only last month, Gilles Bernheim, the


Orthodox Chief Rabbi of France, warned that Christian-Jewish dialogue could not be one- way traffic, focused on “what we Jews think are Christian failures”. He appealed to his co- religionists to see Christians in a more positive light as “models” of faith. Rabbi Bernheim’s remarks point to a wider problem that inter-religious affairs currently figure low on the priorities of Jewish com- munities, preoccupied with more pressing anxieties over rising anti-Semitism and relent- less political attacks on the state of Israel. Theology generally takes second place to the repercussions of events in the Middle East. When it comes to understanding other reli- gions, Jews tend to fall back on the teaching that “the righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come”: it is enough to know that the virtuous can get to heaven without being overly concerned what religion they practise or scripture they read. Moreover, the


Pope Benedict’s new volume on Jesus of Nazareth, particularly its commentary on the blood libel of St Matthew’s gospel, has been welcomed by many rabbinical leaders and academics, at a time when more of them are urging their fellow Jews to engage positively with Christianity


prevalent Orthodox view is that interfaith dialogue should deal only with social ethics and stay clear of theological differences: whereas interfaith studies are part of the train- ing of British Progressive rabbis at the Leo Baeck College located in north London, there is no similar provision for Orthodox rabbis. Christian-Jewish relations remains “very much a minority interest”, observes Jonathan Gorsky, who lectures in the subject at London University’s Heythrop College. “The view of Jews is understandably deeply coloured by their historical experience.” He believes attempts should be made to address “misper- ceptions of Christianity among Jews – those who would say that Christianity is idolatrous or that nothing has changed in the Christian world since medieval days”. Edward Kessler, head of the Woolf Institute


of Abrahamic Faiths in Cambridge, argues that dialogue needs now to progress through exploring shared positive values, for example through programmes of joint biblical study. “You have to deal with negative issues but you can’t build good relations on them,” he said. In fact, there have been recent signs of grow-


ing Jewish interest in the Christian scriptures. The Liberal Rabbi Sidney Brichto’s English translation of the New Testament, published posthumously last year, reflected a belief that Jews should have some understanding of the spiritual patrimony of Christianity, not least because of its broader impact on civilisation. Dr Gorsky observes that the distance of


most Jews from Christianity is such that “it would be rather premature to talk of a the- ological engagement”. The immediate task is for Jews to recognise that they “have friends in the Catholic Church and then see what mutually we can give to the world around us”. But there is acknowledgement that dialogue has to reach beyond redressing grievances, past or present. Rabbi Marc Saperstein, the principal of Leo Baeck College, endorses Rabbi Bernheim’s warning against focusing dialogue on Christian “failures”. That kind of approach, he said, “replacing the Christian ‘Your ances- tors killed our Saviour’ with ‘Your ancestors killed our ancestors’ tends to create a sense of victimhood and self-righteousness among Christians, and self-righteousness among Jews – neither a very constructive basis for communication and cooperation.”


■Simon Rocker is Judaism editor of The Jewish Chronicle.


(See Books, page 24.) 12 March 2011 | THE TABLET | 11


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