Christians “who are interested in speaking seriously to Jews will also have to be prepared to listen carefully to them,” a noted Canadian rabbi today told more than 4,000 Roman Catholic priests, laymen and interested non-Catholics at a theological conference on the University of Toronto campus here.
Rabbi Stuart E. Rosenberg, spiritual leader of Beth Tzedec Congregation here, and a writer on Jewish theological subjects, addressed the International Congress– devoted to “Theology of the Renewal of the Church” — on the subject of “Contemporary Renewal and the Jewish Experience.”
Rabbi Rosenberg, speaking at the final session of the four day gathering, sponsored by the Catholic Bishops Conference in honor of Canada’s centennial, pointed out that Christian students of the Bible today can no longer bypass the Talmud or the medieval rabbinical commentaries in the effort to understand contemporary Judaism.
Christian scholars who want to engage in useful dialogue with their Jewish counterparts, he said, “will have to face up to the ineluctable fact that Jews will simply not conform to the image projected for them in classical Christian theology, nor will they generally accept a fraternal dialogue with those who can conceive of Christian renewal only on Christian terms which overlook the renaissance of Jewish life and vitality in the State of Israel.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
