Jewish Concerns Largely Allayed by Keeler Letter on Jerusalem

Jewish interfaith leaders said their concerns have been largely allayed and Catholic-Jewish relations put back on track by a letter issued by Cardinal William Keeler this week clarifying his stance on the status of Jerusalem.

Keeler’s letter came one week after he signed a statement, along with other church leaders, criticizing Israel’s assertion that Jerusalem will remain the “eternal undivided capital of Israel.”

The eight Christian leaders called on President Clinton to pressure Israel to limit its presence in Jerusalem.

The statement set off a storm of protest from Jewish groups and Israeli leaders.

This week, the Christian Coalition, the powerful evangelical group, weighed in with its own objection to the statement.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the group’s executive director, Ralph Reed, wrote, “This statement does not represent the sentiments of our organization nor, we believe, the beliefs of the millions of evangelical Christians who cherish the security of the State of Israel as one of their top foreign policy concerns.”

“We recognize the Holy City as the undivided capital of the State of Israel,” Reed wrote.

A meeting was hastily arranged this week between Jewish interfaith leaders and Keeler, who is president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and who has had a long history of close relations with representatives of Jewish groups.

Jews left the March 13 meeting, held at Keeler’s residence in Baltimore, not fully satisfied that the Christian leaders understood how central the issue of Jerusalem is to the Jewish community. The Jewish participants were anxious to see the contents of the letter that Keeler promised he would write to them.

Keeler issued the letter the next day. In it, he sought to assure Jewish leaders that he did not wish to interfere in the discussions over Jerusalem, which are scheduled to take place as part of the final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian in 1996.

“The intent of the statement was not to suggest that the negotiators, in this instance the Israelis and Palestinians, should change their agreed schedule as to when the issue of Jerusalem will be formally addressed,” Keeler wrote.

“Nor was it the intent of the Statement to endorse any particular position on the permanent status of Jerusalem. Rather, it was to preserve all options and possible solutions until the principals could address them.

“Similarly, we did not intend that outsiders should enter the peace process but that in the matter of Jerusalem, representatives of the local religious communities should be involved in discussions pertinent to their rights and needs as religious communities,” the cardinal wrote.

Keeler’s letter said that the original statement was prompted by “the increasing fear expressed to us by Christians in the area that certain `developments on the ground’ in and around Jerusalem might preclude vital aspects of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Several of those to whom the letter was addressed said they were not wholly satisfied with the cardinal’s response. But, they said, it did put the Catholic-Jewish dialogue “back on track.”

“Dealing substantively, it’s helpful, and in effect reverses what was there before,” said Michael Kotzin, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Chicago.

“We might still have differences, but this falls within parameters where there can be differences of perspective and that can be talked about, but won’t be damaging to the peace process, as the first statement could have been,” he said.

“The fact that Cardinal Keeler responded with alacrity to our concerns is a good thing,” said Jerome Chanes, co-director for domestic concerns at the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, an umbrella group of Jewish agencies.

“It’s clear that he takes very seriously the consultative process and the fact that there was a lapse in that process,” said Chanes.

There is a tacit agreement between Catholics and Jews engaged in dialogue. Before either groups issues a position on an issue considered sensitive by the other, that group will consult, or at least warn, its dialogue partner about the impending announcement.

This time, Jews who have had warn relations with Keeler for decades did not even get a warning about the statement he was planning to sign about Jerusalem, an issue at the heart of Jewish concerns and passions.

His position shocked several Jewish leaders, particularly because from the top levels of the hierarchy to the grass roots, they describe the Catholic-Jewish relationship as the best interreligious or interethnic relationship in the country.

“There was bewilderment and surprise and sadness” on the part of Jews that the cardinal had taken the position he did by signing on to the original statement, said Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee.

Kotzin described the outcome as a good example of the strength of dialogue between Catholics and Jews.

“It provides an example of using the process to correct a glitch in it. But the [original] document is still there, so there is still something problematic out there with his signature,” he said.