Rabbis Debate Value of Continuing Jewish-christian Dialogues

Opposite views on the value of continuing Jewish-Christian dialogues — a subject that has engendered considerable debate in Jewish lay and religious circles since last June’s Arab-Israel war — were taken in articles by two distinguished rabbis, published this month in the Hadassah Magazine.

Arguing for continued dialogues, Rabbi Marc H. Tannenbaum, director of the inter-religious affairs department of the American Jewish Committee, declared that “the dialogue process holds out promise for bringing the necessary changes in understanding that can lead more Christians to support and recognition of Israel’s right to exist.” Arguing against dialogues, Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, member of the political science department of Yeshiva University and spiritual leader of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, asserted that “it is Israel’s crisis more than anything else that has happened in the past five years, that pinpoints the bankruptcy of any program designed to get Christendom to revise its attitudes about Jews.”

Rabbi Rackman stated that his view of the futility and dangers he considered inherent in Jewish-Christian dialogues applied only to those held on a theological level. “By all means, in social action, Jews and Christians, whites and Negroes, must not only have dialogue but joint planning and implementation as a team,” Rabbi Rackman wrote. But on a religious level, he said, “between Christians and Jews there cannot be dialogue in the correct sense of the term until there is a basic recognition that all the participants are equals and what each group seeks to maintain is its own spiritual heritage, not absorption or assimilation of the other.” Such recognition, Rabbi Rackman contended, does not exist at the present time.

“The continuing existence of our people is a fact which the Church cannot reconcile with its historic theology. The restoration of Israel — the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Prophets for us and not for a Christian Israel — is more unacceptable to Christianity than unequivocal proof that we never committed decide, and public debates will not change the Church’s position,” Rabbi Rackman wrote.

Rabbi Tannenbaum disputed the charges by many Jewish leaders that Christian leadership failed to support Israel during last spring’s crisis. He asserted they had come to wrong conclusions on the basis of wrong information. He cited national polls, a survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee and numerous public statements to show that the overwhelming majority of American laymen and outstanding Protestant and Catholic theologians as well did indeed support Israel. Among those who demonstrated a negative attitude toward Israel’s victory last summer, many have since modified their positions. He attributed the support for Israel and the modification of non-supportive opinions in large measure to Jewish-Christian dialogues.

“Those who have downgraded the dialogue or condemned it as bankrupt are no more accurate in their understanding of precisely what the dialogue has achieved than they were in their highly emotional and imprecise description of ‘the Christian response’ to Israel,” Rabbi Tannenbaum wrote. “Hard-headed realism requires Jewish policy makers not to yield to the temptation to break off diplomatic relations with Christendom and to retreat to a Fortress Judaica.” Rabbi Tannenbaum said it was absurd to limit inter-faith dialogues to questions of social improvement and bar the religious ethics that underlay those questions. “I know of no proposal more in contradiction with traditional halachic Judaism than that of the Orthodox Jews who advocate a separation between religion and life,” he said.