Understanding Oneself through the Other
Rabbi Jack Bemporad and Rev. Dr Hans Ucko

How do our understandings of Jews and Judaism and our relationships with Jews and living Judaism shape the way we Christians think about ourselves?

How do our understandings of Christianity and Christians, and our relationships with Christians and living Christianity shape the way we Jews think about ourselves?

The Jewish-Christian dialogue has been described as a path for Jews and Christians to go from pogrom to peace, from Shoah to shalom, from Holocaust to hesed. While this may be shorthand language and the Jewish-Christian dialogue certainly addresses more than a tragic past, it is true that the Holocaust, the Shoah, more than anything else prompted Jews and Christians to examine deeply engrained roots of mistrust, hatred and fear that culminated in one of the worst evils in human history. Ever since, theologians, historians and educators have been engaged and involved in trying to find ways to make sure that “the teaching of contempt” never again becomes an explicit or implicit Christian teaching about Judaism or the Jewish people. “ Antisemitism and all forms of teaching of contempt are to be repudiated,” said a WCC-document.1

Christian declarations and documents, confessional and ecumenical, articulate in various ways that "the covenant of God with the Jewish people continues and that Christians are to thank God for the spiritual treasures which we share with the Jewish people."2 Some of these statements have found or find their way into preambles of the constitution of many churches throughout the oikoumene. One example is the North Elbian Evangelical-Lutheran Church, which “testifies to the faithfulness of God, who remains true to the covenant with his people Israel. In listening to God's instruction and in hope for the fulfilment of God's rule, the church is linked with the people of Israel."3

On the Jewish side, one could as an illustration refer to the statement and project Dabru Emet, which tries to encourage "Jews to reflect on what Judaism may now say about Christianity". From a Jewish perspective, it affirms the intrinsic relationship between Jews and Christians, saying that Jews and Christians worship the same God, they both seek authority from the same book, and they accept the moral principles of Torah. The document calls finally for Jews and Christians to work together for justice and peace.

In the course of their dialogue, Jews and Christians have begun to discover that the encounter is a challenge for both communities. While it is true that no dialogue is symmetric, during the last decade there is the beginning of a convergence among Jews and Christians. Jews and Christians are beginning to ask themselves, each in their own community, how the other informs our own self-understanding. As organisers, we would like to take this particular process seriously and in the way we can encourage a continued reflection on one of the most important outcomes of dialogue: the unexpected discovery about oneself! The other enables me to reflect upon who I am. This learning is masterly illustrated by French historian Fernand Braudel, who once wrote to a French student, who was about to leave Paris for one year's studies in London: "Living in London for one year does not automatically imply that you will know England very well. But in comparison, in the light of the many surprises that you will have, you will suddenly have understood some of the deepest and most original features of France, those you did not know before and could not learn in any other way."4

After some decades of dialogue, when friendship has been established, there are opportunities not only for learning about the other but also for learning about oneself. There is now a space for unlearning as well as for learning anew. Such possibilities are not necessarily mutual and synchronic. The challenge to Jews and Christians takes different forms and can be expressed in varied ways. Although summarising in a couple of words expressions of unlearning and learning in the Jewish-Christian dialogue easily invites to over-simplification, there is no doubt that Rabbi Leon Klenicki offers a challenge of both unlearning and learning to both communities, while not exhausting other learnings. “Christianity must overcome theological triumphalism: the conviction that it is the only way of salvation and that it has to be imposed on everyone. … Judaism needs to overcome the triumphalism of pain and memories. … the feeling of pain should not be … an attitude of constant accusation.”5

As organizers, we would like to see whether we could work on a theme that, in light of the developments in Jewish-Christian dialogue, would challenge both Jews and Christians:

How do our understandings of Jews and Judaism and our relationships with Jews and living Judaism shape the way we Christians think about ourselves?

How do our understandings of Christianity and Christians, and our relationships with Christians and living Christianity shape the way we Jews think about ourselves?

Elaborating on these questions together would be the main thrust of the consultation.

Notes:

1. “Christian-Jewish dialogue beyond Canberra '91,” adopted by the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in August 1992 as a basis for the ongoing Christian-Jewish dialogue, and sent to member churches for study and action.
2. “Christian-Jewish dialogue beyond Canberra '91”
3. Declaration of the Synod of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Rendsburg, 22 September 2001, http://www.jcrelations.net/en/displayItem.php?id=1468
4. Fernand Braudel: Ecrits sur l'histoire, Ed. Flammarion, Paris, p.59;
5. Leon Klenicki, “A Hopeful Reflection on the Future of the Interfaith Dialogue Relationship” in Lesarten des jüdisch-christlichen Dialoges, ed. Silvia Käppeli (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002), 109
6. Attributed to the Rabbi of Kotzk

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