Considerations in Christian-Jewish Understanding
Summer 2007

Seminarians Gather to Learn With Each Other

The Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding (CCJU) of Sacred Heart University held its annual Seminarians and Rabbinical Students Conference on May 29 – 31, 2007 at the university campus in Fairfield, CT. Now in its eighth year, the 2007 conference welcomed 32 seminarians from across the country representing the Jewish and Christian faiths. The conference is a flagship program of the Center’s Institute for Religious Leaders whose mission is to provide for a deeper historical and theological understanding of the other that can positively shape the future ministries of ordained clergy in their teaching, preaching and relations with each other. Past participants – some of them newly ordained clergy – are invited back each year to continue their study and dialogue for improving Christian-Jewish relations through the Center’s annual Colleagues in Dialogue program.

Rabbi Eugene Korn, CCJU associate executive director, opened the conference describing its aim to provide “a profoundly human and spiritual experience of the other where assumptions can be explored and perspectives enlarged so that both self-identity and the understanding of the religious other can be deepened through dialogue.” The three-day conference included presentations from leading scholars in Christian-Jewish relations, a joint scripture study, a visit to a synagogue and a Catholic church, in addition to opportunities for informal dialogue throughout the event.

Keynote speaker Rabbi Irving Greenberg, of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, spoke about a pluralistic theology of interreligious dialogue. Rabbi Greenberg said the three biblical stories on which Christians and Jews stake their existence add up to one master narrative best described as “the triumph of life.” “The stories of creation, covenant and redemption lead us to embrace human existence from a divine perspective,” he explained. Rabbi Greenberg described the primary goal of religion as the commitment to “a world full of life where humans understand themselves to share the image of God and be sustained in a way appropriate to the image of God.” In the new encounter between Christians and Jews, “Judaism and Christianity can reassert the responsibilities of the covenant and their partnership in the perfection of the world, but first they must replace a legacy of mutual distrust with one of mutual respect.” “Both religions,” he continued, “face the common threats of secularization and relativism that neither is strong enough to handle alone.” He encouraged the seminarians to contemplate the richness of God’s covenantal pluralism that “means more than accepting or even affirming the other, but recognizes the blessing in the other’s existence because it balances one’s own position and brings us all closer to the ultimate goal of respecting human life’s infinite value.”

Seminarians were guided in a joint scripture study by Michael Peppard and Josh Garroway, from Yale University, New Haven, CT. Working in small study groups, Jewish and Christian seminarians examined both the differences and the commonalities in how each tradition interprets sacred text and the processes or methodologies that inform each tradition.

“The ultimate goal of these discussions is not to arrive at a definitive exegetical interpretation to be imposed on all,” said Rabbi Garroway. “The critical issue for dialogue and learning in the presence of the other for Christians,” added Mr. Peppard, “is a reading of the Hebrew Bible that avoids a supersessionist interpretation” (the term used to describe the opinion that Christianity replaced Judaism – a position that was revisited at the Second Vatican Council’s declaration, Nostra Aetate).

Eugene Fisher, Ph.D., associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), addressed the seminarians on the problems of dialogue taking place in an ahistorical context. Dr. Fisher characterized the 1st millennium of Jewish-Christian relations as centuries of tolerant co-existence when Jews were free to practice their religion in a non-violent environment. “When compared to the 2nd millennium beginning with the period of forced conversion of Jews by Christians and Muslims and the mounting of the Crusades by 1095/1096, the 1st millennium was relatively benign,” said Dr. Fisher. “When we place Christianity and Judaism in an historical context,” asserted Dr. Fisher, “we discover that anti-Jewishness was not a central theme of the first thousand years of Christianity.” 

The modern history of Christian-Jewish relations was the topic explored by Dr. Judith Banki of the Tanenbaum Center in New York City. Dr. Banki reminded the seminarians that “it is easy to take the achievements of Nostra Aetate for granted but in actuality the development of the text was a cliffhanger since the document only passed in the final sessions of the final days of the Second Council.” (Nostra Aetate, The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, one of the 16 documents of Vatican II, was approved on October 28, 1965. This document helped to overturn centuries of teaching of contempt about Judaism by stressing the importance of mutual understanding and respect between Christians and Jews.) Dr. Banki, a leading pioneer in Christian-Jewish relations for more than five decades, chronicled the landmarks in Christian-Jewish dialogue following the Second Council and the implementation of Nostra Aetate through subsequent Church documents. Despite the progress, she added, “we must be alert to the potent landmines for Christians and Jews which are found wherever there is evidence of demonization, denigration or a double standard in the treatment of the other.”

A conversation on the most recent developments in Christian-Jewish relations continued with a group discussion led by Dr. Mary C. Boys, the Skinner & McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, and CCJU’s Rabbi Eugene Korn. Dr. Boys and Rabbi Korn offered a Catholic and Jewish perspective, respectively, on such complex issues as Arab-Israeli relationships and the meaning of the Land of Israel for the Jews and the Christians.

In all of these issues, said Dr. Boys, “it is essential to get beyond the fundamental asymmetry in our traditions. For Christians, the challenge is how to assert the centrality of Jesus Christ to the Church while also respecting the legitimacy of Judaism. For Jews, the issue is our troubled history and how they can reconcile with a tradition that has disparaged them over nearly 2,000 years.”

Dr. Boys also led a second presentation on the role of education in transforming the historically complicated relationship between Christians and Jews. She described the goal of educating for interreligious learning “to move beyond learning about the other in the abstract, as important as that may be, in order to have participants encounter Judaism or Christianity as it is lived by informed and committed Jews and Christians.”  Interreligious learning is a form of dialogue that emphasizes study in the presence of the religious other. “You cannot separate content and process in this form of learning,” she explained, “which means that leaders must provide the environment, experiences, and resources for participants to risk crossing religious borders.” “Teaching for interreligious learning,” she added, “requires disciplined preparation but is also a profoundly relational art.”

The final session of the conference, led by Dr. Ann Heekin, CCJU director of programs and publications, engaged seminarians on the topic of worship. Working in small mixed groups, seminarians grappled with some of the challenges of planning interfaith prayer services such as the use of the name of G-d in a manner that authentically mediates each community’s experience and teaching. “The discernment to pray together with another tradition is informed by the leaders of that tradition but must come from within the particular local community. It is a pastoral decision that, if made, means involving all participating faith communities at the very start of the planning process,” said Dr. Heekin.

The 32 seminarians attending this year’s conference were Warren Levy and Gary Buchler, Ziegler School University of Judaism; Michael Woll, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; Joshua Samuels, Hebrew Union College; Eugene Shafir, Institute of Traditional Judaism; Eytan Hammerman, Noah Arnow and Ephraim Pelcovits of Jewish Theological Seminary; Bruce Alpert, Heidi Hoover, Irwin Huberman and Ziona Zelazo of Academy for Jewish Religion;  Rev. James Longe and Aaron Damboise, St. John’s Seminary; Sean O’Mannion and Robert Lupo, Blessed John XXIII National Seminary; Robert Newbury, Jr., Sacred Heart School of Theology; Charles Wrobel, St. Francis Seminary; David Swantek, Anthony Rossi and Jonathan Dalin of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary; Marc Lanoue, St. Mary’s Seminary; John Rapisarda, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary; Rev. Nathan March, David Pickens and Dallas Herold of Theological College; Rico Monge of St. Vladimir Orthodox Seminary; Rebecca Smith, Lyle Snyder and Matthew Ley of Lutheran School of Theology; and Melissa Lemons and Paul Mowry of Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Richard Lux, Professor of Scripture Studies at Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corners, WI, was a special invited guest.
    

CCJU Staff
Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, Executive Director
Rabbi Eugene Korn, Ph.D., Associate Executive Director
David L. Coppola, Ph.D., Associate Executive Director
Ann Morrow Heekin, Ph.D., Director of Programs and Publications
Guillaine Dale, Assistant to the Directors
Joan Jackson, Office Secretary

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