The future of interreligious dialogue

O

ctober 2020 marks the 55th anniversary of Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), the famous Vatican document promulgated by the Second Vatican Council in October 1965. This document undoubtedly helped to radically change the discourse in the field of Jewish-Christian dialogue in particular, and of interreligious dialogue in general, in the contemporary period. This is what I’m talking about in a film called I am Joseph Your Brother (produced by the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel in 2001 and available on YouTube), which was made after Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Israel in March 2000.

“We have changed from persecution to partnership, from conflict to cooperation, from diatribe to dialogue,” I said emphatically in this movie.

This foundational document not only opened a new dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, as well as other Christian denominations, but also initiated a dialogue between the Catholic Church and other religions, including in particular, Islam.

It is now recognised practise for religious belief leaders at all levels to participate in dialogue with each other in many places around the world and whenever possible, to work together for a common cause in order to heal the world. In Israel, where I have lived and worked for the past 41 years, this is also the case. Interreligious dialogue, although it has not yet reached the masses here is part of the landscape here an integral part of our common life (or in other places).

I have decided to concentrate on the future, rather than the past, in this reflection. A great deal has been written about the many recent positive changes over the past 55 years in Jewish-Christian relations. There has been a great deal of improvement accomplished! Now it is time to look to the future and think about the challenges we need to confront.

I want to concentrate on three major future-related problems:

• In the years and decades ahead in Israel, what are the main problems facing Jews and Christians?

• Why is it so necessary and yet so neglected to dialogue with Islam, and what needs to be done?

• How can we connect dialogue with fact, particularly with the issues of peace and justice in Israel and elsewhere in the world?

In Israel, and all over the world, the number one problem we face is still ignorance. We still do not know very much about each other’s religion after all these years. Therefore, in many and diverse settings, we still need multi-faceted, sustained and systematic educational programs: schools, seminaries, colleges and universities for teacher training, and in the curricula of Jewish, Christian and Muslim schools all over the world, and in Israel.

Christians have done a lot more to educate their people about Jews and Judaism over the past 55 years than we Jews did to educate our people about Christians and Christianity. This is undoubtedly due to the asymmetrical nature of Jewish-Christian history, and to the fact that Christianity is more important to Judaism than the other way around.

It should be impossible for Jews to continue teaching about Catholics in the era in which we now live, or Christians in general, as if Nostra Aetate and Vatican II never happened, just as it would be inconceivable for Catholics and other Christians to teach about Jews as if the state of Israel had not been created in 1948. In order to educate our communities about the revolutionary changes in Christian thinking concerning Jews and Judaism in recent decades, we Jews will have to do much more in the future. This is true wherever Jews live, even in Israeli society, where a lot of anti-Christian historical sentiment still prevails.

Furthermore the Jewish-Christian dialogue has largely been about community relations for too long, and it is not surprising, therefore, that it is sometimes referred to as “intergroup relations.” We need to learn from each other and create a genuine interreligious dialogue, a dialogue that is based on mutuality and reciprocity. The places where this is taking place are more and more academic settings. There are now special institutes devoted to this in many colleges, universities and seminaries around the world.

Why is the dialogue with Islam, and what needs to be done, so important and yet so neglected?

We live in Israel as a Jewish majority, with a strong Arab minority of 21% of the citizens, most of whom are Muslims, but Muslims have not been engaged enough in our dialogue. And why not?

• Because we are all afraid. A little bit of our fear is rational. Nonetheless, much of it is based on phobia, an irrational fear, fed by rumours and stereotyping of a whole community and a whole religion and all its followers.

• Because we have been largely influenced by the media, who only portray the work of Muslims-ISIS, al-Qaeda, and all the rest of the fundamentalist extremist radical cut-throat.

• Since we just do not make the effort to get to know Islam. We do not study Muslims’ sacred texts and their holy teachings. Instead to “teach” us what Islam really is, we rely on the Internet and the tabloids.

Fostering hatred towards another’s religion is not a good prescription for creating a culture of peaceful coexistence because of the fanatical acts of those extremist groups that claim to be motivated by this religion but actually distort it to be unrecognizable.