The church statements tend toward pacifism, and if we are pacifistic in the face of Hamas’s unrelenting evil, then we will abandon God’s creation to the forces of death and destruction. Continue Reading »
We should regard an attack on Jews as an attack on our spiritual cousins, God’s beloved people who gave us our Messiah and salvation. Continue Reading »
Let us link arms as Christians and Jews, bearing witness in our loyalty to each other, a loyalty that does not deny our profound theological differences, but holds forth the possibility of unity in our divided country. Continue Reading »
Of all the documents of Vatican II, few have been more discussed and written about than Nostra Aetate. The official text, the shortest of the council’s documents, is only five paragraphs long, containing forty-one sentences. The fourth paragraph, on the Church’s relationship with the Jewish . . . . Continue Reading »
During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Christian rulers across Europe east and west persecuted and expelled Jews. While the papacy had denounced blood libel rumors, Christians from England to Crimea abused their Jewish neighbors, sometimes blaming them for the Black Death. In 1215, the Catholic Church decreed in the Fourth Lateran Council that Jews were to wear special clothing distinguishing them from Gentiles, and were to be segregated in ghettoes. In 1492, Queen Isabella the Catholic of Castile expelled the Jews from Spain. Seven hundred and fifty years ago today, the duke of Greater Poland, Boleslaw the Pious, issued one of the great exceptions to this pattern of persecution: the Statute of Kalisz. Continue Reading »
The occasion of my first encounter with the theology of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik was a reading group at my wife’s synagogue. We were then living in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Elihu Milder, the rabbi then serving at Tifereth Israel, organized a group to discuss Soloveitchik’s spiritual classic, Halakhic Man. Continue Reading »
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