The Catholic Church and the Jewish People: Recent Reflections from Rome

6. The Shoah as a Shadow upon and a Stimulus to Jewish-Christian Dialogue

6. The Shoah as a Shadow upon and a Stimulus to Jewish-Christian Dialogue Massimo Giuliani I do not believe that it is an exaggeration to claim that the Shoah, or Holocaust, inasmuch as it represents the climax of a long history of discrimination and persecution against the Jewish people in the West, constitutes the most painful issue and the most unsettling problem among those Jews and those Christians who are involved in a serious and sincere interreligious dialogue. This pain, however, which flows from a historically enlightened memory, and the anxiety that emerges in any ethically formed conscience, are already an integral part of the commitment to dialogue. In other words, they are already constitutive and constructive elements of that readiness to listen and to interact with the other, without which no dialogue, no encounter, is possible. In fact, the reciprocal attention of Christians and Jews to the memory of the pain that was inflicted and endured during the Shoah, and to the anxiety induced by the gradual realization of the immediate and remote causes of that tragedy, are required to ensure that our attention is authentic and our dialogue sincere. It is, of course, true that the Jewish-Christian dialogue does not have to focus only on this memory nor halt in the face of this anxiety; nevertheless , in this dialogue, the Christians ‘‘begin’’ from this memory, well expressed by the document of March 16, 1998, We Remember: A Re- flection on the Shoah, issued by the Vatican’s Commission for The Shoah as a Shadow upon and a Stimulus to Dialogue / 55 Religious Relations with the Jews: ‘‘While bearing their unique witness to the Holy One of Israel and to the Torah, the Jewish people have suffered much at different times and in many places. But the Shoah was certainly the worst suffering of all. . . . The fact that the Shoah took place in Europe, that is, in countries of long-standing Christian civilization , raises the question of the relation between the Nazi persecution and the attitudes down the centuries of Christians towards the Jews.’’1 The honesty of raising this question and to assess all those attitudes implies a readiness to subject oneself to the judgment of the historians, if not of history, and effectively, it has meant an examination of oneself , of one’s own Christian self-understanding, which has in its turn led to suffering and anxiety. More than one voice, in fact, has questioned the belief that ‘‘history,’’ even that entirely written in lowercase letters, can be used as a criterion to evaluate the faith or to assess the behavior of the Christians in the past, taking away from God the right to read human consciences and to judge all events. To answer this objection , which is legitimate but excessively spiritualistic, one must re- flect on the unique character of the Shoah and the meaning of the witness to which both Jews and Christians have been called by God at different times and in different ways. 1. Heshbon ha-nefesh: The Examination of Conscience and the Historical Assessment Christian wisdom has always taught the value of the so-called ‘‘examination of conscience,’’ the pious practice with which Christians, until not so many years ago, ended each day as if, finding themselves in front of God, they had to give an account of their actions and omissions. There was a certainty that each person’s conscience was a sufficiently authoritative tribunal to evaluate and to judge. However, what would be the value of listening to our conscience if we ignored the words of warning and the judgments upon our conduct coming from our neighbor? It is a commonly accepted psychological-hermeneutical truth that we live and grow thanks to the acknowledgment and the constant dialogue with our family and our social, professional, and political environment. Our life is constantly under the judgment of our parents, of our superiors, of our colleagues, of our subordinates. For a believer, our life is constantly under the judgment of God, already at this very moment. That 56 / Massimo Giuliani which the theological eschatologies call ‘‘the day of judgment’’ is effectively anticipated in every prayer or is celebrated in worship at different moments in the liturgical year. Once more, let us take as our paradigm the experience of Israel. In Judaism, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are called ha-yamim ha-nora...