Friends on the Way: Jesuits Encounter Contemporary Judaism

Preface

Preface Thomas Michel, S.J. The papers in this volume were delivered at the Third International Colloquium of Jesuits in Jewish-Christian dialogue, which was held at Bad Schönbrunn in Zug, Switzerland, from July 18 to 23, 2005. This was the third colloquium in a series of meetings of Jesuits involved in dialogue with Jews. The first seminar was held in Krakow, Poland, in December 1998, and the second in Jerusalem in June 2000. In each case, the venue dictated the theme. In the first seminar, ‘‘Jesuits and Jews: Towards Greater Fraternity and Commitment,’’ held in Krakow less than forty miles from the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz and the death camp of Birkenau, the papers focused on the Jesuit involvement and responsibility in the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust. At its beginnings, the Society showed greater openness and acceptance toward the Jews than did many in the Church. The first generations of Jesuits were in- fluenced by the positive attitude of Ignatius, who ‘‘wished he had been Jewish so that he would have had the honor of being from the same race as Jesus and the Virgin Mary,’’ as Marc Rastoin notes in his historical essay in this volume. A surprising number of the early Jesuits, including Laı́nez, the second general, and Polanco, Ignatius’s personal secretary, were from families of conversos, or Christians of Jewish viii / Preface descent, at a time when such were prohibited from entering most religious orders. However, as time went on, the Society of Jesus succumbed to the prejudices of the day, and the doors of the Society were eventually closed to candidates of Jewish blood. In the two centuries since the restoration of the Society of Jesus in 1814, the Jesuits on occasion even took the lead in fomenting anti-Semitic feelings and policies in the Church and in society, as happened in the Dreyfus affair in France the 1890s and in the editorials of Rome’s influential La Civiltà Cattolica in the 1930s. The papers of the first Jesuit seminar were delivered mostly by Jesuits and focused on this ambiguous and often shameful history of anti-Semitism to which Jesuits too often made a significant contribution. The second colloquium was held in Jerusalem two years later on the theme ‘‘The Significance of the State of Israel for Contemporary Judaism and Jewish-Christian Dialogue.’’ On this occasion, the speakers were almost all Israeli Jews, who represented various points of view on the meaning of the Jewish state in Israel for Jewish self-understanding and relations with those outside the Jewish community. Some of the speakers were members of the Knesset, while others were rabbis, peace activists, settlers, and representatives of women’s movements . The picture was completed by the voices of Muslim and Christian Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. For the first time in this series of colloquia, the proceedings were later published by the Jesuit Secretariat for Interreligious Dialogue. The third colloquium, at which the papers in this volume were delivered , was held in a Jesuit retreat house and conference center in Zug, Switzerland. The theme of this colloquium was ‘‘The Importance of Modern Jewish Thought for Jewish-Christian Dialogue’’ and focused on the writings of modern Jewish thinkers in the Diaspora and the significance of their insights for Jewish-Christian relations. This topic provided a broad scope for the Jesuit researchers, who took up the ideas of rabbis such as Heschel and Soloveitchik, biblical exegetes Preface / ix such as Sternberg, Alter, Fishbane, and Levinson, philosophers such as Arendt and Lévinas, and the literary critic Harold Bloom. Although these colloquia were planned as study sessions for Jesuits involved in dialogue with Jews, in every case the Jesuit participants were accompanied throughout by Jewish scholars. In Krakow, Rabbi Leon Klenicki, then assistant director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, took part in the whole seminar and delivered a moving testimonial to the victims on a bitterly cold overcast day in Auschwitz. In Jerusalem, the participants were invited to the Shalom Hartman Institute , took part in Shabbat services in various synagogues, shared in the Shabbat meal in homes, heard from various currents of Judaism— Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform—as well as from secular Jews, and visited the ‘‘old’’ Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial (the new Yad Vashem is described in this volume). In Switzerland, the Jesuits...