 Rabbi Joel Zaiman |
 As part of the celebration of its 125th anniversary, Chizuk Amuno
Congregation joined with the ICJS to co-sponsor a series of public
conversations. Christians and Jews discovered that they have much
to learn from one another, and explored how this learning can
positively influence the ways people respond to pressing social,
political, ethical and religious issues. From 175 to 225 people
attended each session, and comments revealed that audience members
who had intended to "take in one or two" changed their schedules
so that they could attend the remainder of the series!
Dr. Mary Boys led off the programs by using chapters from her
own life to illustrate central themes in the story of interfaith
relations in the latter half of this century. Her points about
the power of friendship, the re-lationship between dialogue and
religious identity, and the need to educate for paradox were in-directly
confirmed by subsequent speakers as they grappled with their varied
subjects. Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer raised striking examples to
urge re-examination of assumptions about how our traditions form
us and how we shape our traditions. Given the pluralistic world
in which we live, we avoid grappling with these challenges only
at great peril.
Through an historical approach, Dr. Anthony Cook illuminated integral
relationships between race and religion in the African American
experience. That experience is painfully unique and yet shared
in some aspects with Jews. His analysis invited hearers to consider
anew the issues that divide us and to develop strategies that
reclaim our respective traditions. Rabbi Daniel Lehmann prompted
the same listeners to hear familiar foundational stories with
new ears. Exodus can set up opposition between Jew and Gen tile.
Adversarial identity sets up a division between peoples that is
difficult to overcome, but the mandate of a pluralistic world
requires that we forge self-understandings which are not achieved
at the expense of the other.
If the relationship between Jews and Christians is typified by
Esau and Jacob struggling from the womb, what then, asked Rabbi
Joel Zaiman, can we learn from their story? That there is love
and hate between siblings; competition; triumphalism which cuts
both ways; openness obtained only through wrestling with God;
and, finally, knowing one's self, possible only if we meet and
know our other half. Dr. Christopher Leighton followed with a
creative reinterpretation of a parable typologically read by Christians
over the centuries as contrasting the repentant Prodigal Son (Christianity)
with the unforgiving older brother (Judaism). He challenged the
audience to read the parable as an unfinished work that requires
Christians to recognize that "the work of repentance does not
end but begins with the father's embrace."
In her introduction, Dr. Rosann Catalano claimed that "the experience
that more than any other gives meaning to our living is our dying."
Rabbi Gustav Buchdahl and Reverend Carl Edwards then followed
with reflections on religious responses to suffering and death.
Buchdahl questioned whether anyone can have a coherent response
to death. Faith is an assertion of transcendent meaning when faced
even with the injustice of death. The injunction to "choose life"
is critical in Jewish thought. Like Buchdahl, Edwards used personal
stories to shed some light on the "black hole" of death, for we
can know death's surroundings, but not death itself. Perhaps the
experience of estrangement, or relational death, brings us closest
to compre hending death. Then too, perhaps the experience of forgiveness
is the best sign of life beyond death. If God can bring new life
out of relational death, queried Edwards, can God not do so with
physical death?
Ethical deliberation has been painfully changed for Dr. Roger
Gench by his relationship with Jews and the challenges posed by
the Holocaust. Defining ethics as how we understand, relate to
and exercise power, Gench asked whether liberal Christians can
re-embody their story without the corresponding abuses of power,
suggesting that the possibility depends on a self-critical encounter
with Jews. Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin described the Jewish pursuit
of ethics, not as abstractly philosophical but as embodied in
stories. Stories define the identity of selves bound to a community,
and, as is the way with stories, raise problems of interpretation.
Being "made in the image of God" can be misdirected into idolatry
or triumphalism. "Do unto others..." can be an ego-centric measure.
Personal needs can conflict with communal needs. She is challenged
by the Christian emphasis on a personal relationship with God
as a balance to the Jewish affirmation in the covenantal relationship
of God with the people Israel.
The enthusiastic response to this series indicates a deep yearning
for new opportunities that make a living conversation among Christians
and Jews possible. In large measure, it was this desire that influenced
the intercongregational design of the Genesis project. |