THE RABBI WRITES
The increasing frequency of dialogues between Jewish and Christian clergymen has evoked considerable reaction. Among Jewish laymen who are sensitive to the problem of social acceptance and who are prone to judge the value of their rabbi by his interfaith success, this new development is welcomed and applauded. Any action that will promote the goodwill of the Centile community is unconsciously supported as a factor of security. Among Christian laymen and clergymen who are guilt-ridden by the antisemitism of the past or who have suddenly awakened to the Jewish origins of Jesus and regard this fact as significant, the dialogue is felt as both therapeutic and informative.
However, a recent article by Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits in the quarterly Judaism resists this optimism and throws theological cold water on the entire procedure. Dr. Berkovits who is the chairman of the department of Jewish philosophy in the Orthodox Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Illinois, disputes the view that anything of substantive value can emerge from these interfaith conversations. While he freely admits that Jews and Christians can get together to discuss ways and means to implement shared ethical ideals like racial integration and civil liberty, he denies that any meaningful dialogue is possible when the ideological underpinnings of these ideals are discussed. A rabbi and a priest may both fervently believe in the value of open housing, but the authority structure which gives them this ideal is different in each case. The Talmudically-defined Torah is clearly distinct from the Pope in Council, although the former may produce the same moral results as the latter. Two radically opposed sets of premises and operating procedures coincide only in certain ethical consequences. It is therefore futile for a group of clergymen or laymen, each committed to a different method for the discovery of religious truth, to sit down and engage in conversation on theological issues when they do not even share a common procedure for dealing with questions. The authoritative utterances of the Mishnaic rabbis are as irrelevant to Christian argument as the papal decrees are to Jewish.
In the Middle Ages, it is true, Jews engaged in forced disputations with Christian scholars. In France, Spain, and Italy countless rabbis were drafted for the humiliating spectacle of hearing their Gentile adversaries quote the Hebrew Bible to prove the truth of Christianity and the falsity of Judaism. But the common use of the “Old Testament” was no indication of a common possession. For all practical purposes, the Bible is only a collection of words, the meaning of which depends on the interpreting authority. It becomes a different book in the hands of each tradition. “Sharing the Bible” is an interfaith cliche which provides no feasible basis for interfaith dialogue.
According to Berkovits the mutual encounter of Jews and Christians in an intimate discussion of religious beliefs is at best boring and at worst useless. No possible good can arise from a conversation in which the participants do not speak the same language. Opposing logics only yield frustration.
Berkovits’s denunciation has been received with mixed emotion by the Jewish public. While certain militant Orthodox rabbis endorse his stand, the overwhelming reaction has been adverse. He has been accused of narrow parochialism, segregationist withdrawal, and interfaith sabotage. But none of his critics has answered his argument. If Judaism and Christianity are indeed distinct religions, each operating out of a special view of a special divine revelation, then to what purpose is any ideological conversation beyond merely announcing each other’s point of view. No genuine discussion exists where the issue at stake is not debatable.
Although I stand at the opposite end of the religious spectrum to that of Dr. Berkovits, I share much of his apprehension. Few experiences can be as valueless as interfaith encounters. Groups of clergymen, gathering together to discuss questions of God, man, and the universe, usually end up spouting the denominational party line and boring each other with their respective pronouncements. No meaningful discussion ensues because none is possible.
The same problem burdens Jewish intrafaith dialogue. Orthodox and Reform Jews can engage in no effective give and take because they lack a common logic whereby to carry on any argument or investigation. Un- less one takes the Orthodox plunge of faith to the infallibility of the Torah, one cannot even enter the conversations. Many Jewish religious debates are purposeless precisely because the opponents cannot help but be irrelevant to each other.
Nevertheless, despite his perceptive criticism, Dr. Berkovits has missed the reality of much “interfaith” dialogue. In many cases the conversations can become genuine ideological discussions because the insurmountable barriers which are theoretically present are not really present at all. Four observations will clarify what I mean.
(1) If the participants in the dialogue enter the conversation as “labels”, as representatives of denominations and theological vested interests, then any “discussion” of religious beliefs is valueless. As “labels” burdened with the tradition of exclusiveness, Protestants cannot talk to Catholics; nor can Catholics talk to Jews.
But if the participants enter as individuals, who are momentarily willing to transcend their denominational roles (for there is no group of professionals who love to play roles more than clergymen) and to “let their hair down”, much positive good is possible.
As individuals, the participants share a common American environment and a host of identical experiences, which serve as an appropriate basis foi commonality. And as individuals they are not as cocksure about their sectarian ideologies as the party line of their respective denominations claim they ought to be. In fact, too many Jewish laymen in dialogue with Christian laymen talk about “what we Jews believe” rather than what they as distinct persons believe.
(2) If the discussants feel the dialogue is a vehicle for defending their religious position as priest, minister, or rabbi; if they are un- consciously more interested in establishing the “superior” observations of their religious teachers than in an honest pursuit of the truth, the dialogue will degenerate into self-flattering declamations of the “best” in Judaism and Christianity. So many clergymen are defensive in the presence of their congregants that they remain defensive in the presence of other clergymen. And so many religious laymen feel guilty about their lack of belief in what their “label” instructs them to believe that, in conversations with outsiders, they compensate by becoming aggressively protective of what their minds and hearts have already rejected. We in the Birmingham Temple have learned this truth through bitter experience. But if the participants can accept their reality without guilt, and not be afraid that th2 truth may embarrass their position; if they can talk together without feeling that the bishop or the ADL is looking over their shoulders, the results can be an opening of soul to soul.
(3) Too many dialoguers imagine that the doubts-they possess are uniquely theirs. They imagine that the bold affirmations of their colleagues indicate an equally bold belief. In most cases, the opposite is true. If the discussion enables the participants to share their religious doubts as well as their affirmations, a bond of mutuality, of “being in the same boat” pervades the conversation and breaks down the barriers of ideological pretense. The religious problems that confront Jews are,-to a large degree, the same problems that confront Christians. It could not be otherwise, since both are exposed to the same naturalistic and scientific environment. A dialogue of shared doubts, therefore, lends to the realization that sectarian exclusiveness is often only a sham.
(4) Finally, and most important, it is necessary to point out that much of the apprehension of interreligious conversations among traditionalists and group survival minded liberals is the frightening knowledge that what often appears to be interfaith isn’t interfaith at all, and the consequent fear that mutual exposure will reveal this fact.
The truth of the situation is that most of the clergymen or laymen who participate in these dialogues are much more the products of their secular environments than of the denominational world that claims them. Given the opportunity to articulate what they really do believe in an atmosphere of security and friendship, they discover that the exclusive Jewish and Christian methods for arriving at religious truth which appeared as unscalable barriers really don’t exist at all and that a commonsensical, fairly empirical, somewhat pragmatic approach to truth is what they all share. And once that realization is achieved, discussion is possible. In fact, in many cases, what is discovered is that while they may wildly disagree on all sorts of conclusions about the world, they share a kind of common religion, a common way of dealing with questions and finding evidence.
The danger of dialogue to the existing sects, Jewish and Christian, is that it may reveal the “painful” discrepancy between institutional allegiance and personal belief, even among clergymen, and expose the underlying unities that the professional theologians wish to deny. The “blessing” of the dialogue to the welfare and integrity of religion is that it may give strength to timid clergymen and laymen to be more honest
The irony of the new opening in religious “confessions” is that, given one set of circumstances where clergymen and laymen play their institutional roles, nothing can be more insipid; given another set of conditions where individuals and friends respond to each other in free security, nothing can be more meaningful.