Friday, September 13, 1974—THE BULLETIN—11
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ULPAN
• ALEPH (Beginners)--Wed., Oct 16th, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m.
• BET (Elementory)—Mon., Oct 21st, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m.
• GIMMEL (Intermediote)—Tues., Oct 15th, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m.
HABET USHMA SYSTEM — AUDIO VISUAL TECHNIQUES
Hebrew Conversation Classes
START RIGHT AFTER YON TOY
at ERIC HAMBHt SECONDARY SCHOOL
33rd ond Oak
ALL ISRAELI TEACHERS Fees: $28 including Books Times: All Glosses 7:30 - 9:30 p.m.
Under Auspices of Vancouver School Board and CZF — Canadian Zionist Federation, Pacific Region
CHRISTIAN ATTITUDES TO THE JEWS
NEW YORK - Noting that the Christian Holy Week was for centuries "a period when Christians celebrated the passion and resurrection of their Lord by attacking, persecuting and sometimes murdering Jews," a prominent Catholic author has called upon Christian Churches to make further changes in their liturgies and educational materials, both to remove remaining vestiges of anti-Semitic attitudes, and to teach respect for Judaism "as a legitimate living religion."
Mrs. Chaire Huchet Bishop, a French Catholic writer and American correspondent for L'Amitie Judeo-Chretienne (the French Jewish-Christian Fellowship), urged these actions in a new book published by Paulist Press, "How Catholics Look at Jew.s."
The volume is based on studies sponsored by the American Jewish Committee's Leonard and Rose A. Sperry International Centre for the Resolution of Group Conflict.
Acknowledging that many positive changes had been made since Vatican Council II, Mrs. Bishop stated that the age-old anti-Jewish "conditioning process" of Christian culture revealed by the Pro Deo and Louvain University studies required additional changes in the following areas:
1. DEROGATORY LANGUAGE-All invective, and epithets still applied to Jews as a group should be removed. Surviving stereotypes of the Jews as willful unbeliever, as enemy of Christianity and as "money man" must be replaced by truthful images.
Descriptive categories must be handled with greater precision. For example, the Pharisees must not be equated with all the Jews of Jesus' time, or with the Jewish people-generally.
2. THE PASSION STORY — Passages about the Passion "are perhaps the greatest single source of hostility against Jews in the texts."
It should be made clear that the Jewish CouncU (Sanhedrin) which, accordiiig to the Gospels, condemned Jesus, did not represent the Jewish people as a whole, both because most Jews were even then living outside Palestine and because the Council members were puppets of the Roman ruling power.
Allowance should be made for human error on their part and for their documented fear that any riot occasioned by Jesus might turn into a massacre of Jews by Romans.
Also, Pilate should not be excused as a weak character; his long record of cruelty should be noted, as should the fact that the Gospels were written decades after the event.
3. THE "BLOOD CURSE" — The phrase from Matthew, "His blood be upon us and upon our children," which has been traditionally exploited to justify persecution of Jews, should be eliminated from elementary and secondary school texts.
At the university level, it should be e;Q)lained that the cry, if used, could not possibly have represented the views of all Jews in Jerusalem, that it may simply have echoed a legal formula then in use.
Emphasis should be placed on the Declaration on Non-Christian Religions of Vatican II, which states that Jesus' Passion cannot be attributed to all Jews then alive or to the Jews of today.
4. THE DIASPORA—Itshouldbe made clear that the dispersion of the Jews was not a punishment for rejecting or killing Jesus.
5. SAYINGS OF JESUS — It must be made evident that Jesus spoke as a Jew, drawing directly on the Torah and the Oral Tradition. His words were spoken within the Jewish family, as it were, and his criticisms were inspired by loving concern. Numerous gospel passages detail the close ties between him and the Jewish community.
6. POST-BIBLICAL HISTORY -
Textbooks must tell the truth about anti-Jewish excesses in Christendom such as truth about the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews from various European countries, the atrocities against them during the Crusades, massacres and pogroms East and West, and the "ritual murder" trials.
Also, particular attention should be paid to the destruction of European Jews under Hitler.
Further, Catholic teaching should take notice of the Jews' contributions to the general culture and must stop ignoring the State of Israel.
7. BIBLE INTERPRETATION —
Available scholarly insights into the Old and New Testaments should be employed to challenge traditional anti-Jewish interpretations.
Old Testament stories should be presented so as to give a true picture of the venerable Jewish religion, and to inspire the Christian reader with respect for the Jews' fidelity to their faith.
8. CATHOLIC LITURGY-Christians should understand the Hebrew origins of much of their liturgy. Remaining liturgical elements, which build resentment and hatred of Jewry, such as the Improperia of Good Friday should be eliminated.
9. TEACHING ABOUT JUDAISM — Christians should be taught to respect Judaism as a living religion in its own right and not solely as a precursor of Christianity.
They should acquire some knowledge of Jewish holidays and customs and a appreciation of the centrality of Jerusalem and Israel In Judaism.
10. THEOLOGY — Christians should understand that Jews conceive of the Messiah as a royal or priestly leader, but not as a divine figure the way Christians do, because "the false equation between Jewish and Christian conceptions of the Messiah underlies the myth of the Jews as willful deicides."
In her volume, Mrs. Bishop reviews the fincfings of massive pioneering studies of Catholic teaching materials carried out at the Papally-chartered International University of Social Studies "Pro Deo" in Rome and at Louvain University, a Catholic institution in Belgium. At Pro Deo, texts used in Italy
THERE ARE some who remember. Here, the retiring Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsey, is seen on a recent pilgrimage to the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald.
and Spain were reviewed and at Louvain, French-language teaching materials used in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada were examined. '
These studies were conducted simultaneously with analyses of English-language Catholic materials, carried out at St. Louis University in the U.S. The St. Louis project was undertaken in cooperation with the interreligious affairs department of the American Jewish Committee.
The Pro Deo researchers, according to Mrs. Bishop, found references to Jews in Italian teaching materials twice as frequent as references to Protestants, and negative references to Jews almost five times as frequent as positive* ones.
In Danish texts, Jews were mentioned six times as often as Protestants, but negative references to Jews were only one and one-half times as frequent as positive ones.
The researchers also considered whether some hostility toward Jews and other outgroups might be inevitable in religious teaching, inasmuch as the text-books examined appeared "at first glance to conform literally to the New Testament."
On closer inspection, however, it was noted that many of the textbo<4i writers, consciously or unconsciously, tended to select details from the New Testament that lent themselves to an anti-Jewish interpretation, and to omit or gloss over others.
The Pro Deo group also frequently found a "triumphalist" attitude of uncritical defense and self-righteous glorification of the
church.
In Danish texts this attitude was often joined with the nationalistic theme ofthe "special Catholic vocation" of Spain.
The result frequently was "a patriotically as well as religiously motivated hostility against Jews and Moslems."
The French-language materials examined at Louvain University, Mrs. Bishop continues, no Imiger show a deliberate anti-Jewish pattern, but "pejorative images still prevail widely, particularly 'in accounts of the Passion.
"Positive approaches are, for the most part, limited to events before Jesus' time . . . More often than not . . . the Jews of Jesus' time are held collectively responsible for the condemnation and death of Jesus."
The Louvain researchers found that "the central feature in the
image of the Jews is their unwillingness to believe," Mrs. Bishop noted.
However, they pointed out, there had been much progress since a previous study of Catholic texts undertaken by Professor Paul Demann in 1952:
"The most extreme themes — deicide, God's curse on the Jews, the presentation of Judas as tjpi-cally Jewish — have virtually disappeared, as has the grossest language."
The Demann analysis itself is credited by the researchers with bringing aboutmuch of this change.
Nevertheless, the researchers are quoted as saying, "These improvements do not yet touch the heart of the problem. The Jews still are a bad example, a mere foil for Christianity. Their image is still mythical and inaccurate."
A complicating factor in dealing with the anti-Semitism of today, the Louvain researchers continued, is thiat in an increasingly secular society, "anti-Semitism is independent of the religious factor," yet denial of equal rights to Jews, on racial or social grounds, may be legitimized by religious sanction.
Therefore, they assert, the Church "has yet to face fully the fact that she is addressing herself today to a desacralized society." -
"If truth must be recognized, and a new kind of New Testament exegsis and hermeneutics must be developed."
In her evaluations of the study findings, Mrs. Bishop concludes that Catholics are not yet facing broad questions concerning their attitudes toward Jews, among them:
1. The reluctance to face the moral implication of the murder of 6,000,000 Jews by Hitler.
2. The widespread indifference toward the emergence and continued existence of the State of Israel.
3. Christians' traditional view of Judaism as a "soulless legalism," and their failure to recognize its lasting validity and truth.
4. The surviving portrayal of the Jew as a "born money man."
5. The survival of the "ritual murder" charge and of similar cults in Spain and Italy.
Copies of the book may be obtained from The American Jewish Committee, 165 East 56 Street, New York, N.Y., 10022.
The Vancouver Kashruth Committee
wishes to moke the hUowing onnouncements:
1. Cottage Cheese inonufoctured by Silverwood Doiries, Voncouver, conforms to the Jewish Dietory Laws and is Kosher.
2. Leon's Kosher Korner (Meat Market and Restaurant) will be closed on Sept. 27 reopening Oct. 15.
3. Owing tc the illness of Mr. N. Gordon, Vancouver Kosher Meot Market is solely open for Kosher Baking until further notice.
1'J