Comments by Harold Schulweis
COMMENT BY HAROLD SCHULWIES A proposal of such boldness and imagination may be expected to carry with it a freight of ambivalence. On balance I am convinced that Rabbi Schindler's project is...
...Something happens to the student who is called upon to teach...
...Something happens to the Jew who is asked to explain the character of his tradition to one outside the inborn circle...
...but mine own vineyard have I not kept...
...Second, I am convinced that we need such a program not only for the sake of the stranger who seeks to enter our community but for our own sake...
...Can we control Jewish proselytizers from the invidi-ousness of self-serving comparison...
...We Jews have experienced the insults from those who claim absolute and exclusive truth for their religion...
...Is the Schindler proposal designed as a Reform project or would it be wiser to make it a Jewish non-denominational effort which would express the religious pluralism within the Jewish community...
...We Jews have long agitated against the triumphalism of the missionizing church...
...For we know that Jewish fidelity is not identical with synagogue affiliation...
...I believe they miss the latent values for the Jewish community in announcing and implementing a policy of open acceptance of non-Jews who come to us willingly...
...Better, they say, to tend to one's own pastures than to set eyes upon what appears greener on the other side of the fence...
...Harold Schulweis, a contributing editor of moment, is rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California...
...Now, in the post-holocaust years, a growing number of Christian theologians and churchmen—in the spirit of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Til-lich—have risen to denounce the arrogance and condescension of the missionary to the Jews...
...Presumably and on similar grounds, Christian leaders would not abandon "the unchurched" as fair game for Jewish proselytizers...
...But such intra-Jewish discussion can serve to invigorate the inner life of the Jewish community...
...A powerful statement on this very issue was delivered in March 1977 by Tomasso Federici, consultant to the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relationship with the Jews...
...and that they can formulate programs informed by theological modesty that will not degenerate into false idealizing or demonizing...
...Unchallenged, they take the spiritual and moral insights of Judaism for granted, or more correctly, reduce its imperatives to the ethnicity of food taste, hand gesture and voice inflection...
...There remain, however, some qualms about his outreach project...
...Despite these quandaries, I favor the Schindler proposal for two basic reasons...
...Called upon to interpret the spiritual conscience of Judaism and its world wide vision to others, the Jew may gain for himself a new self-awareness, self-esteem and articulateness...
...I am sure that most Jewish leaders would not be willing to exclude "the unsynagogued" from Fede-rici's sensitive advice to the Church...
...Will Jewish proselytizers claim the same for Jewish election...
...Some have opposed the proposal with the imagery of the Song of Songs: "They made me keeper of vineyards...
...Is it, tor example, conversion or witness which best serves the goals of proselytization...
...I am concerned generally with what proselytizing may do to Jewish character...
...Schindler's audience of the disillusioned unchurched are not up for grabs...
...Knowing how to answer is as important for the Jewish respondent as it is for the non-Jewish questioner...
...I am equally concerned that proselytizers in search of audiences prefer to assume that he who is without church is without spirituality...
...We Jews know the manipulation of missionary gerrymandering which carves out their religious territory and then ours with an eye to easy election...
...Most Jews have taken Judaism as a biological gift, a consequence of birth which is lived in incestuous company...
...Something happens to the self which is open to an other...
...First, because 1 think that serious Jewish leaders can work to develop a Jewish ethics of proselytizing sensitive to the pluralistic rights of other faiths and secular traditions...
...We who have so long been the targets of missionary excess are challenged to demonstrate how dialogue can be conducted in a free society without inflation of self or denigration of the other...
...They must be reminded that the unchurched include principled secularists whose life styles are not devoid of moral sense and purpose...
...On balance I am convinced that Rabbi Schindler's project is important for the internal strength of the Jewish community...
...He counseled the Roman Catholic Church to reject every form of proselytism—"the physical, moral, psychological or cultural"—which is directed towards Jewish individuals or communities...
...It is not a simple task and all kinds of questions are in order...
...From the Christian viewpoint, Dr...
Vol. 4 • March 1979 • No. 4
