OPEN LETTER TO THE FRENCH CHURCH
Fleischner, Eva
ROBERT, ARON last Apr* deprived the French religious and intellectual scene of one of its finest representatives. Member of the Acad& mie Fianeaise, historian, religious thinker, journalist, Aroo...
...Jesus can be understood only in the framework of a succession of Covenants...
...Then be said to them: If the law is according to me, let this stream of vater prove it...
...that idolatry which never ceased to haunt Israel, to which it frequently succumbed, yet never once and for all...
...They did not fall down out of respect for Rabbi Joshua, and did not straighten up out of respect for Rabbi Eliezer, and they are still inclined...
...At the same time the bishops call upon all to work for justice for those who have lost their homes and land through the creation of the State...
...Until then all is in suspense, and we walk the tightrope between what has been and what is yet capable of being...
...On that day Rabbi Eliezer brought all the proofs in the world, and the masters would not accept them...
...The bishops insist that Israel and the Church are not complementary institutions, but that the continuing existence of each in a situation of contestation is, as it were, a sign that God's plan is as yet in a state of unfulfillment They deal with the delicate issue of giving witness by squarely stating that all intent of Conversion must be excluded a priori, not only out of respect for the other, but above all because the Jewish people is the object of an "Eternal Covenant" without which the "New Covenant" would not even have come into existence...
...in my experience, been given sufficient attention: the miraculous...
...which has permitted the French Jew wbo regains the' soil of his ancestors to feel himself surrounded by the air of hy native land, as well as by the exhilarating winds of the city where God may be awaiting him, the God of his fathers, the God of our fathers...
...Then he said to them: If the law is according to me, let the walls of the House of Sttidy prove it...
...This deeply personal note which rum throughout the book is inter-woven with the larger historical and Geological context...
...It must be taken on its own terms before it finds "for its ultimate meaning in the New Testament...
...The bishops interpret these laws in accents reminiscent of an Abraham Heschel: "They (the laws) are a'way of 'building time' and of giving thanks for the whole of creation," Israel's enduring Covenant is affirmed unequivocally...
...Suddenly Moses made up his mind...
...Then he said to them: If the law is according to me, let the heaven prove it...
...Aron leaves the question open...
...If at that time there had been only rabbis like him monotheism would probably have remained the preserve of the Jews, with little appeal to gentiles...
...Surely not for Jews-today not even for all Christians...
...This great-heartedness and largess of spirit are to my mind the most powerful aspect of Aron's book...
...The future is open as never before perhaps-at least for those who take Aron's desire and vision seriously...
...For Jews, the supernatural aspects of Jesus' life would be a midrash, i.e., a spiritual and moral interpretation of a material fact...
...Because the biblical Covenant engages both., God and human beings, it actively challenges the human partner to response-ability...
...Above all we have some unforgettable vignettes of Teil-hwd de Chardin, whom he visited fre-qaently and whose difficulties with the Church authorities he shared with deep empathy...
...The destinies of the two peoples are linked-not only through a common origin and often tragic history, but a shared hope and witness...
...He said to them: If the law is according to me, let this locust tree prove it...
...Today's world is in need-not of a new myth, but of a new hermeneutics of posing questions...
...It is natural to man as man, and to God as God, who chose freely to enter human history...
...Aron comments that these Guidelines (widely covered in the U.S...
...we do not listen to voices from heaven...
...Here we have "catholicity" in its truest sense, one that far exceeds its more common "Roman" connotation...
...stream of water turned and flowed backward...
...The work under discussion here-it was to be his last, cotupteted shortly before bis death and published posthumously-will, one can only hope, be available in English before long...
...nothing is profane...
...Is this Jew, perhaps precisely because he is a sympathetic outsider, capable of more tolerance toward Rome today than many Catholics are...
...It was followed by the various Covenants with Israel (Abraham, Sinai), which do not supersede the earlier one...
...It is here that he finds his place-as one more point of encounter between God and man...
...The two words I have italicized occur also in another place, and are a striking indication of the total absence of absolutizing on the bishops' part...
...this moment that I have dared to publish this letter from a lew to the Church of France...
...Addressing the bishops once again directly he writes that for a Jew to renounce the God of the Bible, or for a Christian to renounce Jesus Christ, is too facile a solution, "which mutilates and amputates us of the legacy of thousands of years...
...A wonderworker...
...There are, first, certain given facts (historical, geographical, etc...
...press at the time and has since been largely forgotten-in my mind it has notbeen equaled, yet alone surpassed -let me briefly go through its main OPEN LETTER TO THE FRENCH CHURCH EVA FLEISCHNES, points, which provide the framework for Aron's book...
...Then there is God's action-intervention, yes, but working through and with these facts rather than by-passing or annihilating them...
...Only when he enters the church of Ein-Kaarem, where the Roman liturgy is celebrated in Hebrew, 4t*i te fct* ccwpfctdy at home...
...The law is according to him in every case...
...Rabbi Jeremiah said: The Torah has already been given once and for all from Mount Sinai...
...In the Hebrew Scriptures, even before Ezra, the supernatural, the miracle, is generally embedded in real facts...
...Christianity, on the other hand, beginning already with Jesus' own life, was to spread largely through the miraculous...
...The Covenant is one of the great innovations of the Bible, an antidote to idolatry...
...This was necessary, perhaps, in order to adapt monotheism to the Greek and Roman mentality...
...A false Messiah...
...The bishops speak of the unique and enduring vocation of the Jewish people across the millennia, a vocation which they sum up in the Jewish phrase, "the sanctification of the Name...
...23:2), Rabbi Nathan came upon Elijah...
...A Rabbi...
...Pagans won't understand him, he is a poor missionary, makes no converts...
...Aron is profoundly influenced by the great twentieth-century scholar, Elias Benamozegh, for whom all religion, even idolatry, contains some truth and is worthy of respect...
...Aron distinguishes three levels...
...The originality of Aron's book lies in his approach and tone almost more than in its content, which has been and continues to be explored by others, both Christians and Jews...
...Only doe ot his works in this field is known to EHglish-speaking readers (The Jewish Jesus, Orbis Books...
...Wherever this response is lacking, wherever the human person simply remains prostrate before God, passive, engulfed in petition and need, there dialogue is lacking, there is idolatry...
...He is a French Jew who knew the Nazi occupation and narrowly escaped Auschwitz...
...guide their relationship with Jews...
...And now, after these 2000 years, after Vatican II, are we perhaps on the threshold of a new beginning, yet another Covenant, which will not annihilate but consummate what went before...
...It brings to a new perfection past history, and at the same time looks to the future with a limitless openness...
...And it extends to humanity at large...
...This Covenant is not limited, for Israel, to one unique, marvelous, oncefor-all event, but is inscribed in its flesh throughout the centuries: "It is consubstantial with us...
...press) follow the same general direction as the French Bishops' Statement, but are less precise in their conclusions...
...The Orientations aroused a major controversy in the French Church...
...Other chapters examine certain theological concepts: the Covenant, Jewish universalism, the relationship of Israel and the Church, the mission of Judaism, the crisis which both Judaism and Christianity face today, the possible meaning of Jesus for Jews...
...True, despite their Jewish roots there is much in the Gospels, Acts, and especially in Paul, that would surprise, perhaps even scandalize Moses: unavoidable consequence of the vicissitudes of time...
...There are meetings with Henri de Lubac and other Catholic theologians with whom Aron engaged in dialogue...
...It is in memory of...
...As a religious historian Aron measures history in periods of 2000 years...
...For you have already written the Torah on Mount Sinai: "After the majority must one incline" (Exod...
...The past between Jews and Christians is increasingly recognized by us today as heavily burdened...
...Hence, the goal is not their conversion to Judaism, but the pursuit, in greater light, of their own gropings for truth...
...But it does not erase what has gone before, even though it occupies a central place in Jewish tradition...
...The definitive encounter...
...Must he reject them, protest, or accept them as coming from him...
...As commonly understood in Christianity, this plays no role in Judaism, according to Aron, because everything is sign and encounter with God...
...Elijah said to him: He was smiling and saying: My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me...
...It is precisely in this situation, and against the background of countless massacres over the centuries, that Aron believes Israel must continue to give witness to its God...
...It is a fitting legacy to the French Church and to Christians everywhere from one who has con-tributed mush: to a better understanding of Judaism on the part of Christians...
...others accused the bishops of betraying the Christian heritage...
...The observance of Yom Kippur brings back to Aron's mind not only the war of 1973, but the Warsaw ghetto revolt, Massada and the Maccabees...
...The author is very much at home in Jewish tradition, whether it be that of the age of Moses, of Akiba, or the twentieth century...
...Aron adds his own commentary to the Talmud, creating yet another midrash...
...Among the latter he singles out one ttibject in particular which has not...
...It is living human bdags, with some of whom he had formed deep friendships...
...The Jewish people's right, to return to Eretz Israel is affirmed, and Christians are urged to take into account Jewish interpretations of the return to the land...
...Even as I write this I ask myself if I, or anyone, have the right to make such a statement...
...One of the most provocative sections of die book concerns the meaning of Jesus for Judaism...
...he persuades God to intervene directly in human' affairs...
...Would this, in the perspective of the Absolute, have been good or bad...
...Christianity, for him, obviously developed in the spirit of Eliezer...
...The priest was kffled by the Nazis, but kept his prom-ice even in death: when Aron returned tie books were in their place on Lame's shelf...
...There is Abbft Larue, to whom he entrusted his books and papers when he had to ftee the occupied zone, and who promised him that he would find them in place on his return...
...What Aron calls mythological miracles now come to abound around the "real" facts which constitute the supernatural for Jews A Necessary, perhaps, so that monotheism could appeal to the gentiles...
...The questions which Christians frequently pose to Jews today: Who is Jesus for you...
...And yet, how could Moses refuse to see aa application of the Covenant in that son of Israel who made possible its dissemination throughout the world, and that of biblical monotheism to half of humanity* across twenty centuries...
...Italics in Aron) This ancient Midrash raises one: principal question for Aron, which he addresses to the bishops: Is it possible that across this vast distance of time and space Moses might have been aware of the presence of Jesus in the midst bf all these disciples of his...
...Aron places this question within his wider view of history, which he sees as a succession of Covenants...
...Yet the author is keenly aware of the crisis which both Judaism and Christianity face today, each in its own way, and of the challenge to both posed by atheistic humanism: that phenomenon where so many of the most "righteous" deliberately refuse to identify with either-or any other- faith community...
...30:12...
...Because the bishops' statement received too little attention in the U.S...
...They said to him: The stream cannot prove anything...
...It is within this context of a series of Covenants that Aron situates Jesus and his meaning for Jews...
...They said to him: The locust tree cannot prove anything...
...And yet, despite this abiding awareness and background of the Holocaust, the author is one of those whose faith in the God of Israel seems not to have been shaken by the cataclysm...
...It is not a question of condemning error, but rather of blessing those peoples and religions which have managed to discern truth even in the midst of error...
...The Pope must take into account all the particular elements of which Christianity is constituted...
...The 6,000,000 who did not escape appear again and again in these pages, as a sacred memory and legacy...
...On one of their visits, tescting to some new obstacle Teil-kiffd had just encountered and sensing Jus deep discouragement, Aron exclaimed half jokingly: "After all, Father, am I not lucky to be born outside the Church?' And Teilhard replied gravely: "Would that it were possible to be both inside and outside Oiurcli...
...Wherever there are those who ask insoluble questions and persist in wrestling with the divine paradox, there Covenant exists and is perpetually renewed...
...He concludes his fore-wcard with "Thanks to the Church of Ersiioe...
...The book reveals Robert Aron the man: patriotic Frenchman as well as committed Jew, loving not only France, but that French landscape which is to this day dotted with church steeples...
...This broad, universal covenantal relationship began with the Noachitic Covenant, made with all humanity...
...A voice came forth from heaven and said: "Why do you dispute with Rabbi Eliezer...
...He perceives history not merely as the record of the past, but as straining toward the future, which is dimly outlined in the past...
...For a-moment Moses was filled with an almost superhuman dread, hesitation and doubt...
...Rabbi Joshua reprimanded ttiem: If scholars are disputing with one ' another about the law, what business is it of yours...
...A Messenger from God?-none of these "choices" offers Jews an authentic solution...
...It took two millennia, from Abraham to Jesus, for monotheism to become sufficiently aware of itself through one small people...
...The locust tree moved a hundred cubits...
...In a concluding note he speaks of the January 3, 1975 Vatican Guidelines, [Commonweal editorial, Jan...
...Avon is aware of the vast common ground between Judaism and Christianity, but equally of the differences tietween them...
...Realizing that all these men traced their descent back to him through the uninterrupted chain of human generations, that each . of them represented a stage necessary to the permanence and spreading of the Covenant which he had concluded, he gave them his blessing and agreed solemnly with all the words which, from every part of the globe, each day of times yet to come, rise at this moment toward him, even if he does not understand them...
...31, 1975], which appeared after the book had already gone to press...
...For Jews the Sinai Covenant is that fundamental act which makes them into a people...
...He does not reject belief in the supernatural, but dislikes the marvelous, which often makes excessive use of the supernatural and even disfigures it...
...This enables Benamozegh to say that "the image of God on earth, the partner of the Creator Spirit, is not the Semite, not the Jew, but the human being...
...What was to be his attitude toward all these words, the meaning of which escaped him...
...For Christians, they are a real phenomenon, pure and simple in their authenticity...
...So deeply is this scenery part W him that, in all his eagerness and joy to be at long last a pilgrim to Eretz Israel, he feels some vague lack on his arrival there...
...On April 16, 1973 the French bish* ops published a set1 of Pastoral Orientations for Christians to...
...1 ijeesd a church to b* able to enter Jorusajem...
...He comments on the, document, which he considers a major step forward in the history of Jewish-Christian relations, takes each point to a new depth, elucidates it, brings his own insights to bear upon it...
...But real and unique no less for that...
...Finally, there is the human dimension of commentary and interpretation...
...He saw all over the earth, through millennia to come, generations of men from every age and country, speaking strange languages which he did not understand, and who traced themselves back to him, commenting on his words, the words of the Torah...
...Another 2000 years were needed for idolaters to be converted to the true God-a time in which Israel was despised, rejected, persecuted...
...It was this, to some extent, which aroused such fear and hostility in certain rightist quarters...
...Rabbi Joshua on the other hand, his opponent, is more in the tradition of Ezra and the Pharisees...
...but also one of the elements that widened the rift between Church and Synagogue...
...Member of the Acad& mie Fianeaise, historian, religious thinker, journalist, Aroo had for many years been actively engaged in the Jewish-Christian dialogue...
...He said to him: What was the Holy One, blessed be he, doing at that moment...
...which are the framework for the supernatural...
...The watts of i&e House of Study began to topple...
...His last words are a model of charity: "This is only natural in a document that addresses itself to all Christian countries, some of which do not share-often for political reasons -the same spirit of kindliness and good will...
...Can we ever know what crises of faith another had undergone...
...This approach to Jesus typifies in some ways Judaism's relation not only to Christianity, but to humanity at large...
...In the process he has given us a book that brings us into contact with the very soul of Judaism...
...Many hailed them as a breakthrough that went far beyond- the Vatican II Declaration...
...This is brought out in the Midrash of Rabbi Akiba, of which Aron gives his own, again slightly adapted, version: When Moses had been given the Law on Sinai, he suddenly was caught up in an extraordinary vision that transported him across space and time...
...Aron's Open Letter to the Church of France is, in his own words, not so much a response to the bisbdps' document as it is inspired by it...
...Rabbi Eliezer is the wonderworker, the thematurge, the man who causes miracles to happen, and who has much success in converting gentiles...
...What is the meaning of: "It is not in heaven...
...Aron's deep sympathy and concern for Christianity not surprisingly, perhaps, make him capable of remarkable tolerance for the at times slow rhythm to which Rome moves...
...The various chapters of Aron's book correspond roughly to the bishops' main points...
...Only the end-time will reveal to us the meaning of the whole...
...Hence the Church, far from seeking tiie disappearance of this people, can find its own identity only through a living link with it...
...Aron returns here to the aspect of the miraculous and its different interpretation in the two traditions...
...The Jews' continuing presence in the world is a challenge and call to faith for Christians, who are urged to deepen their understanding of Judaism, in particular of the laws that govern every detail of the devout Jew's life...
...It would have remained intact in a world closed to its convictions...
...This openness to the future characterizes not only this book of Robert Aron-his last-but his entire work as historian...
...Aron's own-admittedly purely personal-answer is in the affirmative...
...This is only one of the intriguing questions raised by the book...
...There are historical sections that deal with the trial of Jesus, the Pharisees, Christian origins, the beginnings of the rift...
...Rabbi Joshua rose to his feet and said: "It is not in heaven" (Deut...
...Aron illustrates the two different tendencies from within the Jewish tradition itself, in the following Mi-drash (Baba Metzia 59b...
...There is evident throughout a concern for the future of Christianity scarcely less keen than that for bis own people...
...The French Chorch is no abstraction or power structure for Aron...
...Let me, then, less presumptuously, simply say that the pages of this book breathe a deep, serene faith...
...A prophet...
...which, without seeking to turn lae from my faith, has offered me an echo of my home at the supreme moment of my return to Eretz Israel...
...Were they faithful translations, or more or less accurate adaptations...
Vol. 103 • January 1976 • No. 3
