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Jewish Influence on Modern Culture
The Editors

The theme of this number of Sidic is vast and complex. It is almost impossible to write adequately about the contribution of any people to civilization, but the task becomes even more problematic when it is a question of the Jewish people. And this is for several reasons.
The Jewish people has existed for nearly four thousand years, and has survived many other ethnic groups. Its existence is based on a very special religious experience; an experience which is linked to the history of a promised country, and which has remained the centre of its centuriesold aspiration.
In addition, this people has lived through extraordinary vicissitudes over the centuries. Dispersed throughout the whole world, moving from one country to another, its history in the Christian era is often stamped by suffering and discrimination. Christians and Jews have becom:~ widely divided, almost completely alienated, so that post-biblical Jews no longer have any place in Christian theology. According to the « traditional » Christian point of view, the Jewish people no longer plays any role in the economy of salvation. A manual of theology which was widely used until even after the Second World War expresses this point as follows. Question: « Why did the first Christians continue to follow the religious practices and customs of the Jews? » Answer: « ut mortua synagoga debito cum honore sepeliretur » (so that the dead synagogue should be honorably interred; in G. v. Moort, De Ecclesia). So much for theological thinking, the synagogue is dead, or according to other opinions, condemned, punished, etc.
Nevertheless, the Jewish people continues to exist, with its rich religious and cultural patrimony. This fact cannot be repudiated far ever. Nowadays, Christian attitudes are changing gradually and laboriously. A new openness to
reality is the first condition for this change, and it will take much time before the extent, the richness and the importance of Judaism is discovered. To understand and fully realize what Judaism has contributed to civilization is an even more exacting task. As Louis Finkelstein says in his introduction to the three excellent volumes: The Jews, their History; The Jews, their Religion and Culture; The Jews, their Role in Civilization; (Fourth edition; New York: Schocken Books, 1971): « To understand fully the place of Judaism in civilization it would be necessary to master philosophies and mental outlooks of cultures as varied as those of the ancient Canaanites, the Egypt of the Pharaohs, the Mesopotamia of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians, the Seleucid and the Ptolemaic empires of the Greeks, the world empire of the Romans, the deserts of the Arabs, pre-Christian and Christian Europe, as well as the chaotic and complex world of our own day. In turn, the faith and tradition of the Jews have left an indelible stamp on western music, art, science, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, letters, education, philanthropy, law, public administration, manners, morals and religion. The extent of this influence is not yet fully understood » (pp. xi-xü).
The three volumes of Finkelstein are minea of information, which give rich insight into Jewish patrimony in western civilization. The above quotation from Finkelstein renders more concrete the conciliar exhortation in Nostra Aetate to mutual understanding and respect between Christians and Jews. At the same time it stresses the immense work still to be done.
So as not to be discouraged by this difficult, but fascinating task in the discovery of others, it is perhaps helpful to remember some of the Jewish religious elements and culture to be found in the history of Christianity itself. Studying the Church's history, many aspects of the influence of Judaism can be discovered, which, in general, are not realized.
First of all, the whole of the New Testament is impregnated by the spirit, the thinking, and expressions of Jewish religious culture and the books of the Hebrew Bible. And the Hebrew Bible itself, always venerated by the Church, is the greatest monument to Jewish thought and culture. All Christian liturgy is modelled on the forms and structures of Jewish liturgy and has kept this fundamental structure in spite of changes brought about by faith in Jesus the Messiah (see, e.g. L. Bouyer, L'Eucharistie...; S. Cavaletti, La spiritualità cristiana e la liturgia ebraica; R. Le Déaut, Le Nouveau Testament et la liturgie chrétienne). The prayers of the Church, particularly the breviary, are also full of biblical texts and Jewish expressions. Their fundamental inspiration cames from Jewish tradition, founded on the books of the Bible. In addition to the principal doctrines of Christian faith, such doctrines as the unity of God, God the Creator, God the Revealer, the meaning of human life, etc., are based on biblical tradition, which is lived in Judaism. The other dogmas cannot be understood without reference to this tradition which is the bearer of divine revelation, and which Jesus himself lived.
This intimate relation is very understandable when the meaning of Paul's words are understood: « ... if you were cut from your natural wild olive to be grafted unnaturally on to a cultivated olive, it will be much easier for them, the natural branches, to be grafted back on the tree they came from » (Rom. 11:24). In spite of the fact that the majority of Christians do not yet realize these close relations and their profound influence, there is a very rich patrimony in common between Jews and Christians (cf. Arthur A. Cohen, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition).
This issue of Sidic desires to further knowledge of Judaism and its contribution to civilization. In view of the extent of this subject and the impossibility of treating it adequately, Sidic wishes only to give some idea of the importance of the question, and a stimulus to further research. The editors are particularly grateful to Doctor Renzo Fabris, who has kindly adapted the text of his conference, given at the Sidic center in Rome, for publication in our review.