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Towards mutual recognition - An interview with Mgr. Lustiger
The editors

The Israeli daily, Yediot Aharonot, recently published a long interview with the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Jean-Marie Lustiger. We reproduce that part of the interview which deals with the question of mutual recognition, as an illustration of how Jews and Christians, once having acknowledged one another's rights, can witness together in such a way as to be a source of blessings for the world. The interviewer for this section was Y. Ben Porat.
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When you show such respect for Judaism and Jews, is it not in fact because you are Jewish yourself? Many other Christians, even priests, do not speak so respectfully of Judaism.

It is possible, but I think it is a pity. It is a pity that Christians, who are almost all descended from pagans, should have lost this pagan mentality. Jesus never called himself King of the Jews, it was a pagan Roman, Pilate, who did so; Jews living in Israel at that time did not normally call themselves Jews. They said the people of Israel; only foreigners said the Jews. Matthew's gospel, which was developed in Jewish surroundings, is very precise on this point.

If Christians had been faithful to God's gift to them, becoming in their turn children of God, sons of God, as the children of Israel are, but in a different way, in the person of the Messiah who welcomes them, they would have understood that they shared pre-eminently in the gift made to Israel, the greatness of which even Israel did not always undestand. From the depth of my heart I wish for a double recognition; I with Christians would not forget — I am in the middle of a commentaryon Saint Paul — that they have been grafted onto a single root which is Israel, and also that the root still exists.

It is an illustration.

Yes, and a strange one, because it says the wild olive has been grafted onto the cultivated one. A gardener always does the exact opposite; the shoot of a cultivated plant is grafted onto a wild one. To explain the relation¬ship of pagan Christians with the Jews therefore, Paul said in effect: you pagans are the wild shoot and you have been grafted onto the cultivated olive, the Jews; you have become branches of that tree. There is also something else which I see as a source of hope. Thanks to the spiritual and cultural freedom given by Israeli nationality, which alters the problem, and thanks to a modification in Christian attitudes, Judaism will perhaps be able to recognize that Christianity has a Godgiven sonship. After all Judaism, while remaining faithful to the call of God, could one day admit that Christian gentiles are also unlooked-for children given to the Jewish people. It would be like having an unexpected and as yet unrecognized descendant. If Christians have not recognized Jews as their elder brothers, the root onto which they have been grafted, perhaps the Jews themselves have to recognize gentile Christianity as their younger brother. But forgiveness must also enter in because there has been persecution and fratricidal war. Because of problems of identity, there has been a war over legitimacy; the desire to kill one's brother and take the whole inheritance is always there. Jealousy in the spiritual sense is the cause of persecution; it can be changed into emulation and thereby become a source of blessing.