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Presentation
The Editors

So much has been written of late about the break-down of family life in today's world that there is a temptation to fear that an institution as old as time is threatened with disintegration before our very eyes. I f we are too pessimistic we run the risk o f clinging to a past which needs to die in order that new life - a new mode o f being - may be born.
The optimist, on the contrary, sees today's crisis as a challenge and asks what can be done in order to sift the chaff from the wheat, to learn from history which teaches us that, as people's social patterns have changed, so too does the family adapt itself to them. Since no century has witnessed such dramatic changes and so quickly as our own, it is only to be expected that family mores should undergo an unprecedented upheaval.
What is of prime importance is not that patterns are changing, since this is an inevitable law of life itself, but that these changes - traditions if you will - be based on the solid foundation of Tradition which ensures permanency and which, because it is the very source from which our inspiration and our motivation come, retains its values. Far from changing as society changes, the enduring Tradition of family life should be the firm basis on which society can rest secure.
Our aim in this issue, therefore, has not been so much to examine the causes and effects of these upheavals that seem to be shaking us, but rather to return to the very source from which marriage and the family have sprung in our Western world, that is to say, to the Jewish and Christian traditions. It is only when we are clear about the foundation on which we are building that we are able to adapt our structures to the new patterns of life required by new circumstances, secure in the knowledge that our house will endure.
With this thought in mind our issue tries to look at the Tradition which underlies family life in our two traditions. Returning thus to our source in the Scriptures, the Word of God, we are able to see how, both in Judaism and Christianity, the foundation is the same. From this basis we can examine together how the traditions have diverged in order to appreciate our different points o f view and share those concerns which affect us both. Christians are struck, for example, by the catechetical value of Jewish family life, by the natural way the child learns from its earliest years the ancient traditions of the Jewish people through participation in time-honored rituals designed explicitly for the home. Then too we are challenged together to take a fresh look at problems that were thought to be, in pre-dialogue days, insurmountable barriers. A case in point is that of mixed marriages. As in the past, so still today they are certainly discouraged on both sides. But whereas previously our responses remained purely negative, nowadays we are more prepared to consider the problems together, see what can be done to help the husband and wife o f a mixed marriage to remain loyal to their own tradition and to seek positive solutions to difficult questions, based on mutual respect.
Returning to the source of our common traditions can be an incentive for us to be courageous and imaginative as we face the challenges posed by the social, religious and economic confusion o f our time. Let us then go forward confidently, trusting that answers will be forthcoming i f men and women o f faith build new family traditions on the solid Tradition o f the dignity o f the human person, on the firm belief that God created man and woman in his own image and likeness, calling both together to co-operate with him in the building up of his kingdom.