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Presentation
The editors

In presenting our readers with this issue on the theme of Jewish and Christian Aspects of Witness, our aim has been to contribute to interfaith dialogue by showing how the two religions - each in its own unique manner - witness to the Living God in their midst.
More than ever before, witness to the permanent and enduring values of religion is required, to bring a sorely needed message to our world troubled by conflicts of all kinds too numerous to mention. Especially in times throughout history that have been particularly disturbed, leaders have arisen, strong in their faith, to rekindle faltering hopes in a better world.
What is new today is the challenge that is calling us to witness together - the possibilities that are ours, Jews and Christians, as believers in the One God of Abraham, to bring a message of encouragement to our world. It is only a comparatively short while ago since witness, on the Christian side, included necessarily the idea of mission, of conversion. One's belief in Jesus Christ used to presuppose the wish to convert the other to one's own persuasion as the greatest gift that one could bestow on the other. The fact that this mission was sometimes expressed in the over zealous and aggressive forcing of one's own beliefs on the other is too well known to need emphasis here. A sound theological term in itself, mission has been for so long associated with the monologue of conversion to be inadequate, at this moment in time, to express the richness of what we wish to convey by witness.
For what is its aim if not to witness in the presence of another to the deep reality that is the faith of each partner, Jew and Christian, in its individuality, its uniqueness; and at the same time to dialogue both about our common witness to the one God and its different expressions. To dialogue means that we become vulnerable - that we listen to one another with a view to learning, not only about the other, but from the other. It is impossible to learn from the other without opening oneself to being changed by this new knowledge.
If it be true that in our dialogal situation the word mission must take on a new, positive meaning as it is purged of its old unfortunate associations with conversion from one faith to another, one persuasion to another, so also must the very word conversion itself undergo a metamorphosis. Who, in fact, must be converted? It is I, as a partner in dialogue, who must submit myself to a continuing process of interior conversion as I listen attentively to what you, my partner, tell me about yourself. You, in your turn, will learn about me in a new way that will color your own thinking.
Once this attitude of dialogue, of attentive listening and frank responding, has sown seeds in the hearts of the partners, its fruits will be both a strengthening of one's own faith in a deeper awareness, and a common witness to the One God whom we both worship. Not only shall this spirit be manifested in the deepest respect for our differences, in the desire to learn from the other, but we shall come to realize that, as two children of the one Father, we should go out together to our world which so sorely needs a witness, not only of words, but of deeds that will spring from our common faith and put it into action.
Let us then search together for peace and brotherhood, for the means to wage war against poverty and hunger and to promote human dignity and respect for life. Let us be prepared to take the risk of stepping out into the unknown in order to be able to experience the joy which could came from listening seriously to the prophetic words of Zephaniah:
I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. Zeph. 3: 9