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Extracts from Conferences
E. Pariente | P. van Boxel | C. A. Rijk

 

During a recent series of conferences organized by Sidic in Rome, Rev. Kurt Hruby of the Institut Catholique, Paris, dealt with "The Link between the Jewish people and the land of Israel in Jewish thought". A second speaker, Mr. Andre Chouraqui of Jerusalem, outlined "The Significance of Israel for Jewish-Christian dialogue". Following are several ideas contained therein particularly relevant to the topic being developed.

Fr. Hruby discussed the permanence of a centuries-old tradition concerning the essential links between the people of Israel and what, in biblical vision, is termed its Land. In the Bible, he said, three major and inseparable realities are to be found:

— the election of Israel as the People of God,

— on whom God bestowed the gift of the Torah, the Law of the Lord,

— which the people were to put into practice in the country assigned to them by God.

Leviticus 26 is the key passage to the relation between these three facts. Other biblical texts explain the modalities. In Leviticus 25:23 the country is the exclusive possession of God, and his inheritance, which God gives to Israel as a possession and inheritance. And, just as the Covenant is called befit olam, an eternal possession, so it is given for ever to Abraham and his posterity, on condition, however, that the people remain faithful to the commands of the Torah. This explains all the warnings of the prophets, their threats of punishment, which were, in fact, fulfilled in the course of history. But, in spite of everything, the Torah remains a source of consolation, hope and redemption, because every threat is accompanied by this message: "But whenyou return to the Lord your God with all your heart... the Lord will bring you back to the land, and you will again live in security".

In rabbinic tradition this possession of the land has many aspects. Historically, the land of Israel is considered as an inheritance of the Fathers, because Abraham had already taken juridic possession of it by the fact of having traversed the country, and, say the masters of the tradition, it is in virtue of Numbers 33:53 that the people had the right to conquer it and to settle there in the first place under Joshua, and later after the Babylonian exile.

Further, Fr. Hruby remarks that the most interesting aspect is that of the holiness of the land. According to the Talmud, this holiness surpasses all other holiness in the world, because this is God's own country (Num. 35:34).

A number of commands are linked to living in this land. This holiness has existed since the time the country was given to the Patriarchs as an inheritance. It is, therefore, as eternal as the inheritance itself, and was not abolished by the destruction of the Temple or by exile. The Shekhinah, the presence of God, has never left the western wall of the Temple, which is still standing, and this explains the importance which Judaism attaches to it, as well as the liturgical prescription to turn towards the Temple, or, at least to turn the heart towards the sanctuary. This rule was made at the time of the dedication of the Temple as we read in 1 Kings 8.

Another aspect, which is more actual, and which stems from a precept of the Torah, is the duty to settle in the land of Israel (Dt. 12:29). Much has been written in rabbinic literature about the imperiousness of this command which dates roughly from the defeat of 135, and which aimed at preventing a total exodus of the Jewish population. According to some teachers, the only valid excuse for leaving Eretz Israel temporarily, was a state of insecurity which renders life practically impossible. However, the Jew should be buried there, and throughout the centuries many a teacher and a pious Jew have striven to fulfil this precept.

Father Hruby spoke also of the links which have always existed between Israel and the Holy Land. History records that, although Judea was almost de-populated after 135, Galilee has always had a strong Jewish community, and had a patriarch (Jewish) right up to the Byzantine period. The Jews suffered in the seventh century when the short-lived Persian domination gave way to Roman rule. Under Arab domination hope sprang up again, but the Jewish population in Palestine, though never completely disappearing, became very small. However, throughout the years, the memory of the land of Israel has always been kept alive in the Diaspora, and the hope of returning there is mingled with messianic expectation. In the daily liturgy, as well as that of feasts, there is frequent evidence of this hope, which has animated many mystics from Maimonides in the thirteenth century to the Hassidim of the eighteenth, and Rabbi Isaac Luria of the Cabbalists.

Although Zionism, at its inception, was not a religious movement but a political one, the influence of the Jewish masses in central Europe rapidly brought it back to the traditional vision of Jewish history, which bases on the Bible (and, therefore, on the Word of God) all relationship between the Jewish people and its ancestral land.

In his conference, Mr. Chouraqui treated Jewish-Christian dialogue within the framework of the Mystery of Israel, of which St. Paul was perhaps the first to speak.

One of the greatest difficulties, he remarked, in penetrating this mystery is the realisation that the Israel community which existed in biblical times resulted from the combination of three fundamental realities: a message, which camefirst; a people which recognized itself in this message and which submitted existence itself to it; and, finally, the land of Israel which is the place of the accomplishment of the message.

Exile, which deprived Israel of its land, placed it in a state of utter want, a kind of widowhood, because Israel could no longer meet God in the one place on earth where the Shekhinah is present. During this long period, dialogue was impossible: between Greek and Hebrew, in the first place, who ignored one another completely in spite of commercial and political relations between the two countries; then between the Synagogue and the Church, in spite of their common sources (the same God, the same Scriptures, the same prophets), in spite of the fact that Jesus, his mother and the apostles were all Jews.

After the identification of the Church with the Roman Empire, the Jews turned in on themselves, in order not to disappear altogether. They had said "no" to Christianity, as they had said "no" to Greek philosophy, and, as later, they were to say "no" to Islam. Since then the Church and the Synagogue have known only each other's worst facets.

With the rebirth of Israel, however, Jewish-Christian dialogue is also coming to life again, and, by a surprising parallelism, there is an Arab renaissance, too. In Jerusalem there is inevitable confrontation between those who claim to be the heirs of Abraham. One day, in the pure light of the message which unites us, it will be possible to become what Abraham would wish us all to be: saints.

Some interesting questions gave Mr. Chouraqui the opportunity of enlarging further this conception of the Land in the Mystery of Israel. As part of the reality of Israel, it is absolutely fundamental. The commands of the Bible can only be accomplished in the Holy Land, which, throughout the eighteen successive dominations of Israel, has always been at the center of Judaism's hope and prayer. It is now the place where efforts are being made to concretize the message.

On April 6th, 1968, during the course of a Hebrew Session at Strasbourg, a conference was given by Mr. E. Jacob, Scripture professor at the Protestant Theology Faculty of Strasbourg on "Israel and the Land". For Professor Jacob, the people of Israel are the primordial reality. The land remains a distinct reality, but it is united to the people, and their encounter has always been considered an existential link necessary to the accomplishment of Israel's vocation.

The Old Testament uses various images to bring out this fundamental relation between the People and the Land. Some texts speak of a heritage given by an oath, and Mr. Jacob studies the evolution of this term in Ex. 15:17, 2 Sam. 21:3; 1 Sam. 26:19; Dt. 1:8; 32:8-9; Ex. 32:13; Jer. 12:7 ff. However, from the time of Hosea, Jewish tradition has always defined the God-People relation in terms of the marriage union, and the sign, the sacrament of this marriage, were to be found in another marriage, that of Israel with its land, which came about, not through reciprocal attraction, but by the command and gift of God, the result of a lengthy progress through a history beset with difficulties. Indeed, the conquest of the land has been a struggle, but one in which God Himself was involved, as Deuteronomy teaches in its accounts of Israel's faith in the victory of God. Accounts of violence exist, but this violence was only a means of preserving the people for a universal mission, and not a sign of self-affirmation or of national vindication. War is an ordeal which should lead to tranquillity, the menuha of the home where each one will live in the shade of his vine and his fig tree.

It is in Jerusalem, above all, that the two spouses will enjoy intimacy, and their love will make the Land-spouse fruitful. It is there that the blessing of marriage resides, there that the Land will become a mother through her human mission (Ps. 87). Jerusalem is the model of love and service, qualities of the wife, Mr. Jacob tells us, and she will be the instrument of the reconciliation of humanity (Is. 19:23-25).

But the success of a marriage depends on the observance of reciprocal promises. In the Israel-Land marriage, the land had become the source of idolatry, and the separation of the spouses became necessary for Israel to rediscover both himself and his God, also for the land to fulfil her sabbatical years, which the selfishness and the cupidity of men had rendered impossible. However, this sabbath of the Land can only be the starting point of the recovery of the conjugal link, a 'marriage link that, from Genesis to Revelation, has been the axis of Israel's history, and that the will of men cannot destroy.

E. Pariente

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Symposium at Klosterneuburg.

The text of the Klosterneuburg Symposium, held from October 31st to November 2nd, 1966, has been edited by Clemens Thoma under the title Auf den Triimmern des Tempels, Land und Bund Israels im Dialog zwischen Christen und Juden (On the Temple Ruins, the Land and Covenant of Israel in Jewish-Christian Dialogue). The book is an important contribution to Jewish-Christian reflection on the meaning of the land and the true value of divine Revelation. The conferences of this symposium, organized by the Koordinierungsausschuss fur christlich-jiidische Zusammenarbeit in Oesterreich, show a development of relations between Jews and Christians. No dogmatics or absolutes, as too often happened in past history. No presuppositions beyond dispute; on the contrary, these are rejected as unjust, or simplifications. I believe this to be the right atmosphere in which to ask precise questions concerning the complex reality of Jewish-Christian relations.

These lectures show that it is not merely an historical question which is being discussed, but a dialogue between two religious families, reflecting on their own questions and those of others. During the symposium, this reflection centered on the land of Israel, both as a geographic and theological reality. Kurt Liithi describes the permanent necessity of situating the theological grandeur of the Promised Land in an historical perspective. According to Christianity, the material aspect is personified, not spiritualized, in Jesus Christ. He is the place of the Christian community. This personification is spatial, and by it the community receives an ethical dimension which includes the task of humanizing geographic space. To serve God means responsibility in history, in material questions, in one's own country, but is this responsibility necessarily allied to the actual land of Israel? Kurt Schubert and Leon Slutzky focus a great deal of light on this question when they discuss the Land of Israel in the perspective of rabbinical Judaism, and the link between the People and the Land from a historical view-point and that of modern Hebrew literature. They show how the idea of the actual land of Israel, the desire, the nostalgia for it, have an important place in the expressions of Jewish life, in the rabbinical concepts and explanations, in the hopes of the Diaspora. Slutzky notes that this nostalgia has been translated into movements of return throughout history. But even the presence of the people in the country must always be a dynamic one, for it has a mission to fulfill — the creation of a better world. It is clear that Jews and Christians are called to the same work.

The dogmatic supposition that, according to the New Testament, the Jewish people is rejected and its history concluded with the destruction of the Temple is decisively refuted in the conferences of Wolfgang Wirth and Clemens Thoma. Despite all the errors of Christians throughout history, Jews and Christians have a responsibility in common which can only be fulfilled in a new encounter.

P. van Boxel

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Several books treating the link with the Land.

Het Feit Israel (The Fact of Israel) by M. Wijnhoven (Amsterdam, 1958), illustrates the bond between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. With supporting historical and statistical facts, the author shows that there is an interaction between the land and the people. When they are separated both suffer; together, both grow and prosper.

From the theological point of view, there is a remarkable chapter in Christus de Zin der geschiedenis (Christ, the Meaning of History) (Nijkerk, 1962), by the Protestant theologian H. Berkof. To the explanation of Romans 9-11 he adds a reflection on the people and the land, in which he asserts that until now the political and geographical elements in God's plan have been too often forgotten. With arguments from Scripture (particularly from Deuteronomy, the Prophets, St. Luke, and St. Paul), Berkof throws new light on God's plan concerning the essential and permanent link between the Jewish people and their land. Without approving certain political tendencies, the author is convinced that the land of Israel and the return to it play a preponderant role in the destiny of the Jewish people from the perspective of fulfilling God's will. The final prophetic teaching of both the Old and New Testaments is the certainty of the reunion of the people and the land; a reunion which will both be a praise of God and a witness to His wonders.

This same idea is presented in Le Mystere d'Israel by Jacques Maritain when he says:

The people of Israel are the only people in the world to whom a land, the Land of Canaan, has been given by the true God, transcendant, Creator of the Universe and of mankind. And what God has given once is given forever. In all events, this gift of the Land of Canaan by divine decree to the tribes of Israel is as much a matter of faith for Christians as for Jews.

C. A. Rijk