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BOB ABERNETHY<\/strong>, host: We have a profile now of a man who has spent most of his life working for better relations between Christians and Jews. He is Rabbi James Rudin, for many years until his retirement the head of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee. Rudin has a new book out called \u201cChristians and Jews, Faith to Faith.\u201d One reason he wrote it, he says, is his fear that the cause he has served so long is losing momentum.<\/p>\n We met Rudin at a retreat center near his home in Florida. Once, he promoted better interreligious understanding with top US and foreign leaders. He had 11 meetings with Pope John Paul II and then with Benedict XVI. Rudin may be retired officially, but he is still busy writing, speaking, and leading interfaith meetings, this one of Catholics and Jews.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: Rudin says the Nazi Holocaust of the 1930s and \u201940s taught his generation what can happen when bigotry goes unchecked.<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: To me it\u2019s a pathology, it\u2019s a cancer\u2014that is anti-Semitism or any religious hatred\u2014and if you don\u2019t treat it, if you don\u2019t treat it as a pathology, it can fester and can be quiet for a while, and then it explodes.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: Pope John Paul II, along with many others, led the postwar attack on religious prejudice, especially on anti-Semitism. In the year 2000, John Paul prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism\u2019s holiest site. The note he left asked God\u2019s forgiveness for all those who had caused Jews to suffer. I asked Rudin if he blames Christians for the Holocaust.<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: I don\u2019t hold today\u2019s Christians guilty, not at all. Most of them were born after \u201945. But there is a responsibility to teach it to young Christians growing up today. In Christian Europe, in a Christian society mass murder took place of a religious community, and how did that happen?<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: In churches, synagogues, and schools, often with carefully prepared courses and videos, dialogues explore the issues that separate the two religions, one of them\u2014the words \u201cOld Testament.\u201d<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: And what about the understanding many Christians have that the Hebrew Bible foreshadows the coming of Christ?<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: I want Christians to take the Hebrew Bible or, it\u2019s called, the Old Testament or the Tanakh on its own terms. Do not imply that it was written six- or seven-hundred years before an event and was already predicting an event.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: What then should evangelical Christians and others do about their conviction that the whole Bible is literally true\u2014God\u2019s word?<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: Well, that\u2019s not the way Jews and other Christians read the Bible.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: And the ancient accusation that Jews killed Christ?<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: That\u2019s one of the most insidious and odious charges, and everybody knows, or everybody should know that Jews under Roman occupation in the land of Israel at that time had no power to execute anybody.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: Another issue\u2014Jesus\u2019 \u201cGreat Commission\u201d to his followers to make disciples of all nations.<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: Well, I respect that and I understand it, but Jews are already with the Father, already with God\u2014the Covenant\u2014and are not in need of any intermediary.<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: There are many Jews who are very unhappy with the various policies of the Israeli government and have expressed it. However, there is one thing that the overwhelming number of Jews agree\u2014that Israel must survive as a Jewish state.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: Rudin says the best results from interfaith dialogue come when participants honestly identify their differences as well as common ground.<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: I\u2019ve found after 40 years of this that Jews and Christians who really engage one another come out better Christians and better Jews.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: Rudin preaches a theology that accepts the validity of all religions, all different approaches to the transcendent.<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: I really believe that God\u2019s plan for the human family is that there are many, many paths to God, and there\u2019s not just one path and one way and one truth, and that\u2019s the hardest thing for Christians and Jews to accept. They can accept neighbors, they can accept working together, marrying one another, they can do all kinds of things, but when push comes to shove they\u2019ll say \u201cmy faith is the truth,.\u201d But when you say \u201cmy faith is the truth\u201d you are excluding 98 percent of the rest of the world.<\/p>\n INTERFAITH MEETING PARTICIPANT<\/strong>: I go back to my own childhood, where my schoolmates would call me a dirty Jew, and now I have a beloved Catholic son-in-law, and we\u2019re sitting in this group. It\u2019s like day and night.<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: That\u2019s in one generation<\/p>\n INTERFAITH MEETING PARTICIPANT<\/strong>: In one generation\u2014well, a long one.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: Others emphasized their concern for the future.<\/p>\n INTERFAITH MEETING PARTICIPANT<\/strong>: My fear is that we have peaked. Now if I\u2019m wrong in this tell me, because a lot of the folks that are engaged in our work here are not necessarily going to be around the next 10 years. The challenge for us is how to bring folks who aren\u2019t 60 years old into this game, right?<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: Rabbi Rudin, too, sees work left to do and not enough younger people interested in doing it.<\/p>\n RUDIN<\/strong>: I think the initial enthusiasm, the first flush of excitement\u2014gee, Christians and Jews meeting together in America and dialogue or in Israel or Europe either\u2014that\u2019s over. And you have a whole new generation of Jews and Christians for whom all this either seems old-fashioned or unnecessary or the job has been done. There\u2019s nothing more to do. Maybe they think we\u2019ve succeeded, but we haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n ABERNETHY<\/strong>: If younger generations feel better relations between Christians and Jews are no longer a top priority, surely one of the reasons is the great improvement in those relations that Rabbi Rudin helped bring about.<\/p>\n![\"post02-rabbirudin\"](\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/02\/post02-rabbirudin.jpg\")
RABBI JAMES RUDIN<\/strong> (speaking at interfaith meeting): Is it possible to be a faithful Catholic and a faithful Jew, very deep in your soul, in your heart, and still have mutual respect and understanding for the Other, capital O, the Other who is not of our faith?<\/p>\n![\"post01-rabbirudin\"](\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/02\/post01-rabbirudin.jpg\")
RUDIN<\/strong>: It\u2019s not accurate because it puts Judaism as if it were something old-fashioned, not up to date or, as many Christians believe, has been replaced by Christianity and that the New Testament is superior to the Old Testament, and that\u2019s my beef with it.<\/p>\n![\"post03-rabbirudin\"](\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/02\/post03-rabbirudin.jpg\")
ABERNETHY<\/strong>: And attitudes toward Israel? I asked Rudin whether he thinks some Jews are so supportive of the state of Israel that they can\u2019t criticize its government\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n![\"post04-rabbirudin\"](\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/02\/post04-rabbirudin.jpg\")
ABERNETHY<\/strong>: The interfaith group Rudin spoke to was the board of directors of the Center for Christian-Jewish Studies at Florida\u2019s Saint Leo University. Some of the members spoke of the progress they have seen:<\/p>\n