Dabru Emet: A Marker of Revolutionary Relationship
by Julia McStravog
As a Catholic theologian, it is not my place to debate the nuances of Dabru Emet as they relate to Jewish tradition and teaching. Rather, it is my responsibility to accept this document as a gift of friendship. Dabru Emet both reflects the “learning with” that happens in the contexts of interreligious dialogue and facilitates “learning with” for a fecund dialogical future. It is an entry point for the next generation of Jewish and Christian interlocutors to enrich and enliven the Jewish–Christian conversation. It is a marker in the story of a revolutionary relationship.
The origin of the dramatic shift in the relationship referenced by the writers of Dabru Emet finds its roots in the history of the Holocaust and the post-Shoah theological reckoning with the reality of inescapable anti-Judaic and antisemitic Christian teaching and preaching. For Christians—Catholics in particular—the promulgation of Nostra Aetate by the Second Vatican Council in 1965 was, as Rabbi Yitz Greenberg has noted, the vital pivot from “enemy to partner.”[1] The purposeful and emphatic embrace of Nostra Aetate on the part of Roman Catholics spurred other Christian traditions to examine the implicit and explicit ways their beliefs and practices upheld notions of Jewish inferiority and confront the concept of Christian superiority.
This shift is not rupture with tradition as such. Tradition is a reflection on the relationship between God and humanity; that relationship is constant, but it is not static. The dynamism that permeates the Creator-Created relationship must therefore be incorporated into the understanding and shaping of tradition. My faith compels me to understand Nostra Aetate as the inbreaking of the Holy Spirit upon human history. Therefore, subsequent constructive activity of Christians building relationships with people of other religious traditions is a faithful response to divine intervention. In this light, Catholics can see Dabru Emet as a recognition and a response on the part of Jews to the divine action within the life of the Church. It is a reflection back to Christians of how those outside the tradition see the multifaceted action of the Holy Spirit. It is a recognition and affirmation of God in us. It is a gift that has revealed to Christianity that the real and tangible gifts of the Spirit are actually working.
Like Nostra Aetate and other Christian church documents that have shaped the Jewish–Christian relationship, Dabru Emet is a fruit of internal reflection stimulated by external relationships. The internal workings of institutional Christianity and rabbinic Judaism are quite disparate. Therefore, it is not possible to have perfect counterparts in each tradition that reveal definitive points along the path of the changing relationship between Christians and Jews. Nonetheless, Dabru Emet is both an entry point and guidepost for each tradition along the renewed endeavor of relationship between Jews and Christians.
Dabru Emet is indicative of a certain milieu that is distinctive to the rich religious diversity found in the United States. This context from which Dabru Emet emerged and in which I am formed has played, and continues to play, a crucial role in the formation of relationships across religious traditions. With its long history of interreligious activity and religious pluralism, the United States is home to a robust Abrahamic dialogical landscape conducive to encounter, innovative theological inquiry, and relationship-building between Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
Christians and Jews in the United States have been on the cutting edge of the new theological discipline that emerged after the promulgation and emphatic embrace of Nostra Aetate and which Dabru Emet affirms: interreligious dialogue. Interreligious dialogue is an iterative process: the work that goes in bears some fruit and that fruit is then folded back into the goals and purpose of engagement—that which it bears sustains it. Dabru Emet was a fruit of intentional interreligious relationship, and as it is taken up and looked at anew, it will continue to act as a catalyst for reflecting, reimagining, and reinterpreting the historic and present Jewish–Christian relationship. It is in the experience of those who engage in the dialogical process that contribute to the formulation and fruition of the future foundations of interreligious relationship.
I was shaped and formed in the groundbreaking work of the theologians and practitioners of interreligious dialogue from which Dabru Emet emerges. That is, in the difficult work of initiating reconciliation, making the first attempts at addressing the real and painful theological issues that participated in and precipitated the Shoah, sharing the first meals, writing the first collaborative reflections, and ensuring that there would be a way for emerging Jewish and Christian theologians to enter into a new paradigm of relationship. That is not to say that all these issues have been comprehensively addressed; there is still much work to be done.
The relationship between Jews and Christians is ongoing, taking new forms, and providing new opportunities for what Pope Francis calls a “culture of encounter.” The Jewish–Christian interreligious friendship is in its infancy when compared to the two millennia of religious anti-Judaism and racialized antisemitism, which has still not been completely abandoned from Christian theological thinking and ritual practice. Dabru Emet is a gift to the Christian community in that it is a recognition of the sincerity behind the reimaging and rearticulation by Christian theologians of Christian theological and dogmatic understanding of Jews and Judaism. It was a gift of radical hospitality to affirm the newfound mutuality and a commitment to the continued construction of an honest and dynamic relationship reflective of the dignity of all. It is a fruit of dialogue and relationship that continues to offer opportunities of reflection, of where the relationship between Christians and Jews began, to its transformation over the past half-century, as well as contemplation about the possibilities for engaging the divine dynamism in the Jewish and Christian traditions in the present and future.
The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
[1] Greenberg, Irving. “From Enemy to Parner: Toward the Realization of Partnership between Judaism and Christianity.” In Nostra Aetate: Celebrating 50 Years of the Catholic Church’s Dialogue with Jews and Muslims, edited by Pim Valkenberg and Anthony Cirelli. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016. 178-206.
Julia McStravog is a Th.D. candidate at La Salle University and Program Manager for the Program on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She also is a member of the National Council of Synagogues–United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Consultation.