A TRIP TO GERMANY
An International Jewish Christian Dialogue
Involving Professors and Advanced Graduate Students of the
Religion Department of Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
May 14, 1980 – June 27, 1980
Lewis John Eron
December 14, 1980
INTRODUCTION AND PREPARATIONS FOR THE TRIP
Temple University, Philadelphia PA - Fall 1979-Spring 1980
In retrospect this trip to Germany was for me a working pilgrimage. As a Jew, a rabbinical student and a Ph.D. candidate in Judaica, the opportunity to spend six weeks in Germany engaged in Jewish-Christian dialogue was a chance not only to see a land filled with Jewish memories, both triumphant and sad, but also presented the possibility to help participate in the difficult task of healing wounds and preparing for a better future. The possibility of meeting young Germans and Germans of the so-called “middle generation”, those old enough to remember the Nazi period but too young to have been participants, concerned with developing a new Christian theological appreciation of Judaism and the continuing existence of the Jewish people and through this new appreciation a better Christian self-understanding was exciting.
The preparation for this trip started well over a year and a half ago. Professor Leonard Swidler, a professor of Catholic Thought in the Religion Department of Temple University and, as founder and editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, a prominent participant in the ecumenical movement, conceived the idea that a group of students and faculty members from Temple University’s Religion Department should travel overseas to engage in inter-religious dialogue.
It would be useful for us, he thought, if we were to meet with European colleagues and it would be instructive for them to learn and see in action a different style of the academic study of religion. While in Germany theology and religion are studies in the context of Catholic or Protestant theological faculties, Temple University’s Religion Department, in both a formal and informal sense, is a center for inter-religion dialogue and the study of religion in a multi-faith community.
In addition to Prof. Swidler’s work in inter-religious dialogue, it is the department’s policy to have as professors of a religious tradition people who are active members and believers in those traditions. The students also have strong personal commitments to their own religious traditions as well as a desire and ability to study religion in an academic fashion. For example, many of my fellow students at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College are also, as I, graduate students in the Religion Department. The department’s desire is to avoid both the artificial objectivity and religious parochialism that sometimes occurs in other approaches to the study of religion. It hopes to replace it with clarity of insight that grows out of an open discussion of issues by people who are committed to the issues.
Last Fall the active preparations for the trip began. Those students who were interested participated in a seminar in which we read books and articles in English and German on issues in Jewish-Christian dialogue as well as prepared papers that we sent to Germany to be read by our future dialogue partners. Although the paper exchange continued on and off during the entire year, we were not sure of we would actually be going to Germany until the Spring.
Every Thursday, Prof. Swidler would read to us the correspondence he received about the projected trip and every time we would evaluate the chances of going. Finally, after many weeks of sinking hopes, I think it was sometime in March, when it became clear that we would receive financial support, our activity increased. We finished our papers. We started to study or review German in earnest. We made plans, collected addresses, looked for suitcases. The money had come through and we were off to Germany thanks to the DAAD (The German Academic Exchange) and the EKD (The German Protestant Churches)!
I started percolating. I finished a paper on the concept of the “Fear of God”. I wrote to my relatives in Europe announcing my expected arrival and bought new clothes for the journey.
Needless to say most of my personal preparations were left to the week before we were to depart. The first time I sat down that week to rest was on the airplane to Europe.
On May 14, 1980 we all met in the takeoff lounge for Capitol Airlines at Kennedy Airport in New York. For us it was a reunion of sorts. We had not seen each other for a week. It was then when all our fears, hopes, wishes and expectations finally were realized. Although we had spent a year together in a seminar and had known each other for a number of years, it was clear that from that point on for the next six weeks most of our intellectual and emotional support would be coming from the other members of this small group.
Our dialogue would be as much within the group of with the people we would meet. Inter-religious dialogue is an attempt by the participants to arrive at a better mutual understanding of each other as religious people. In dialogue, as I understand it, the goal is not the leveling of religious differences, but rather a search for a theological understanding of the other participants and their religion that would promote human harmony. This requires much more than the acceptance of the dialogue partners as merely fellow human beings but as people with sincere and legitimate religious beliefs. In Jewish-Christian dialogue we do not speak for Judaism or Christianity but for ourselves as believing and, hopefully, knowledgeable Jews and Christians. A dialogue that is more than a sharing of information requires trust between the partners. That is trust in the sincerity of their beliefs and in their value as fellow believers. This trust can only be built through continual interaction and we would be with each other for six weeks.
The problems that Christians have with Jews and Jews with Christians are not the same. For Christians, the questions, as I understand them, are primarily theological: the need to explain within a Christian theological context the continual existence of Jews and Judaism, the Jewish origins of Christianity, and the proper relationship between what they consider God’s chosen people, the Jews, and, in Christian terms, God’s church.
For Jews, on the other hand, the questions concerning Christianity are perhaps more of an halachic, that is, legal, nature than a strictly theological one. The question is not whether a person of Christian heritage can be just, that was and is always possible, but what is the status of Christianity. Is it a monotheistic religion and, if so, in what sense? How do we, as Jews, relate with Christians? What is the status of other religious traditions with a modern Jewish worldview?
There were seventeen of us travelling to Germany, though not all of us would be able to stay the entire six weeks. Some have to return early to family or work. We were a group of four professors and thirteen graduate students, or six Catholics, for Protestants and seven Jews, or ten men and seven women. Our interests ranged from Biblical exegesis to philosophy, for history to theology. In addition, there of our Jewish members, Alan Mittleman, Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer and myself, were students at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College as well.
Aachen, May 15-18, 1980
We arrived in Brussels on May 15 and quickly hurried on to Aachen, Germany. Most of us were exhausted. It was a long plane ride, then a run through Brussels, then an hour and a half train trip from Brussels to Aachen. When we finally arrived at the Aachen train station, we lifted our heavy suitcases and dragged ourselves off the train. As soon as we assembled on the platform, two figures came running to meet us. One was a tall man with light brown hair and an ascot and the other a dark haired man with a stoop. Clasping our hands, they greeted and cheered us proclaiming. “Hertzlich willkommen”! They gathered and shepherded us to the Catholic Academy, that is, conference center, of the Bishopric of Aachen, which was only three blocks away.
The young man was Hans Herman Hendrix, the director of the Academy, and the other was Father Schwartz, its rector. Were it not for the efforts of these two men, our first meeting in Germany could not have been successful. For the next six day, Hendrix spent practically all his time with us. He not only saw to it that the two conferences we were to attend there went well but made sure that our group of slightly disoriented Americans was healthy and happy.
We started working the very next morning, right after a breakfast of fresh rolls, cheese, sausage (for those who ate it) and coffee. The major meal in Aachen, Germany is lunch and dinner consists of the same menu as breakfast except that we drank tea instead of coffee. More than the difference in language, it was common things such as different meals, the use feather beds instead of blankets, the difficulty in finding the flush on the toilet, which convinced us we were no longer at home.
Prof. Swidler started the proceedings with his lecture “The Jewishness of Jesus”. This was the first of perhaps five times that we would hear him deliver the talk and although by the end of thei trip we all would be able to recite large parts of it by heart, it was a good stat for it emphasized what we had in common. Prof. Sloyen, one of our Catholic professors, lectured on Jewish influences in Christian liturgy and in the evening Cantor Herz of the Aachen Jewish community spoke on Jewish synagogue music of the nineteenth century. In that talk, the cantor showed how nineteenth century music, particularly Romantic music, influenced German Jewish musicologists and synagogue composers. It was a perfect lecture for that evening, a Friday evening, in that it presented a generally little known but vital aspect of Jewish life.
Later that evening we had a meeting, the first of many during those first two weeks. We had a great deal of planning to do and some of the group members had various personal issues to discuss. Luckily, later in the trip the need for and number of meetings dropped considerably.
On Saturday morning we went to the synagogue in Aachen for Shabbat services. The congregation is small and the group from the conference overpowered the regular worshippers numerically. Prof. Zalman Schacter, our Jewish professor, gave a D’var Torah, a short homily, and I was given the honor of maftir, reading the last section of the weekly Torah portion and reciting the haftarah, the corresponding section from the Prophets. Although I have read the haftarah many times in the synagogue where I serve as student rabbi, reading it never seemed to me to be such a great honor as on that Shabbat. I was as nervous as I was at my Bar Mitzvah. After the services, Prof. Schacter told a lengthy but interesting Hassidic story at the Kiddush, the reception after the service.
That afternoon, Pinchas Lapide, an Israeli-German Jewish scholar delivered a talk entitled “A Jewish Theology of Christianity”. The talk really did not offer much theology, but in it Lapide presented an explanation of Jesus’ life in terms of early Rabbinic Judaism. Lapide, a balding man with an oval face and short grayish hair, presented a summary of his recent work in sharp, blunt statements. For example, he argued that the concept of resurrection is a Jewish concept. No Greek would ever think of bodily resurrection. Furthermore, the event of Jesus’ rising from the dead had precedent and parallels in Jewish literature. Lapide would expand on his Jewish “Jesusology” in his talk during the second conference in Aachen.
Saturday evening, Prof. Schacter lead us all in an interreligious kumsitz, gathering, followed by a Havdala service (the service that marks the end of the Sabbath). We sang Hebrew, English and German songs. He played a tape of Martin Buber reading Buber’s own renditions of Hassidic takes. He told some of his own tales. We danced and, finally, after two and a half hours, recited the Havdala prayers.
On Sunday evening, May 18, the first session at Aachen ended with two talks, one by Prof. Paul van Buren, our Protestant professor, on a Christian theology of Judaism and the other by Prof. Schacter on a Jewish theology of Christianity. The afternoon and evening were free so I took a train to Brussels to visit my cousin Zus.
Aachen, May 19-21, 1980
The second of the two session we attended at Aachen were more informal that the first. There were fewer lectures and more time for discussion. It was then that my German was given it first major test. I lead a discussion group. Although the topic of the group was biblical views on the various issues pertaining to dialogue, the discussion concerned itself primarily with an explanation of a Jewish definition of Christianity. Together we tried to explain in German the meaning of some of the concepts Jews historically have used to understand non-Jews in general and Christians and Christianity in particular – the meaning of the seven Noachide laws, the Hebrew abbreviation AKUM (Worshippers of Stars and Constellations), etc.
Tuesday evening, May 19, was the most interesting session of that conference. It began with a talk between Professors Schacter and van Buren on Paul of Tarsus in an attempt to discuss St. Paul’s feeling concerning Jews. The different understandings of Paul offered by both men were interesting since they both recreated Paul in their own images. Prof. Schacter’s Paul was a searching Jewish mystic, which Prof. van Buren’s Paul was a sensitive theologian.
Later that evening a Catholic priest from India, now teaching theology in Germany, presented some of the work he had been doing in ritual dance. He had choreographed the Our Father (Lord’s Prayer) using traditional Indian dance movements. After presenting jis version, he had us attempt our own choreography.
The next morning was Shavuot and we met in the garden for morning services. Prof. Schacter led the services and although they were short the services was meaningful. I learned that a non-traditional service can have the beauty and power of a more traditional service when it constructed by someone like Prof. Schacter who knows not only the liturgy bit the function of prayer.
That afternoon, after the close of the conference, we were given a tour of the Aachen Cathedral by the retired Dombaumeister (chief architect of the cathedral). He gave us a lengthy and detailed tour of the church, first built by Charlemagne. Here and throughout the trip I was constantly reminded of the wealth and variety of Christianity’s artistic traditions. It was always easy to forget these aspects of religion in discussions with theologians. As a Jew, I often found it easier to understand the theological positions of Christianity when they were presented verbally than in their physical representations in painting and sculpture.
The Cathedral itself, a prime example of Carolingian art, stands over Roman ruins and an earlier chapel built by Pippin. In its hexagonal design one can see the influence of Old Testament imagery. Charlemagne built the cathedral by basing its design on the design of the Temple in Jerusalem. This church was to play the same role in Charlemagne’s kingdom as Solomon’s Temple played in Solomon’s.
Tübingen, May 22-24, 1980
On the morning of May 22 we left Aachen in rented cars to drive to Tübingen. Although we started out together and had the same instructions we quickly became separated. We had planned to leave the autobahn and drive along the Rhine. Although we separated five miles out of Aachen, Providence guided us and we all met in the town of Bacherach, the setting of Heine’s story, the Rabbi of Bacherrach, for lunch.
Late that afternoon we arrived at Tübingen. Prof. Schachter had a lecture that evening, so after a short reception party we were sent to our various hosts. In Tübingen, as was to be the case throughout out trip except while we were at conference centers, we were housed in private homes. Most of us that is. I and two other students slept in the dormitory of the Protestant Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen which was called the Stift, the Foundation. The building was over 600 years old and originally served as a monastery. After the reformation it was given to the University as a residence. Many famous students stayed in the Stift. I believe that I slept in Hegel’s own bed – it seemed to be over two hundred years old. The building is huge and in many ways still medieval. We three stayed in a dormer halfway to heaven and we could only find two showers for all six hundred residents. One needed a degree in medieval architecture just to find oneself in the building. Every night it took me at least twenty minutes to find my room.
Dr. Schacter’s lecture that first evening, entitle “A Kabbalist’s Contribution to Dialogue” was quite unusual, especially or our hosts. Although Tübingen has both a Catholic and a Protestant Theological Faculty and in that regard there is more opportunity to hold inter-religious dialogue there than in many other German universities, three are few Jews either at the university or in town and fewer mystics. Alan Mittleman presented a response from the rationalist side of our tradition.
Prof. Schacter, in this talk, which he gave in various forms throughout the trip, made use of Kabbalistic categories as tools for classifying diverse phenomena. He employed the four levels of soul: nephesh, life itself, ruach, emotive soul, neshamah, intellectual sour and chiyyah / yehidah, divine soul, as a model for discussing the contributions of various religions and on which levels dialogue can take place.
He held that all religions involve activity on all four levels. In fact, a well-adjusted individual or society must integrate activity on all four levels. Certain people as well as religious traditions, however, emphasize different levels. That is to say that Jews and Christians can talk without much difficulty on topics such as: mysticism, which belongs to the level of hiyyah / hechida – existence; philosophy, the level of neshamah – theory; and religious feelings, the level of ruach – emotions. Jews and Christians have little to say to each other on the level of nephesh which involves activity because Christianity has really nothing compatible with the Jewish system of halacha.
Although we had no other academic activities for the rest of stay in Tubingen we were kept quite busy touring sites of Jewish interest in the area. We visited the Institute of Judaica of the university where important research is now being conducted in Jewish life in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. On Friday, May 23, we took a tour through the countryside. Since the sixteenth century the area around Tübingen contained may Jews/ We first went to the town of Haigerlach, a town about twenty-five kilometers south of Tübingen. This town, in addition to its magnificent setting perched on a cliff has two old Jewish cemeteries. The older one in a wood outside the town was the only Jewish cemetery until 1803 when the Jews successfully petitioned the duke for permission to be buried in town. The removal of this Jewish disability marked the emancipation of the Jews of Haigerlach. One can easily see the growing acculturation of the Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the changes in style and language of the tombstones in the new cemetery. The use of German increases while the use of Hebrew decreases over time.
That day we also went to the town of Hechingen where members of the Ecumenical Institute of Tübingen are attempting to establish a museum of Jewish life in the old synagogue. The building, which is a unique example of the Moorish style of synagogue architecture in southern Germany, is now being used as a warehouse for bathroom supplies. Upon their request we sent a letter to the Minister of Culture of the Bundesland (state) of Baden-Württemberg to ask for his help in promoting the establishment of the museum. Even though Hechingen is a bit off the beaten path, a museum in the synagogue building would preserve the memory of a destroyed Jewish community.
The final stop of the day was in Bad Teinach. In the town church we saw a seventeenth century Lehrtafel (Doctrinal Tablet) based on Kabbalistic teachings. This large painting witnesses the interactions between Lutheran Pietists in Swabia and Jewish Kabbalists and is a major document of Christian Kabbalah. The painting is a virtual dictionary of symbols. Each figure and image represents some mystic truth. To comprehend the picture, one must be versed not only in Kabbalah and Christian theology, but also in such arcane subjects as tarot, astrology and plant lore. The picture was so overwhelming that after leaving the church Prof. Swidler and I walked over to the nearby spa and drank from the health inducing waters as we listened to a band play themes from obscure old movies.
On Saturday, May 24 we had lunch with Hans Küng, the controversial Catholic theologian. The lunch was quite pleasant. I had a local Swabian dish that looked like a large kreplach, pasta dumplings. After lunch we spoke with Prof. Küng. We asked him a number of difficult questions important to Jewish-Christian dialogue. Lance Nadeau, one of our Catholic students, asked Küng about his use of Judaism as a symbol for a set of attitudes about authority and especially as a foil against Catholic authority. Küng admitted to his lack of awareness of the problem such as a use of Judaism might cause in dialogue. His lack of familiarity with these issues expressed itself, however, in his claim that he was arguing against legalism in religion, which he illustrated by holding that it was an injustice that Prof. Schacter could not attend our luncheon because he would not travel on Shabbat.
Dachau, May 25, 1980
The next day we drove to Dachau to visit the concentration camp. The town of Dachau today is a pleasant suburb of Munich. The town does not give the feeling that thirty-five years ago it was the site of a notorious Nazi concentration camp. Today, the camp is a monument. Not much remains but a wall surrounding a vast, empty compound. All but the first row of barracks have been demolished. The administration building, which is now a museum, stands at one end of the compound while on the other end of the compound are three memorial chapels: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish. Behind the chapels, outside the wall is a convent in which prayers are offered continuously.
The entire site was cold and empty though we were there on a bright summer day. The camp’s unbearable, endless space is its most powerful feature. Its hollow expanse drew out all my emotions. We held a short memorial service in the camp before a monument for those who suffered there. I found it difficult to pray. The void consumed my words as it did my feelings. It remained empty and left me empty.
On the Road to Freiburg, May 26, 1980
After Dachau, the “au” ending means “pasture”, any trip would be a pleasure. Yet, our journey to Freiburg left me with mixed feelings. On our way we visited the nineteenth century fantasy castle of the Hohenzollern kings of Prussia, who by that time were also the rulers of Württemberg. In this castle, set on the top of a mountain, they achieved the heights of Romantic ersatz medievalism. Although built on the foundations of older structures, the present building is a stage-set castle, not a fortress; a pleasure palace, not a stronghold. It is the playground of aprince charming and not the bastion of a Barbarossa. Yet, it, too, expressed power and imperial aspirations.
In addition to the magnificent view of the surrounding countryside, one sees an equally powerful view of the hopes and dreams of Imperial Germany. One can feel the yearning to recreate a glorious past, worthy of the future, to replace centuries of disunity. It was a captivating dream and, though, it may have lead Europe into was of unspeakable horror, the fact that a tourist today with a camera and walking shorts can still sense it presence, attests to its strength.
Freiburg, May 27-31, 1980
We arrived in Freiburg later than expected. We had a short welcoming dinner and then we were sent off to our various hosts.
In Freiburg, we were guests of the Pedagogic Institute of the Catholic Theological Faculty. Prof. Gunter Diemer, the director of the institute, is particularly interested in educational aspect of Jewish-Christian dialogue, specifically the teaching of Judaism in Catholic education.
Although we were guests of the pedagogic institute and most of the students we met were interested in Catholic education, our discussions were not restricted to educational topics. We had a good dose of theoretic theology as well. Prof. van Buren presented a paper that summarized some of the positions in his new book, Discerning the Way, in which he attempted to develop a new Christian understanding of Judaism. Prof. Schacter presented the educational aspect of his ever-expanding presentation, “A Kabbalist’s Contribution . . . “ and Prof. Swidler gave his talk on the Jewishness of Jesus once again.
In Freiburg I gave I short presentation, as part of a panel discussion on “How Jews Teach about Christianity and Christians Teach about Judaism”. My specific topic was traditional Jewish teachings. Although the assignment did not seem particularly difficult, the circumstances made it a real challenge. Firstly, the talk had to be given in German, and minor hurdle, and secondly, I was only informed of the assignment when I boarded the airplane to Europe. Although my studies at the R.R.C. gave me some background in the area and helped structure an answer, I needed a Jewish library to do some research. Luckily, in Tübingen I was able to use a library and collect information and outline a talk, but the talk was still not in German. I had a choice, I could try to “wing it” and speak from notes or I could write out a presentation and read. Fortunately, chutzpah lost, so I spent a day or so writing the talk in German.
I did not finish until twenty minutes before the afternoon session on May 29, the scheduled time for the panel. It was not as pressured or as miserable as it may seem, I managed to miss a meeting, always a blessing, and a lecture or two which I had already heard.
The discussion began sharply fifteen minutes late, which is a German academic tradition. We sat in the library of the institute. The room was filled with books and people. Speaking first, I presented an historical introduction to the discussion. The other speakers described the contemporary aspects of the problem.
That evening we met Dr. Gertude Luckner, an eighty year-old Catholic woman and a leader of the ecumenical movement in Germany. She is the founder and editor of the Freiburger Rundbrief, an important inter-religious dialogue journal in Germany. This small, slight woman is a genuine hero. During the Nazi period, she worked for Charitas, the Catholic relief organization, and used her position to aid Jews and other people oppressed by the Nazis. She worked as a courier carrying money, material and aid. In 1943 she was taken off a train by the Gestapo, arrested and sent to Ravensbruch Concentration Camp where she was imprisoned until the end of the war. She is an old friend of the State of Israel being the third German to receive a visa to travel there.
While we were in Freiburg, we had the opportunity to see a collection of Franz Rosenzweig’s books and papers which was donated to the university. We saw some important relics. The most interesting being the only example of the second edition of his book Hegel and the State and the letter he sent to Rudolf Ehrenberg in which Rosenzweig wrote that if he were to enter Christianity, as Ehrenberg asked him to do, he would do so not as a gentile but as a Jew. Rosenzweig remained in Judaism and became the first Jewish thinker to develop a theological system in which Christianity, as well as Judaism, was seen as a way to salvation.
On the Road to Bonn, June 3, 1980
The trip to Bonn was part of the pilgrimage experience in Germany. On the way, we stopped in Speyer and in Worms. Both of these cities were important Jewish centers in the middle ages. I drove with Prof. Swidler, Margaret Cotoneo, a fellow student, and Karl-Heinz Minz, a young German scholar who became very interested in our project. We arrived in Speyer in time for mass at the Romanesque Cathedral. The Cathedral, which was an imperial chapel and contains the tombs of the Holy Roman Emperors, transmits a feeling of might in its powerful columns, bold round arches and long, plain aisles. After the mass, we went to the Judenstrasse, the medieval Jewish quarter, and saw the Judenbad, that is the mikvah, a much more modest building than the cathedral.
From Speyer, we continued to Worms. The day had been pleasant, but when we arrived at Worms, the weather hid changed. The day became dark and foggy. We parked by the Cathedral and walked to the ancient Jewish cemetery. The cemetery gate opened into a small park with slow rolling slopes. The graveyard had the atmosphere of an old shul, synagogue, with trees as its columns and the hanging branches as its dusty chandeliers. The sky was low and a gray dim light filtered through a cobwebbed heaven. The gravestones tilted right and left. Their moss bearded forms rooked back and forth in the grips of unceasing prayer. After joining their silent minyan (prayer quorum) for a brief memorial prayer, we left the graveyard and continued on our way to Bonn.
Bonn, June 2, 1980
We spent the night in a cloister called Waldberger outside of Bonn. This cloister which also serves as a Catholic Academy seemed more like a palace out of the Brothers Grimm than a monastery. We were the only guests and the brothers walked as silently and as unseen as spirits. The rooms were light and airy. Food and drink were prepared for us and in the morning we walked through long corridors past dancing gardens to a dining room all set for a hearty breakfast.
In Boon we received a tour of Bundestag and Bundesrat and a lecture on the German political system. The DAAD treated us to lunch in their ultra-modern offices. In the evening, after a meeting with professor from the University of Bonn, we had dinner in a restaurant facing the Rhine.
We were all very good tourists when we visited the government buildings. We all picked up buttons, booklets, postcards and loose materials which were available to visitors. In addition, we all received special packets with more of this informative material within. Since we received all this material on our trip to the Bundesrat, we called it Bundes-stuff.
Heidelberg, June 3-6, 1980
Our stay in Heidelberg was the academic highpoint of the trip. It was in the middle of the trip. We were in full strength: physically, spiritually and numerically. Our command of the German language had finally become respectable and our host, Profs. Rentdorff and Dr. Stegemann, had organized a well-constructed program. In addition we were joined by Pinina Nave Levinson, the wife of Landesrabbiner Levinson and a leader in her own right in Jewish-Christina dialogue in Germany, and Michael Wyschograd, a Jewish philosopher from New York who was teaching for a semester at the newly established Jüdische Hochschile in Heidelberg.
In spite of the heavy academic schedule, we managed to find time, as always, to relax and sightsee. In the evening pf June 4 our academic efforts were celebrated at a reception at which wine flowed as if our hosts were trying to empty the Heidelberger Flass. I was staying with a divinity student and his wife and after the reception they held a diner at which I and some other members of our tour were able to meet some other students. Later that evening everybody met in the center of town and together climbed up to the Castle, which overlooks Heidelberg.
Theses informal gatherings were as important as the sessions. The spirit of friendship developed at them helped to encourage authentic dialogue. For me, a rabbinical student, the opportunity to talk with students for the ministry about problems, hopes and desired common to clergy of any faith was enlightening. We discussed the various roles the clergy must play and how we were being prepared for them. This dialogue on practical matters contributed to my experience as much as any other and reinforced my feeling that interreligious dialogue can take place on many other levels than a strictly theological one.
At Heidelberg our academic / theological discussions provided the forum for the investigation of some basic issues. The topics we discussed were varied. Ellen Charry, one of our own, presented a paper on Jewish theology. Basing her thesis on a dialectic described by Franz Rosenzweig, in which both God and a human being have an infinite essence, which is unchanging and absolute, and a finite manifestation, which is free and dynamic, she argues that Judaism can only place its ultimate faith in God. God is infinite in respect to God’s faithfulness, though finite in respect to God’s power, while humanity’s idiosyncratic character is it infinite aspect and its freedom its finite manifestation. We rely on God’s faithfulness. To be in a covenant relationship with God means not only to give up all ultimate commitments to land or people but also to affirm that people can be obedient to God’s covenant. To be in such a relationship to God implies the recognition that God’s election of Israel was not for the sake of Israel alone, but for the world. Israel has the mission of witnessing God’s commitment to the world and in spite of the failings of Christians and their churches should join with the Christian Church in proclaiming God’s name.
Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer discussed the limitation of the Biblical Theology Movement in America. She claimed that the basic concern of this predominately Protestant movement was to provide a theological understanding of the rise of Christianity. Although its leaders were not anti-Semitic, their handling of biblical Heilsgeschichte (salvation history) and the prophetic encounter was a result of a low evaluation of the Pharisees and lead to a misunderstanding of Christian origins. Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer supported Canon Criticism, the attempt to understand the function of biblical literature within the communities that formed and preserved the text, as a better means for deriving theological meaning than the historicism of the Biblical Theology Movement. Prof. Rentdorff, our host and a prominent German Protestant Bible scholar, supported Nancy’s position in his response to her paper.
Some of the risks involved in dialogue became clear in the discussion following Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer’s presentation. A young Jewish student at the University of Heidelberg became upset at what he took to be a misapplication of Judaism. Judaism, he claimed, had no theology and, in addition, terms such as “grace: and “salvation” did not refer to Jewish concepts. Although it is correct that these terms may sound “Christian”, they do have their “Jewish” equivalents: chein, chesed and yeshua.
Dialogue is a rather difficult field. Prof. Swidler describes the two-way dialogue in which any participant in dialogue must engage.
The first is with the dialogue partner from another religion and the second is the dialogue with one’s co-religionists. If inter-religious dialogue is to have any beneficial effects, the participants should be able to learn from their own tradition as well as teach the insights into another tradition gain from dialogue.
The interest of our dialogue happened to be primarily theological, though inter-religious dialogue is not limited to theology. Theology is an area in which few pragmatic American Jews indulge or even worry about, Yet, Jewish thought is far from being a barren field and can contribute as much as it can gain from discussions with people of other religions who face the same problematic modern world as we Jews do.. Reconstructionist Jews have much to offer in such discussions because of our concern with reconstructing Judaism on all levels.
Other areas of discussion dealt with Christian views of Judaism. Prof. Van Buren delivered his paper “Messiah or Israel or Christ of the Church” in which he attempted to analyze the expression “Messiah of Israel” as it was used in the declaration of the Rhineland Synod of the Protestant Church in Germany. Prof van Buren felt that the expression “Christ of the Gentiles” was a better way of expressing the function of Jesus of Nazareth in Christianity for it does not deny the continuing validity of the Jewish tradition.
While we were in Heidelberg we had the opportunity to visit the newly established Jüdische Hochschule. This institution was founded to train people in Judaism with the hope that in the near future a rabbinical program could be started. Though the Hochschule has not moved to newly built quarters, we visited it in its temporary setting which compared favorably to that of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Though they apologized for the antiquated condition of their facilities, the R.R.C. students felt right at home. The only difference was that while the view from the seminar rooms at the R.R.C. is of North Broad Street in Philadelphia, from the Hochschule one was able to see the old section of Heidelberg and the wooded banks of the Neckar River.
The Jüdische Hochschule promises to make significant contributions to European Jewry. The institution has willing students, both Jewish and Gentile, new facilities, and financial resources. What it lacks is a faculty. It has proven difficult to find senior Jewish scholars who would be willing to teach in Germany. This is understandable. The people appropriate for such a position generally already have tenured positions and would be reluctant to move to Germany for financial and emotional reasons as well as for the difficulty of raising a Jewish family in a country with so few Jews.
Frankfurt, June 7-9, 1980
The next stop on our tour was the Protestant Academy in Frankfurt. There the program was similar to that of Aachen. In Frankfurt the atmosphere was completely different from that in Heidelberg. No longer were we in a quiet medieval university town but in an active ultra-modern metropolis, Frankfurt was rebuilt after the Second World War and the remaining old buildings look like Old Masters hanging in a contemporary museum.. Furthermore, we were n longer speaking with academic theologian but with interested laity
It was here where we first experienced the difficulties as well as the rewards of interfaith worship. The meeting took place on a weekend. We arrived before Shabbat and included the celebration of Shabbat as part of our activities. Prof. Schacter was feeling ill that weekend and wanted to rest, so he asked me to lead the Shabbat morning services. On Friday night, however, he conducted a charming Oneg Shabbat in which he told stories of Jewish religious figures who lived in the Frankfurt area and asked for tales of saintly Christians connected with Frankfurt.
Saturday morning I ran down the stairs to the room, which we were using for services, having slept to the very last minute since this Academy was a comfortable as the rest. I leapt into the room to find it full of my German Christian dialogue partners. There were only two other Jews in the room; Mrs. Levinson, who had come to join us for the conference, and Prof. Schacter. There were only a few siddurim (Jewish prayer books)and only one or two in German, one of which I held.
Needless to say it was not the best or easiest circumstances for a service. I said a silent prayer before proceeding with the service. Never before was I so thankful for (a) studying German diligently, (b) having had a student pulpit, (c) having studied with Prof. Schacter, (d) being a fifth and final year RRC and (e) preparing somewhat for something else beforehand.
The hardest step was beginning. I gave a brief introduction to the service explaining what was about to happen and then I started with the prayer Baruch She’amar. Althoug Prof. Schacter had taught us the possibility of chanting in the vernacular as well as in Hebrew, I never had done so at a service. Faced, however, with a room full of siddurless, German speaking Christians, I started davening (praying) in German and well as in Hebrew, so that they could follow. For some strange reason, the prayers flowed smoothly.
My ease in chanting the service partly in German perhaps can be explained by the “two language theory. For all people there are at least two languages in the world, “mother language” and “foreign language”. For me both German and Hebrew fall into the category of “foreign language”. While it was difficult for me to chant in English, “mother-language” I can considerable experience chanting in Hebrew, “foreign-language”. To my brain, German also fell into the category of ‘foreign-language”. Mrs. Levinson helped in the Torah service and Torah discussion and we omitted Musaf, the additional service on Shabbat morning.
That evening Prof. Schacter led us in another lengthy but moving prayer lab followed by a Havdala service.
The next morning we held an interfaith service. It was led by Mrs. Levinson. She had prepared a series of prayer experiences, which she called Jewish worship for Christians and we used one of her services. The service was both interesting and well-constructed. She followed the order of a Jewish service and included some prayers of Jewish origin. The rest of the service, however, contained prayers and readings which were neither recognizably Jewish nor Christian. In fact, she avoided any clearly Jewish or Christian references.
Her service was a good service but in retrospect, I think that a Christian service would have been more in order because of the Jewish services the day before. The ability to observe and appreciate other people’s worship is at time more important to dialogue than prayer together. One has to learn to respect and appreciate the dialogue partner as a religious person within his/her ow tradition in order to trust him/her as a representative of that tradition.
Sunday evening after the meeting was over, we went to a Chinese restaurant, Chinese cooking in Germany has a distinctive German feel. This heaving German-Chinese meal sat in me as firmly as anything else I ate on the trip.
In Frankfurt, Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, Prof. Schacter and I also went to the synagogue for the Mincha-Maariv (afternoon/evening) service late Sunday afternoon. The service took place in the chapel of the main synagogue and between the two services we were treated to a Mishnah lesson led in Yiddish by an old Jew from Hungary.
Most of the Jews we met in Germany had settled in Germany after the Second World War. They were generally prosperous and seemed to have benefitted from the growth of the German economy. Being a small community, they feel isolated from the Jewish world and are not overly optimistic about the future of Jewish life in Germany. It seemed to me that a number had mixed feelings about their material success in a land that in the recent past had treated Jews so poorly. I found them to be interested in us and our project and extremely friendly and hospitable.
Münster, June 9-10, 1980
This was the event for which I was waiting. In Munster I was scheduled to present my paper on the “Fear of God”. I spent the evening prior to the meeting working feverishly to prepare myself. The next day came. We drove to the university, parked, walked to the Catholic Theological Faculty, entered the lecture hall, climbed the stairs, come into the room, sat down, and waited. I felt as if the entire room was quaking. Then it began.
We were welcomed; I was introduced; I made a joke and read a summary of my paper. Then, grasping firmly the table in front of me, I braced myself for the worse. The respondent was about to speak. I was taking notes so carefully that it was not until he finished his response that I realized that he commented favorably on the piece. The discussion following was quite lively. I survived my first academic presentation.
The thrust of my paper was that the biblical concept of a God-Fearer provides a human-God relationship found in both Judaism and Christianity that could provide a basis for inter-religious dialogue. We would be able to accept each other’s validity as a religious person in light of this common relationship. I argued further that the relational category “Fear or Awe of God” was more useful in this regard than that of Covenant. The idea of Covenant seems to be understood differently in the two traditions and there is great difficulty for either tradition to recognize the validity of each other’s claims to be in a covenantal relationship with God.
Duisburg, June 11-15, 1980
Even though Duisburg is an industrial city and a major river port, our visit there was like a country vacation. We stayed at the Protestant Academy at Wolfsburg in the suburbs which at one time was a resort hotel. Our activities included meetings at the academy with students and laity, a lecture series at the university as well as a two hour boat ride on the Rhine,
By this time we had created a small fan club in Germany. People who we met already at Aachen and other places we met again along the way. Our stay in Duisburg was in many ways like a small reunion. The most memorable fans included: Father Wilhelm Salberg, a parish priest with a broad smile, booming voice and an ever active instant picture camera, and Carla Paap, a young Dutch woman with an unlimited spirit, energy and repertoire of songs and jokes who was studying to be a religious school teacher
Having a fan club was both flattering and worrisome. It was nice to know that we had made an imprint on the people involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue but since we were meeting many of the same people for a second time one could wonder how large this fraternity really was.
Our stay at Wolfsburg was as refreshing as a Shabbat afternoon nap. A number of the members of our group had already returned to the US. Shabbat was not a production. Saturday morning, Alan Mittleman, Prof. Schacter and I prayed together on the roof of the academy. Prof. Schacter taught us about the lulav and etrog because he wanted to prepare us for the Fall Holidays. We learned about their mystic function. That afternoon, I went to the zoo. In the evening we made Havdalah in Alan’s room with a red candle, Carla Paap’s perfume and current juice. The evening concluded with a little party.
Finally in Duisburg we had the opportunity to visit German schools to see how religion was being taught. This was important for many of us from Temple for we all had had experience in religious education as teachers, administrators, clergy, consultants, curriculum developers, etc. We went to three different schools – a trade school, a technical school and a gymnasium, an academic high school.
Gail Pohlhaus, Prof. Swidler and I visited the trade school. The students appeared to be what we would consider sixth or seventh graders and had been together with the same teacher fo a number of years. This was a class of potentially problem students from disadvantaged and poorer neighborhoods, but the teacher, Herr Zierman, had created an educational atmosphere of quiet co-operation. During the discussion the students called on each other and were able afterwards to work quickly and quietly in small groups. Herr Zierman taught a unit on the Holocaust with the skillful use of a few slides and short tape recordings. After each slide and recording, he would open with a question and then the students would continue speaking with only a little input from the teacher. Finally, after the third or fourth slide, the students divided into groups and each wrote a caption for one of the slides on a transparence for an overhead projector. The hour was over so the captions were saved for the next class. We returned to Wolfsburg after a brief discussion with Herr Zierman in which he explained that his desire was to help the students understand the problem of the Holocaust, in particular, and prejudice, in general, and to learn how to express their ideas on the subject in a creative fashion.
Our stay in Duisburg ended with a short service followed by a panel discussion at the university. In was a mixed audience and in the discussion following the presentations and after a sries of learned questions, as old woman stood up and obviously upset asked, “I am old. I have to time to study. How can I consider Jesus as a Jew?” To this, Prof. Schacter answered, “Love him as your Christ,”
Berlin, June 16-26, 1980
Our week in Berlin was as busy as any other we spent in Germany. The city government gave us a tour of Berlin led by an enthusiastic government official who pointed out all the activity in urban renewal. The tour was followed by a luncheon and we were given tickets to a play. The play was in Turkish about the plight of Turkish workers in Germany. Though good liberal people went to see the production, I must admit my lack of Turkish limited my enjoyment of the evening,
One of the major social and religious problems in Germany today is the situation of foreign workers. Although there is essentially no e Jewish problem because of the small number of Jews, about 30,000, the problem of absorbing foreign elements into Germany’s non-pluralistic society still remains. The Jewish experience in Germany reflects the difficulty foreign groups have had in that country. The foreign workers, generally from rural areas, themselves experience great social and economic dislocation in their search for employment in industrial Germany. Germany is not the only northern European country to have a problem with foreign workers, but some Germans are particularly sensitive to the problem in light of the Nazi Holocaust.
In Berlin, we held a series of meetings at the Kirchliche Hochschule (the Protestant Seminary), the Protestant Academy and with various groups in East Berlin. The high point of the talks at the Kirchliche Hochschule was a discussion whether one could be an observant Jew and a professing Christian at the same time. The context was not in regard to the Jews for Jesus movement on the US, but in the search of the Protestant students for the Jewish roots of their faith. Although I felt that such a position was, on historical grounds at least, a theological impossibility, the discussion did point out the difficulty Non-orthodox Jews have in establishing criteria for answering the question of who is a Jew.
The discussions in East Berlin were more important to us in hat they made us aware of the problem of religious life in Eastern Europe. Religion is tolerated in East Germany and there are even a number of Theological seminaries as well as a theological faculty at the Humboldt University in East Berlin. These schools, however, do not receive any encouragement from the regime and they are isolated from the major centers of theological studies in West Germany. It is difficult to receive material from the West and practically impossible to travel there. We met with a small group of scholars, Church leaders, and theological students who assembled in East Berlin from all over East Germany for the meeting. The scope of the discussions was limited and people seemed to be quite reserved. I assumed that this was a result of living in a tightly controlled state, since people were more relaxed when we met informally.
East Berlin should be a pilgrimage center for Jews. It was a major center of Jewish life in Germany before the Second World War and in its three Jewish cemeteries are the graves of the great German Jews of the 19th and 20th centuries, among them: Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Gaicomo Meyerbeer, Abraham Geiger, Leopold Zunz, etc. We were given a tour of the cemeteries by a young Protestant seminary student who had studied them as a hobby. The largest of the three cemeteries is also the youngest. Today it is an overgrown Eden, a jungle of voter forty hectares in the midst of the city. It contains the graves of 114,000 Jews and is a Romantic period vision of a final resting spot. Trees and vines grow out of crumbling tombs and embrace solitary gravestones. The cemetery itself is a dark, moist, green tomb whose only living inhabitants are a small handful of caretakers. Even here the doleful fate of Germany’s Jews is not forgotten. The cemetery contains grave of those returned dead from the concentration camps in the early years of the War and a tomb for Torah scrolls desecrated by the Nazis. It was here amidst the affluence of life even more that at Dachau, where I felt the horror of the Nazi years. How dare these plants flourish is such a place, I protested. It was the obscene, absurd side of Thanatopsis, and, yet, it was also the most peaceful of parks.
At the Academy we were part of a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue. Even though I missed two of the sessions in order to attend synagogue services in West Berlin, I participated enough in the meetings to sense the difficulty of such a dialogue. The sense of trust and friendship necessary for dialogue can only be established with hard work and over a long period of time. The addition of a third person to our group disrupted our process. Our Islamic partner did not have the time nor the opportunity to join us in our efforts and often acted defensively. The most difficult moment was during an interfaith service in which he used his section of the service to extol the virtues of his faith at the expense of the others. The success of the meeting, in spite of such difficult odds, can only be attributed to the efforts of the director of the academy, Franz von Hammerstein, who during the Second World resisted the Nazis and was imprisoned in Dachau. Von Hammerstein was able to direct even the most outlandish remarks in ways that let to constructive discussions.
In is in Berlin where one can most clearly sense the conflict between the East and West. The crossing of the border gives a protected Westerner a small taste of the arbitrariness of a police state. The economic differences between East and West Berlin are unmistakably outstanding. In Berlin, one can feel how close we may be to war. A dinner, to which we were invited, was interrupted by the grinding roar of tanks on regular maneuvers.
Regensburg, June 26-27, 1980
Our trip ended in Regensburg. There we met Prof. Franz Mussner, a Catholic Priest and Professor of New Testament at the University. Not only did he spend an afternoon talking with us, but he took us on a personally guided tour of Regensburg.
Regensburg witnessed the full range of the Jewish experience in Germany. It was the home of the mystic poet Judah of Regensburg, author of Shir HaKavod, a hymn still sung as part of the Shabbat morning service in many congregations, and of the medieval traveler, Obadiah of Regensburg, who travelogue is an important source of knowledge concerning the Jewish communities of his time. The Jews were expelled at least three times from Regensburg; in the Middle Ages, during the Wars of Religion in the 16th century, and in the Nazi period. Yet, Jews have always returned to this city on the Danube. On our tour we met the present leaders of the
Jewish community. Today, even though their community seems to be a dying one, they were not sad for their younger members had moved to Israel.
The walls of some of the older houses contain Jewish tombstones. After the Jews were expelled during the Religious Wars, the pound citizens placed them on their houses as trophies of thie victory. Furthermore, the walls of the cathedral are graced with medieval anti-Jewish sculptures. One is of the Jews is contemporary medieval dress dancing before the Golden Calf and the other is of Jews suckling at the teats of a sow.
These sculptures particularly embarrassed Prof. Muessner who had just finished a major work describing a positive Catholic theological position vis a vis Judaism. The book, Traktat Über die Juden, is notable mot only for its positive evaluation of Jews and their faith, but also for its clear and accurate presentation of Judaism.
After the day in Regensburg the trip was over. Those of us who stayed to the end now broke up. I went with four other student members of our group to Munich and then to the Alps. On our way back to Brussels, we stopped at Augsburg to see part of the celebration of the 450th anniversary of the Augsburg confession.
Conclusions and Brief Reflections – Six Months Later
After rereading and rewriting my notes, comments and journal entries, this trip remains one of the important events of my life. During the trip I was able to draw on most of what I had studied at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and at Temple as well as earlier at Yale and Johns Hopkins. I came to appreciate the value of dialogue as well as its limitation. I was encouraged to learn that established scholars considered what I had to contribute to be valuable. I learnt how to difficult it is to listen when I had to double my efforts to understand German conversations. I fell that I established ties with the colleagues we met in Germany that I hope to maintain in some way in the future. Most of all I feel that the sense of purpose and loyalty to our own faiths, to interreligious harmony and to each other that this small group of Americans brought to Germany was strengthened and brought back to America where we can continue our work.
Note – April 2, 2018
This is a transcription of the piece Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, editor of The Reconstructionist the journal published by the Reconstructionist Movement and Founder and President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, asked me to prepare to record and report on this highly unusual journey. He published an edited version of this paper as “Interreligious Dialogue in Germany, Summer 1980,” in the April 1981 and May 1981 issues of The Reconstructionist. I made very few changes in the text beyond some grammatical and spelling corrections. This version preserves my literary voice as it was almost forty years ago. Reading it over after the passage of so many years brought me back to a pivotal time in my life. I have always been in debt to Prof. Leonard Swidler from providing me and my colleagues with such a deep and meaningful experience. Although I returned to Germany with Prof. Swidler a few more times in the 1980’s and from time to time have had the opportunity to work with him in the area of inter-religious dialogue throughout my career, these six weeks played a central role in my development as a rabbi, a scholar and as a human being. I developed deep and lasting relationships with my professors and my fellow students which I cherish to today.
Rabbi Lewis John Eron, Ph.D.
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