Rabbi hits at

/Jewish view on
Council text
Catholic Herald Reporter A N American rabbi who is a leading expert on Christiana• Jewish relations has strongly criticised the negative attitude of extreme orthodox Jewry to the "Jewish Chapter" before the
He is Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, 38-year-old national director of the Department of Inter-religious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, who was interviewed on his return from the Sister Formation Conference at Marquette University, Milwaukee, by the New York correspondent of the Jewish Chronicle.
This was his second year as a member of the international faculty of the conference, which serves the spiritual and intellectual needs of 170,000 American teaching nuns.
REVOLUTION Referring to the widespread movement among Christians towards eliminating anti-semitism in texts and liturgy, including the deicide charge, he said that even if the Chapter is not approved in Rome. the revolution has now begun and it would take a counterrevolution to stop it".
He criticised the 'shooting-fromthe-hip syndrome syndrome of many of my colleagues, rabbis and other Jewish leaders. Emotional, impulsive. uninformed statements are being made in the public press which are not grounded in any understanding of developments in the matter of the Jewish Chapter.
"IGNORANCE"
Rabbi -Tanenbaum declared that these leaders "apparently fear their Capacity to inspire Jews to retain their identity and commitment to Judaism without the external srutch of anti-semitism".
He attacked the press criticism of the American Jewish Committee in this field as based on "complete ignorance of what is being done". He said: "We know for a fact that these statements of the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox) and the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform) were used by snti-semitic elements in the Vati:an and by the Arab States."
They were used "to prove that religious Jews were hostile to Christians, that they are not interested in the Jewish Chapter and that therefore Cardinal Bea and those who share his viewpoint are unnecessarily getting the Catholic Church into trouble".
Rabbi Tanenbaum said the Jewish Chapter in the Schema on Ecumenism would be the climax of a series of efforts involving many Christians of goodwill in many parts of the world going back at least to the end of the Second World War.