The major Jewish festivals in September provide an opportunity to take stock of the renewal of relations between Israel and the Church.
Our “elder brothers”, as Saint John Paul II greeted them in 1986 during his historic visit to the Great Synagogue in Rome, are entering a cycle of great feasts these days: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. These names are a bit of a mystery. What is being celebrated is not foreign to us, however, and invites us to explore what Jacques Maritain calls “the mystery of Israel”, whose Christian perception has deepened in the past century.
The meaning of the holidays
There can be no question here of fully explaining all that these festivals mean. If it behooves us to be curious about it, as “grafted” on Israel (according to Saint Paul in Romans 11:17), we must leave to the Jews themselves not only the care, but also the freedom to do so. , since it belongs to them. Likewise, it is better to leave the apostle, and the whole Church in his wake, rather than specialists in “human sciences”, to expose and unfold the mystery of Christ. As Saint Paul said just after to the baptized pagan in Rome, “it is not you who bears the root, it is the root which bears you” (Rm 11, 18).
It will suffice here to recall that Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, that Sukkot is a harvest festival that has become a commemoration of the exit from Egypt, and that between two Yom Kippur, it is the Day of Atonement. . This last name is quite suggestive: it is to commemorate the mercy of the Almighty after the people worshiped the golden calf while Moses received the Law at Sinai. Sukkot recalls the wandering of the Hebrews in the desert under divine protection. Rosh Hashanah, on the other hand, has no precise origin in the Bible and has prevailed in the rabbinical tradition after Christ.
The roots and the source
This New Year’s party is all the more interesting. Because it reveals that Judaism did not stand still 2000 years ago. The image that is thus refined and renewed is no longer that of the roots, buried underground, invisible and too easily forgotten, but of the source which has not dried up and remains alive, since God remains faithful to his promises, as Paul (as Jewish as Christian, see Phil 3, 5-6) repeats it to the Romans (9, 4 and 6; 11, 1 and 29).
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Rosh Hashanah marks both the anniversary of the creation of the world and the announcement of the Last Judgment. It is an invitation to the examination of conscience, to reconciliation, to fasting, to abstinences, to the reading of the Law and of psalms, to the offices in the synagogue, to family meals with all kinds of rites and dishes. which have a memorial and symbolic value. Ten days of penance follow, until Kippur, where the expiation of faults, meditation on the human condition and on divine goodness lead to a joy which is expressed five days later on the occasion of Sukkot, where graces are returned for the benefits received in the year.
The Rediscovery of the First Testament
The interest of Christians in Jewish piety and spirituality in order to better receive and understand their own faith is undoubtedly an advance of the XXe century. It was nourished among Catholics by the rediscovery of the First Testament, which could not be left to an academic critic unable to see in it the living Word of God and finding only the dead letter of ancient documents of authenticity. doubtful. This reappropriation of the Scriptures inspired the revivals of theology (going back to the Fathers of the Church, whose works are often commentaries on the Bible) and of the liturgy.
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It is remarkable that this resourcing is not limited to the religion of Israel before Christ, but takes into account the experience of contemporary Jewish communities. In its most inhuman version – the Holocaust of the Nazis – anti-Semitism is decidedly incompatible with Christianity. Lubac’s father wrote it down and circulated it illegally during World War II. In his lectures at the Institut catholique de Paris in 1950, where he encouraged Catholics to immerse themselves in the Bible to revitalize their faith, Father Bouyer did not hesitate to maintain that Christians always need Jews to receive the heritage of which they remain the bearers.
Meaningful words and deeds
All this leads to the statement In our age of Vatican II in 1965, which “recommends mutual knowledge and esteem”, as well as the words and deeds of Saint John Paul II, including “repentance” for the persecutions inflicted on the Jews by Christians over the centuries . We must add the decision taken by Saint Paul VI in 1974 to link relations with Judaism to the Secretariat for Unity, and therefore to ecumenism, and not to interreligious dialogue as with Muslims or Buddhists.
In 2015, a theological commission of the Vatican even recognizes that the Jews keep “a part in salvation” even if they do not see in Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah …
In 2015, a theological commission of the Vatican even recognized that the Jews keep “a part in salvation” even if they do not see Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah, and that Christians, if they must testify before them of their faith, must do so “with humility” and without systematically seeking to convert them. The idea is that at the end of time the people of God will be “Israel and the Church”, when the latter has somehow filled up with baptized pagans, in accordance with Saint Paul’s vision (Rm 11, 25).
Reciprocal openings
It is important to stress that the rapprochement efforts are not unilateral. The Jews opened up to it. Jules Isaac is an exemplary figure. Famous author (with Albert Malet) of history textbooks, he narrowly escaped the Shoah and understood that anti-Semitism was facilitated by the contempt of Christians for the Jews (although the Magisterium had always disapproved of the opinion that the ‘Church would have taken the place of Israel who would have made themselves unworthy by rejecting and even killing the Messiah). He goes to see Pius XII then Saint John XXIII and is listened to. Jewish but not observant, he studied the Gospels and did not feel out of place. His request for recognition joins the discovery by Christians of living Judaism. He participated, with Chief Rabbi Jacob Kaplan, hero of the resistance, in the creation of the Judeo-Christian Friendship of France in 1948.
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More broadly, our “elder brothers” now seem to be faced with a double challenge: on the one hand, to preserve, with their religious culture, their distinct and singular identity; on the other hand, respond to their vocation as a people witness to the Lord’s plan, by contributing to the common good of humanity, by dialoguing and cooperating with other beliefs and institutions. Today, when anti-Semitism is more explicitly condemned (although it has unfortunately not disappeared), Jews no longer have to take refuge in ghettos where they are no longer relegated.
There is still a long way to go
But we must be aware that we are asking the Jews a thorny question symmetrical to that raised by the intuition that their religion is, in a deep sense, no other than ours: are Christians goyim (“Gentiles”, pagans) ordinary, or do they participate in the Covenant since they claim to submit to the Law of Moses? And do baptized Jews remain children of Israel? This is the provocation that has resurfaced by Cardinal Lustiger. There is still a long way to go, thank God. History is not over.
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