COVER STORY The importance of interfaith dialogue

Victor Goldbloom and Pope John Paul II in 1984

In the late 1950s I had been asked to be part of a dialogue that was initiated by Jesuit fathers who were faculty members at Loyola College, which later merged with Sir George Williams to form Concordia University. It was an intellectually stimulating exercise, calling on all that I had learned about Judaism and obliging me to learn a great deal more. 

After two years or so, I said to my Jewish fellow participants that, good as this dialogue was, it was of limited value because we were not in any such communication with the French-speaking majority community. I took action accordingly and made contact with Léon Lortie, a world-renowned professor of chemistry at the Université de Montréal, whom I had encountered in my student days when he came as a guest lecturer to McGill. He and Judge Harry Batshaw had led a dialogue group for a time, and we were now able to revive it. There was also, within the framework of the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Cercle juif de langue française, a manifestation of the far-sighted intelligence of the executive vice-president, Saul Hayes (and of his successor, Alan Rose), directed by the great writer Naïm Kattan, who had arrived from Iraq a few years before. 

One day shortly after I had become an MNA (member of Quebec’s national assembly), I was invited to a luncheon at the Canadian Jewish Congress office to meet a Benedictine monk from the monastery of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, Dom Jean-Anselme Mathys. Dom Mathys had just returned from his first trip to Israel, and he wanted to share his emotions with members of the Jewish community. He proposed a continuing dialogue, which was readily accepted, and he suggested that it be called Le Cercle de Saint-David. I had to gently point out that there were no saints in Judaism, something he did not know, and so it was named Le Cercle du Roi David. It continued for several years. 

So the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews (CCCJ) seemed an appropriate and opportune career move. I set out to build a genuine, in-depth dialogue program.
The idea of a structured conversation between Christianity and Judaism, between Christians and Jews, was relatively recent – the CCCJ had been founded in 1947 – and the prejudice of prior centuries – the anti-Semitism, to give it its name – still ran deep. People did not set foot in a place of worship of another tradition. But men and women of goodwill had taken a hard look at pre–World War II Canada, had been troubled by the derogatory attitudes and words they found and by the barriers between religions, and had undertaken to do something about them.

Shortly after my arrival, I received a call from David Hyatt, head of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (in the United States.) He offered cross-border cooperation and also invited me to represent Canada in the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ), of which he was president. Twenty-odd countries were ICCJ members (there are now more than 30); Canada had not, until that time, been among them. In 1982 the ICCJ held its conference and annual general meeting in Berlin. David, to everyone’s surprise, announced his retirement as president, and he put my name forward. I served as president of the ICCJ for eight years, until 1990. 

We held an annual conference, in a different country each year, aiming at giving a higher profile to dialogue and fostering mutual respect. In 1986 we met in Spain, in the historic university city of Salamanca. As we planned the conference, we came to the conclusion that we could not be in that country without taking account of its history, which included a period of coexistence between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. For the first time, we invited Muslims to join us. Nine people accepted our invitation. Muslims have participated in most of our conferences ever since.

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Christian-Jewish dialogue has been, and continues to be, a profoundly valuable undertaking. Prejudices and condemnations that have been preached and taught for almost two millennia have been set aside. The recognition that Jesus, his family, and his disciples were practising Jews and that Christianity has religious and liturgical roots in Judaism has stimulated widespread scholarly study. The conclusions of the Second Vatican Council, spelled out in Nostra Aetate, have been reaffirmed by every pope since John XXIII and restated explicitly by successive cardinals responsible for Catholic-Jewish relations: Edward Idris Cassidy, Walter Kasper, and Kurt Koch. One of my personal objectives has been to cause those conclusions drawn in high places to filter down to grassroots clergy and their parishioners. Protestant churches have also been regular participants in dialogue, and they have equally set aside the anti-Semitism of so much of Christian history.

Some churches have, however, been rather negative about the State of Israel, and this position has been a source of tensions.

The vast majority of Jews throughout the world have a deep emotional attachment to Israel. They perceive it as living under constant threats to its very existence, surrounded by hostility and selectively and unfairly criticized by a variety of countries and systematically in the United Nations. They feel pride in its medical, scientific, and technological achievements and in its democratic polity, and they rise to its defence whenever it is attacked.

I am one of its defenders, notably when churches become its detractors. On two occasions the Jewish community has suspended its participation in the Canadian Christian-Jewish Consultation, and I have shared in the making and implementation of those decisions, and in the search for a resolution. I denounce the appellation of “apartheid state” as thoroughly inaccurate, and I bring forward the many positive things that Israelis do in relation to their Palestinian neighbours. 

I am not unquestioning and uncritical, but I retain the idealistic vision of the state that inspired its founders. Criticism of any government, especially a democratic one, is clearly legitimate. It is equally clear, however, that for some people anti-Israel criticism, selective and disproportionate and not matched by criticism of grave situations elsewhere in the world, has become the new anti-Semitism. It does not admit its name, but it is deeply troubling. And it is, sadly, especially conspicuous in the United Nations. 

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Each religion says, ‘Ours is a religion of peace.’ Each religion says, ‘Those who invoke our religion to explain and justify violent extremism are perverting it.’ Each community says, ‘Our community should not be stigmatized and stereotyped because of this minority of extremists.’ 

I have no wish to challenge these statements, to doubt the sincerity and goodwill of those who make them. They contain, however, an implication: We are not responsible for these people. 

Of course we are not, directly. But in a broader sense, we are. 

In the classic musical South Pacific, there is a song titled You’ve Got to Be Taught to Hate. Teaching is at the root of the extremism which is destabilizing the world. 

I must add that there are parts of the world, the Middle East in particular, where there is a significant imbalance: an imbalance of hatred, an imbalance in the teaching of hatred, and an imbalance in the value placed on the life of a human being.

Anger is an emotion which almost everyone feels from time to time. We hear it on open-line programs, we read it in letters to the editor, we encounter it in public and private meetings, in schools and in family relations. We feel it if we or our family or our community or our religion are made the object of hate or of ridicule. But only extremists perceive in such offences a justification for terminating the life of any human being. 

Indeed, most jurisdictions in the developed world have dispensed with the death penalty, even for murder. 

We cannot be passive in the face of extremism. It is not enough to say, “These people do not represent us, and their life-taking in the name of our religion is a perversion of its teachings.” We must recognize that “You’ve Got to Be Taught to Hate.” And we must take responsibility for teaching differently. 

That responsibility extends to every human being, and we must teach the respect and the safeguard of the life of every human being – of both genders. I was born in an era when women’s roles were preponderantly domestic. It was almost universally thought that women did not need advanced education, and that if they received it, they would be intellectually and emotionally incapable of applying it as wisely and as effectively as men. Today, the women with whom I work are every bit as capable as men in analyzing and directing the affairs of society. 

There are, however, parts of the world where tradition, and yes, religion, are invoked to maintain ancient discriminations. In the name of, and for the benefit of, humanity, that needs to change. Misogyny is a crime against humanity. 

Extremists are not open to dialogue; it is illusory to imagine that they could be persuaded to reasonable conversation. It is too late. Education for dialogue, for harmonious and mutually respectful coexistence, for peace, must begin early, ideally even at the preschool level. If a disease cannot be cured, we must focus on preventive medicine, on immunization.

Excerpted from Building Bridges by Victor C. Goldboom (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).