Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

QUARTERLY REVIEW, WINTER 1984
theological stance in Islamic religious circles. Israel's national ethos
remains strongly conditioned by the trauma of the Holocaust and the
memory of persecution in Arab lands and in the USSR. As a survivor
of Auschwitz once told me on a late-night walk on his kibbutz in
northern Galilee, "You must understand that this land is our
resurrection." Too few Christians, especially many of those prepared
to criticize Israeli governmental policy, appreciate or affirm this
continuing sense of vulnerability. All such criticism from Christians
that fails to display a deep sensitivity for this understandable sense of
Jewish vulnerability deserves to fall on hard ground.
And the Holocaust too cannot be forgotten in any discussion of
Israel. The moral stain remains deeply embedded in the Christian
soul. While proper response to Christian failure during the Nazi
period should not be excessive guilt but continued support of the
people Israel today in both their religious and political dimensions,
the Holocaust must remain central to Christian memory. And while
the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 should never be viewed
as a recompense for the Holocaust from the West, the deep, abiding
connection between the two events needs to be understood by
Christians.
Once Christians have grasped this Jewish sense of vulnerability
then they properly may raise questions about changing aspects of
Israeli life and policy. For one, Christians will need to understand
better the gradual emergence of Oriental Jewry, largely people who
fled to Israel from Arab countries. They are acquiring a new social and
political prominence that in all likelihood will profoundly affect the
overall ethos of the country and in time have important consequences
for the Christian-Jewish dialogue. Some have seen the Oriental Jewish
community as archconservative in terms of a political accommodation
with the Palestinians. But some Oriental Jewish leaders such as
former Israeli president Yitzhak Navon have cautioned about any
easy assumptions in this regard. Over and above politics there is the
whole range of Oriental Jewish religious thought and liturgy which
has hardly penetrated Christian consciousness in the dialogue. The
ascendency of Oriental Jewry may be the catalyst for freeing the
Christian-Jewish dialogue from its almost exclusively Western context
up till now.
The issue of Israeli treatment of Arabs, both in Israel proper where
many have spoken of a growing marginalization of Israel's Arab
citizens and in the administered areas, will grow as an issue in
Christian-Jewish relations. Certain Christian groups have tended to
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