Angelus News | December 20, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 43

The importance of never forgetting
Pope John Paul II greets Rabbi Elio Toaff at Rome’s main synagogue April 13, 1986. The meeting
marked the beginning of a new era in Catholic-Jewish relations. It was the first time a pope had
entered the Rome synagogue.
I
was probably about 10 or 11 years
old when I became friends with
Harry Bernstein. Harry and I met
while playing in a chess tournament in
Westchester.
In the way that kids can, we quickly
became fast friends. We both liked
baseball. Our idol was Sandy Koufax,
legendary pitcher for the LA Dodgers.
I’m not sure I knew then that Koufax
was Jewish. If I had, I might have converted
on the spot.
I did know that Harry was Jewish, and
he knew I was Catholic.
Harry’s family seemed exotic to me,
and the impression they made on me
remains after all these years. I remember
his parents as short and darkhaired,
very different from my parents.
Their Playa del Rey apartment was tidy
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and calm.
His parents seemed bemused that
Harry’s chess and baseball-loving
friend was Catholic. I had dinner over
at their house more than once, and the
meals had different smells and tastes. I
remember his mother taking pleasure
in my newfound passion for kugel.
I lost touch with Harry after my
family moved out of the area, but as I
grew older and learned more about the
often fraught nature of Catholic-Jewish
relations, I felt singularly blessed that I
had known him and his family.
It was years later before I realized
that while I was throwing a baseball
with Harry, Church leaders were
promulgating “Nostra Aetate” (“In Our
Time”), the groundbreaking document
of the Second Vatican Council
BY GREG ERLANDSON
ARTURO MARI/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO VIA CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
that set the Church on a new course
regarding its relations with Jews and
Judaism.
In 2015, on the 50th anniversary
of “Nostra Aetate,” Rabbi Noam E.
Marans recalled that when it was first
released, it was greeted with mixed
reviews by Jewish leaders. Time has
shown, he said, that the document was
in fact “revolutionary, transformative.”
Since Vatican II and the promulgation
of “Nostra Aetate,” Catholic
teaching has taken a decisive turn.
Anti-Semitism has been condemned,
and the accusation that the Jewish
people bear some sort of responsibility
for the death of Christ, a longstanding
shibboleth of the anti-Semite, has been
rejected. Popes Paul VI, John Paul II,
and now Francis have all sought to
heal this historic breach.
Perhaps most powerful was the example
of John Paul II. He was the first
pope to visit Rome’s synagogue. He
established diplomatic relations with
the state of Israel.
And, on the eve of the Third Millennium,
he wrote: “The Church should
become more fully conscious of the
sinfulness of her children, recalling all
those times in history when they departed
from the spirit of Christ and his
Gospel and instead of offering to the
world the witness of a life inspired by
the values of faith, indulged in ways of
thinking and acting which were truly
forms of counter-witness and scandal.”
Yet all of these developments have
taken place within the long shadow of
anti-Semitism in the Christian West,
culminating in the Shoah, or Holocaust.
The Church’s response to the
Nazi campaigns of persecution and
extermination remains both morally
24 • ANGELUS • December 20, 2019