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Consultative Document on Israel

 Committee on Episcopal-Jewish Relations

The Episcopal Diocese of New York

 

Israel is young, and I have loved him…” (Hosea 11:1)

God’s commitment to God’s people endures forever.

The deepest of arguments divides Christianity and Judaism when they define who God’s people are. Divisive definitions reach within both religions, so that the issue of Israel has proven to be controversial for much of our common history.

The purpose of dialogue is not to obscure these differences, but to articulate them. Inter-faith discussion proceeds in the confidence that God, in God’s time, determines the Israel that finally matters.

Until then, the commitment to articulate our differences and our common ground expresses who we are and where we can relate to those of other faiths. Theology can instruct us in how to learn from diversity even as we affirm our core beliefs, and to defuse opportunities for violence that beset religious difference.

In the context of our theological work, the State of Israel permits us in differing ways to clarify the relationship between God’s choice of Israel and historical communities that claim succession to the promise of Israel . Use of the name by itself does not make a community into God’s Israel . But when the United Nations recognized the State of Israel, they did so to establish a national homeland for the Jewish people. That determination to contradict the genocidal policy of the Third Reich remains a moral imperative. Israel is humanity’s vessel of salvation; the State of Israel is a ship of rescue for Jews in peril.  

The State of Israel answers to the peoples of the world as other nations do. Its agreement to a national homeland for the Palestinian people contiguous with the State of Israel represents a hopeful development. During the negotiations and struggles to achieve lasting peace, this committee wishes to affirm the right of the State of Israel to exist and to prosper with all its neighbors in the international community. Church-sponsored programs to disinvest from Israel impede efforts towards a peaceful settlement by undermining the perceived legitimacy of a sovereign. Worse, they give the appearance of supporting Christian antipathy towards the Jewish people. The adoption of such a policy would reverse hard-won gains by a generation of inter-faith scholarship and dialogue.

 

The Rev. Dr Bruce Chilton, chair

Rector and Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion

The Church of St John the Evangelist and Bard College

 

Bob Cohen

Cantor, Temple Emanuel in Kingston

Chair , Ulster County Religious Council

 

The Rev. Curt Hart

Director of Pastoral Care & Education

New York Presbyterian Hospital

 

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton

Rector, St Paul ’s-on-the-Hill

 

Patricia McKay

Psychoanalyst, Manhattan

Member, The Church of St John the Evangelist

 

Rabbi Jacob Neusner

Research Professor of Theology and Senior Fellow

The Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College