Good Friday is upon us and the prayer that has caused so much Jewish-Catholic strife in the past year is to be spoken in churches across the world. But the large amount of attention paid to the Catholic supplication for Jewish piety evokes another question: Do Jewish prayers ask the same thing? Some scholars say it is important to remember that all Abrahamic faiths have texts that proclaim their veracity above all other religions, before chastising Catholics for reinstating such a prayer. But others say that such a perspective does not reflect historical truths, and a comparison is unjust.
Every day, Orthodox Jews across the world give thanks that God did not make the Jews like others, who “bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god which helps not.”
This Hebrew text, though not originally intended to refer to Christians, was omitted in prayer books after Christians protested in the Middle Ages, but was restored at the behest of Orthodox rabbis in the 19th century.
Last year, Pope Benedict XVI sparked the current controversy by permitting traditionalist Catholics to return to an older version of the Good Friday litany that prays in Latin that God will “remove the veil from (Jewish) hearts; that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This text was removed by order of Pope Paul VI in 1970 to express camaraderie with the Jews, in line with the changes of the Second Vatican Council.
Jacob Neusner, professor of Judaism at Bard College and one of the most published scholars in the world, says that no one should be offended by the return to theold ways. “It’s common for religious groups to pray for conversion of the non-believers,” he says.
“There are Jewish prayers that pray that all humanity will recognize the unity of God (in the end) … so if the Catholics are praying for the conversion of Jews at the end of days, this is quid pro quo.”
Neusner views such passages neutrally, but when members of the Jewish community took offense to the pope’s reinstating the litany passages, some Catholics responded with equal offense at Jewish passages.
“Maybe this is an opening to say, ‘Would you care to look at some of the Talmudic literature’s description of Jesus as a bastard, and so on, and maybe make a few changes in some of that?’ ” asked Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, in an October interview with the National Catholic Reporter.
In February, after Pope Benedict revised the 1962 litany to remove the passage about the veil, but still ask for their conversion, Cardinal William Keeler, moderator of Catholic-Jewish relations for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, apologized for George’s remarks.
“Cardinal George respects the fact that there can be no comparison between passages in the Talmud … which do not now play any significant role in Jewish life or worship, with some texts from the rites of 1962 which were reformed … to express positively our understanding of God's chosen people,” he wrote in a letter to the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish watchdog organization.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says that the views of Neusner and the verbal faux pas of George reflect an ignorance of history. Even if there are passages in Jewish prayers that are semantically similar, they are completely different when put into historical context, he says.
“In Judaism, for the 2,000 years we have prayed this prayer, it is not accompanied by inquisitions, conversions and expulsion,” he says. “Christianity, unfortunately, when it talked about conversion, it tried to convert Jews under the threat of death.” He adds that to bring back those prayers has the baggage of oppression, and the possibility of the prejudice returning as well.
Despite the controversy over who prays what and whether it is demeaning or not, both Neusner and Foxman believe that there is no permanent damage to Catholic-Jewish relations. Neusner says that in a year, everyone will forget about it, and Foxman adds that above all else, there is a valuable lesson to be learned.
“It will always be a reminder that dialogue and respect needs attention and work,” Foxman says. “You can’t take these things for granted. You need to work for respect, reconciliation, and dialogue.”
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