Opening comments at 40th Anniversary ILC meeting in Paris, 27 February 2011

(Since some of the lines in these comments yielded press and headlines - and quite a bit of strongly held opinions shared since last week's historic ILC meetings, I am publishing the substantive parts of my remarks)

…. It is a great pleasure and privilege to be with you this evening to inaugurate the 21st Biennial meeting of the International Catholic Jewish Liaison Committee, between the Vatican delegation and the world Jewish community. We are meeting here in Paris, in the very city which hosted our historic inaugural gathering in 1971.

1971 was also a personal milestone, the year of my ordination as a rabbi.

Now, in fairness, to quote a great American President, “the world will little note nor long remember" that occasion in my personal life. But it will never forget the important role of my teacher at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the revered Abraham Joshua Heschel. As his student during a time of great change and upheaval, one could hardly be unaware of his vital role in the formulation of Nostra Aetate, the very document which marked the transformation of the relationship between our two religions – Roman Catholicism and Judaism – after 1900 years.

40 years – in the history of a people, in the histories of two great world religions – is but the blink of an eye. This anniversary allows us to celebrate and be proud of our achievements during these years, but ever humble in believing that we can fully know all of the challenges which still lie before us.

But if 40 years of history is but a moment, 40 years of a relationship is a sign of its maturity. We know well – perhaps too well – our mutual cares and concerns, our respective fears and foibles, that which is symbol and that which is essential, that which disappoints and that which reassures.

Our meetings this week will deal with much if not all of the unfinished business of our 40-year relationship, as well it must. Two different religions never can and never should see eye to eye on all matters, and continuing to fine tune our mutual understandings is what we must always be about. Our discourse this week will give ample evidence to the authenticity of this effort. We invite all, participants and observers alike, to pay close attention not only to our agenda, but also to how we model how to talk with one another.

Yet, after 40 years, that is not enough. The world which fostered our rapprochement is not the world of today, of this century. The agenda which must define our next 40 years must transcend, though never ignore, the parameters of our first 40 years. The focus of the world is no longer Jewish Christian amity. We must, for so many reasons involve the third of our Islamic siblings. We pray that our rapprochement will be a model for a transformed relationship with Islam.

In this Century, our engagement must also include the Eastern Traditions whose very assumptions of the deity and the cosmos differ radically from ours.

We must model forms of Globalism which affirm humanity and sacred values and

We must speak to an interconnected world which does not yet have a reliable ethic nor a common ethos.

It is my hope, then, that this noble and worthy anniversary marks the celebration of mutual trust and engagement, and also marks the expansion our mutual commitment to speak, ever cogently and with careful wisdom, to a world so very much in need.

It is with deep humility that I stand before you as chair of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, the loving partner of our counterparts in the Roman Catholic world, with the hope that our 40 year anniversary will prove to be but a single stride in a journey of many decades and centuries. Thank you all for being with us as we take the next small steps, arm in arm, as we continue our sacred walk through history.