Beach, Bert B.

Goldstein, Clifford R,

English

Andrews University

10  SHABBAT SHALOM / Autumn 2001Dr. Bert Beach SInterviewDr. Bert Beach is currently the di-rector of Public Affairs for the GeneralConference of Seventh- day Adventistsand the general secretary of the Seventh-day Adventist Council on InterchurchRelations. He is also the secretary of theConference of Secretaries of ChristianWorld Communions and the secretary-general of the International ReligiousLiberty Association. As a regular pan-elist on the weekly telecast of AmericanReligious Town Hall, Dr. Beach is in-tensely involved in the disciplines of in-terchurch dialogue.He is the author of several books in-cluding Vatican II—Bridging theAbyss (1968), Ecumenism—Boon orBane? (1974), and more recently, Ro-tating the World With Rotary(1991).Dr. Beach has been the recipient ofseveral honorary awards, such as a spe-cial resolution of the Senate of the Stateof Maryland (November 1984) for hiscontribution to religious liberty; a PaulHarris Fellow of Rotary International;and a Th.D. honoris causa from theChristian Theological Academy, War-saw, Poland.habbat Sha-lom*: The historyof the relationshipbetween the Christian churchand Israel is a very painful one.Can you please give us the rea-son for this failure?Beach: Yes, indeed, the rela-tionship has been a painful one.A lot of the fault certainly restson the shoulders of the Chris-tians, without saying that theJews are perfect and have nevermade a mistake in interrelations.The Christians have called theJews “Christ-killers” or usedsome other similar term. Histori-cally Christians have not infre-quently tried to make the Jewsliving in the contemporary pe-riod, in other words Jews of to-day, responsible for what someRomans and some Jews did2,000 years ago. That has coloredrelationships.Shabbat Shalom:  In thewake of Vatican Council II, doyou see any changes takingplace in the Christian churchin general, and in your churchin particular?Beach: Well, certainly VaticanII did mark a watershed as far asRoman Catholic-Jewish relationsare concerned. In fact, the Sec-ond Vatican Council made a dec-laration regarding the Jews whichindicated that there should bemore fraternal relations betweenthe Roman Catholic Church andthe Jews; and I think the RomanCatholic Church has acknowl-edged some of the mistakes thatit made in the past. At the timeof the Second Vatican Council, Ispoke to one of the specialists inthe Catholic Church regardingrelations with the Jews, and heacknowledged that the CatholicChurch had a certain burden ofhistory to carry in regards to itsanti-Semitism. I will just give oneexample: right near the TiberRiver is located the entrance tothe former Jewish ghetto, andthere is  a Roman CatholicChurch at the entrance. All theJews going through the entranceinto the ghetto would pass rightin front of the Roman CatholicChurch. That Roman CatholicChurch had inscriptions writtenout (I believe they are still theretoday. Some years ago I took pic-tures of them) in Hebrew and ineither Latin or Italian, in whichthey quote from the Old Testa-ment the statement, “I have la-bored hard and long with thisstiff-necked and rebell iouspeople.” The Jews could read theseinscriptions as they passed in frontChallenges and problems of theJewish-Christian dialogue from the pointof view of a professional in religiousdialogue.Autumn 2001 / SHABBAT SHALOM  11and went into the ghetto. Thisshows some of the past attitude.Shabbat Shalom: Is theChristian church interested inhaving a relationship or, if any,a better relationship with Juda-ism?Beach: Oh, I think so. In fact,there are societies that have beenformed—I’m not sure I remem-ber offhand as I’m speaking herewithout any notes regarding theirnames—but there are Jewish-Christian associations that meettogether. The Council of Chris-tians and Jews, for example, isone of the world organizations.So there is definitely an improve-ment in relationships. There arealso efforts made to tone downsome of the language used byChristians. I’m thinking, for ex-ample, of some of the Orthodoxliturgy used at the time of Easterwith some pretty strong languageregarding the Jews. They speakabout the Jews, the perfidiousJews. Talking in such genericterms can, of course, be seen asquite anti-Semitic.Shabbat Shalom: What kindof relationship do you envisionbetween the Christian churchand the Jews—a relationship ofecumenical dialogue where ev-eryone is in agreement, or a re-lationship of imperialisticmonologue where the Christianchurch can bring truth to theJews, or rather a reciprocal re-lationship where Christiansand Jews will learn from eachother and from God?Beach: Well, certainly thethird suggestion is, I think, thebest. Ecumenical dialogue isgood. And, by the way, dialoguedoesn’t mean that participantshave to agree with each other; itjust means that one tries to beopen-minded and willing to bothlisten and speak. I think imperi-alistic monologue is of no use toanyone, be it a political mono-logue, or be it a religious mono-logue. Christian, or any other, re-ligious imperialism is not in har-mony with authentic religion.Shabbat Shalom: Is thereanti-Semitism in the Christianchurch; and if so, what is youradvice on how to deal with thisproblem?Beach: Unfortunately, there isanti-Semitism. Sometimes it ishard to know what one meansexactly by it, because if somebodyis not in favor of the State of Is-rael and the policies of the Stateof Israel in the present time—forexample, in its relationships withthe Middle East or land occu-pancy and all kinds of problemsthat arise in regards to the Pales-tinians and other issues—veryoften that is interpreted by someas anti-Semitism. I don’t thinkthat a person who has an oppos-ing political viewpoint regardingthe State of Israel is ipso facto anti-Semitic. So I think we should becareful how we use the term. Cer-tainly, there is a kind of latentChristian attitude that surfacesfrom time to time. In fact, in myown church, the Seventh-dayAdventist Church, I did a littlepiece of research and prepared aquestionnaire at the time of theSecond Vatican Council to seewhat our own young people werethinking. I presented the ques-tionnaire to the students at sev-eral of our schools. If one tookthe answers from the students atface value, one would have to saythat there was some anti-Semitism. For example, onequestion asked, “Are the Jews re-sponsible for the death ofChrist?” The answer very oftenwas “Yes.” But then when I dis-cussed the questionnaire with thestudents and asked them: “Whatdid you really mean by that? Doyou really mean to say that a Jewliving today is responsible for thedeath of Christ 2,000 years agoany more than we all are, for Hetook upon Himself our sins”—then they would say, “Oh, no, Ididn’t mean that.” So obviouslythe students very often were an-swering without really thinkingthrough what they were saying.And yet, the very fact that theywould answer that way wouldindicate that there was a kind ofa latent anti-Semitism there,somehow, without it being clearlyarticulated or even understood.Shabbat Shalom: What is theimpact of the Holocaust onyour view of Israel and the re-lationship between Christianityand the Jews?Beach: The Holocaust can beDialogue doesn’t mean that participantshave to agree with each other; it just meansthat one tries to be open-minded andwilling to both listen and speak.At the time of the Second VaticanCouncil, one of the specialists in theCatholic Church regarding relations withthe Jews acknowledged that the CatholicChurch had a certain burden of history tocarry in regards to its anti-Semitism.12  SHABBAT SHALOM / Autumn 2001seen as the nadir in human his-tory. No one knows exactly howmany Jews were killed, and thereare a lot of people who are tryingto change the figures; but itmakes no difference to mewhether they can reduce the fig-ures by 100 or 200,000 or evenby one million. The facts are thata tremendous number of Jewswere killed; and if there were evenonly 1,000 Jews, it would still bea terrible thing; and when it’s ob-viously up in the hundreds ofthousands and millions, it is aterrible event. Therefore, I thinkthat society has a certain respon-sibility to ensure that such a trag-edy is never repeated. One caneven ask the question, Are theGermans living today responsiblefor what their ancestors did oneor two generations back? Well,obviously not in any direct sense,though they have a moral andyou might say maybe even a fi-nancial responsibility to repaywhat the state did to which theynow belong. I think the Holo-caust had an important role in re-gards to the establishment of theState of Israel. It makes sense toprovide the Jews with some kindof a home base, a country withwhich they can identify. It fitsinto their history, their desires,their ambitions, but exactly howlarge that state should be andwhere the borders are, I certainlywould not be the expert to knowthe answers to those questions.Shabbat Shalom: What couldthe Christian church learn fromthe Jews?Beach: Well, I think one thingthe Christian church can learn isfaithfulness to inherited prac-tices, traditions, and truths.When you think that the Jewshave been separated from anyhome base and have lived for cen-turies in a diaspora situation,scattered around the face of theearth, and yet still have manyhundreds of thousands of faith-ful Jews keeping the Sabbath,waiting for their Messiah, as theywould understand it, to come, inthat sense, I think we can learnfrom that faithfulness to their tra-ditions and teachings, respect fortheir rabbis, respect for the roleof the mother in the home, re-spect for the beginning of theSabbath hours. I think these arethings we could all learn fromthem.Shabbat Shalom:  Whatcould the Jews learn from thechurch?Beach: Well, of course, fromour perspective, we would thinkthat the Jews would gain to learnabout Jesus Christ, who is theSavior of the world, and there-fore also their Savior.Shabbat Shalom: What arethe common points which yourparticular church shares withJudaism?Beach:  As Seventh-dayAdventists, we would share un-derstanding regarding certain as-pects of the Sabbath. We alsoagree regarding some dietarypractices, though not all. We alsoin the United States support bothseparation of church and stateand freedom of religion. I thinkthese would be the three mainpoints that come to mind imme-diately when one thinks of Sev-enth-day Adventists and Jews.Shabbat Shalom:  Whatshould be the contribution ofShabbat Shalom to that matter?Do you have any pertinent ad-vice on what Shabbat Shalomshould do?Beach: Shabbat Shalom has avery difficult task, and I wouldnot claim to have the answers re-garding how to deal with this. Ithink we should try to balanceJewish cultural and religious in-The Holocaustcan be seen asthe nadir inhuman history.terests in general and respect forJewish practices and Jewish his-tory and culture, while at thesame time exposing Jews andChristians to each other’s truth.How to keep this in balance iswhere the editor has to show hisgifts.Shabbat Shalom: Thank you,Dr. Beach, for your time andyour challenging observations.*This interview was conducted byClifford R. Goldstein.

Dr. Bert Beach

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Dr. Bert Beach

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