Oświadczenie rabinów na temat relacji z chrześcijaństwem Dokument o potencjalnie historycznym znaczeniu!

opr. Paweł Jędrzejewski

Ortodoksyjni rabini z Izraela, Stanów Zjednoczonych i kilku państw europejskich opublikowali 3 grudnia 2015 roku Oświadczenie (“Wypełniać Wolę Naszego Ojca w Niebie: W stronę partnerstwa pomiędzy Żydami i chrześcijanami” -“To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward a Partnership between Jews and Christians” ), w którym głoszą, że chrześcijaństwo jest „darem dla narodów” oraz wzywają Żydów i chrześcijan: „Dążymy do realizowania woli Naszego Ojca w Niebiosach poprzez podjęcie ręki wyciągniętej do nas przez naszych chrześcijańskich braci i siostry. Żydzi i chrześcijanie muszą pracować razem jako partnerzy, aby podjąć wyzwania moralne naszej epoki”.

„Teraz, kiedy Kościół Katolicki uznał wieczne przymierze między Bogiem, a Izraelem, my, Żydzi, możemy potwierdzić konstruktywną trwałość chrześcijaństwa, jako naszego partnera w odkupieniu świata, bez obaw, że zostanie to wykorzystane w celach misyjnych” – stwierdzają rabini.

Rabini piszą także:

“Uznajemy, że od Soboru Watykańskiego II oficjalne nauczanie Kościoła na temat judaizmu zmieniło się całkowicie i nieodwołalnie. Ogłoszenie Nostra Aetate pięćdziesiąt lat temu rozpoczęło proces pojednania między naszymi społecznościami. Nostra Aetate, a później oficjalne dokumenty kościelne, które ta deklaracja zainspirowała, jednoznacznie odrzucają wszelkie formy antysemityzmu, potwierdzają wieczne Przymierze pomiędzy Bogiem i narodem żydowskim, odrzucają oskarżenie o bogobójstwo i podkreślają wyjątkową relację między chrześcijanami i Żydami, którzy nazywani byli “naszymi starszymi braćmi” przez papieża Jana Pawła II i “naszymi ojcami w wierze” przez papieża Benedykta XVI. Na tej podstawie, katolicy i inni reprezentanci chrześcijaństwa podjęli uczciwy dialog z Żydami, który narastał w ostatnich pięćdziesięciu latach. Doceniamy potwierdzenie przez Kościół wyjątkowego miejsca Izraela w historii świętej i ostatecznego odkupienia świata. Dziś Żydzi doświadczyli szczerej miłości i szacunku wielu chrześcijan, które zostały wyrażone w licznych inicjatywach dialogu, spotkań i konferencji na całym świecie.”

„Tak jak uczynili to Majmonides i Jehuda Halevi, uznajemy, że chrześcijaństwo nie jest ani przypadkiem, ani błędem, ale rezultatem Bożej woli i darem dla narodów. Oddzielając judaizm i chrześcijaństwo, Bóg zechciał rozdzielenia między partnerami z istotnymi różnicami teologicznymi, a nie separacji między wrogami. Rabin Jakub Emden napisał, że “Jezus przyniósł podwójne dobro dla świata. Z jednej strony, wspaniale wzmocnił Torę Mojżesza … i żaden z naszych Mędrców nie wypowiadał się bardziej zdecydowanie w sprawie niezmienności Tory. Z drugiej strony, usunął idole z narodów i zobowiązał te narody w Siedmiu Przykazaniach Noego, że nie będą zachowywać się jak zwierzęta polne i zaszczepił w nie mocno przymioty moralne (…)”.

I dalej:

„Rabin Samson Raphael Hirsch nauczył nas, że chrześcijanie “przyjęli żydowską Biblię w postaci Starego Testamentu jako Księgę Objawienia Bożego. Wyznają oni swoją wiarę w Boga Nieba i Ziemi, jak ogłoszona jest w Biblii i uznają zwierzchność Bożej Opatrzności. “(…) Jak stwierdził Naczelny Rabinat Izraela w Dwustronnej Komisji ze Stolicą Apostolską, pod kierunkiem rabina Shear Yashuv Cohena: “nie jesteśmy już wrogami, ale decydowanie jednoznacznymi partnerami w wyrażaniu wartości moralnych niezbędnych dla przetrwania i dobrobytu ludzkości”. Żadne z nas może samotnie wypełnić w tym świecie misji [wyznaczonej przez] Boga.”

“W przeszłości stosunki między chrześcijanami a Żydami były często postrzegane przez opozycyjną relację pomiędzy Ezawem i Jakubem, ale już rabin Naftali Cwi Berliner (Netziv) rozumiał pod koniec XIX wieku, że Żydzi i chrześcijanie są przeznaczeni przez Boga, aby być kochającymi się nawzajem partnerami: “W przyszłości, gdy dzieci Ezawa będą pobudzone przez czystość ducha do uznania ludu Izraela i jego zalet, wówczas my także zostaniemy pobudzeni do uznania, że Ezaw jest naszym bratem.”

„My – Żydzi i chrześcijanie – mamy więcej tego, co wspólne, niż tego, co nas dzieli: etyczny monoteizm Abrahama; relację z Jedynym Stwórcą Nieba i Ziemi, która kocha i troszczy się o nas wszystkich; żydowskie Pismo Święte; wiarę w wiążącą tradycję; wartości życia, rodziny, współczucia i prawości, sprawiedliwości, niezbywalnej wolności, miłości powszechnej i ostatecznego pokoju na świecie.(…) Nasze partnerstwo w żaden sposób nie ogranicza bieżących różnic między dwiema społecznościami i dwiema religiami. Wierzymy, że Bóg zatrudnia wielu posłańców, aby objawić Swoją prawdę, gdy jednocześnie potwierdzamy podstawowe obowiązki etyczne, jakie wszyscy ludzie mają przed Bogiem, których judaizm zawsze nauczał poprzez uniwersalne przymierze Noego.

Naśladując Boga, Żydzi i chrześcijanie muszą zaproponować modele służby, bezwarunkowej miłości i świętości. Wszyscy jesteśmy stworzeni według Świętej Istoty Boga, a Żydzi i chrześcijanie pozostaną oddani Przymierzu poprzez wspólne odgrywanie aktywnej w odkupieniu świata.”

Dotychczas Oświadczenie podpisali następujący rabini:

Jehoshua Ahrens (Niemcy)
Marc Angel (USA)
Isak Asiel (Główny Rabin Serbii)
David Bigman (Izrael)
David Bollag (Szwajcaria)
David Brodman (Izrael)
Natan Lopez Cardozo (Izrael)
Yehudah Gilad (Izrael)
Alon Goshen-Gottstein (Izrael)
Irving Greenberg (USA)
Marc Raphael Guedj (Szwajcaria)
Eugene Korn (Izrael)
Daniel Landes (Izrael)
Steven Langnas (Niemcy)
Benjamin Lau (Izrael)
Simon Livson (Główny Rabin Finlandii)
Asher Lopatin (USA)
Shlomo Riskin (Izrael)
David Rosen (Izrael)
Naftali Rothenberg (Izrael)
Hanan Schlesinger (Izrael)
Daniel Sperber (Izrael)
Jeremiah Wohlberg (USA)
Alan Yuter (Izrael)
Herzl Hefter (Izrael)
David Jaffe (USA)
David Kalb (USA)
Shaya Kilimnick (USA)
Yehoshua Looks (Izrael)
Ariel Mayse (USA)
David Rose (UK)
Zvi Solomons (UK)
Yair Silverman (Izrael)
Daniel Raphael Silverstein (USA)
Lawrence Zierler (USA)

Pełny tekst Oświadczenia: http://cjcuc.com/site/2015/12/03/orthodox-rabbinic-statement-on-christianity/

The Great Maharsha Synagogue in Ostroh: Memory and Oblivion. Have we reached the point of no return?

Dr. Sergey R. Kravtsov

Ruined Maharsha Synagogue in Ostroh, Ukraine, 2011. Photo © Sergey Kravtsov

The nine-bay layout, which symbolized the Twelve Tribes of Israel surrounding the Sanctuary, was a seminal architectural design for synagogues that emerged in eastern and then western Europe in the 17th century. As Sergey R. Kravtsov, of the Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University, writes, it was applied to the Ashkenazi and Portuguese synagogues in Amsterdam – both of which today are wellknown and well preserved monuments, in the 1670s. Decades earlier, however, it formed the structure of the Great Maharsha Synagogue in Ostroh (Ostrog), now in Ukraine – a once glorious building whose fate has been quite different. In this article, Kravtsov describes the history of the Ostroh synagogue – and wonders about its future.

The Great Maharsha Synagogue in Ostroh: Memory and Oblivion. Have we reached the point of no return?

Sergey R. Kravtsov

The Jewish community of Ostroh, dating back to the fifteenth century, was one of the oldest and most affluent communities in Volhynia, then a province of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and presently part of Ukraine. The community was home to outstanding rabbis and scholars, among them Shmuel Eliezer Ha-Levi Edels – Maharsha – who lived from1555 to1631. Its tragedy during Khmelnytsky’s uprising in the mid-17th century was described in Abyss of Despair by Natan Hanover, whose own father perished in Ostroh. This Jewish chronicle, a first-hand account of the devastation wrought by Khmelnytsky, describes the desecration of the Great Synagogue and its conversion into a stall. Centuries later, the building was damaged during the Holocaust and then used as a pharmacological warehouse under the Soviets.

Today it is a vulnerable ruin – but it also, nonetheless, remains a powerful place of Jewish history and memory, heritage and lore.

Indeed, like many other old synagogues, the Great Synagogue has its legends.

One recounts that Maharsha himself laid its cornerstone, and thus it bears his name. Another story says that the synagogue existed before Maharsha, and that he only added the women’s section. Yet another narrative, recorded by the ethnographical expedition of S. An-sky in 1913, holds that the synagogue was – already then ‒ 800 years old. A story reflected in a special scroll, the Megilat Tammuz of 1793, celebrates a miracle: that the synagogue was hit by Russian cannonballs with the whole congregation assembled inside, but the shots did not explode….

In fact, the synagogue was built after 1627, when an owner of the town issued a privilege prohibiting the erection of synagogues taller than churches, conducting Jewish burials during daytime, distilling spirits on Sundays, and selling beverages before the end of the Holiday mass.

Maharsha synagogue, Ostroh, pre-World War II. Photo: Yad Vashem

The synagogue design was novel: the spacious prayer hall had four interior columns and twelve perimeter pilasters, which support nine equal vaulted bays. Another, slightly earlier, synagogue of this type was the Great Suburban Synagogue in L’viv, built in 1624–32 and ruined during Holocaust. This synagogue shared some almost identical design forms with the Maharsha synagogue, namely the ground plan, the octagonal column shafts, and capitals so like each other that they eliminate any possibility of accidental similarity. This suggests that the same architect designed both synagogues, and this apparently was Giacomo Medleni (d. 1630), a L’viv guild master who subsequently also worked in Volhynia. The inverse (Doric over Corinthian) placement of the architectural order, the nine-bay scheme of the ground plan, and an addition of the slanting buttresses in the Ostroh synagogue suggest that the architect employed an imagery published in 1604 by the Jesuit theologian Juan Bautista Villalpando, which presented the Temple envisioned by prophet Ezekiel as a nine-bay compound adorned with a specific order featuring Doric elements over the Corinthianesque ones and retained by slanting buttresses.

The nine-bay layout, which symbolized the Twelve Tribes of Israel surrounding the Sanctuary, stipulated three large windows on each of four sides of the synagogue. In the eyes of believers, this concept was probably reinforced by the Kabalistic idea of the “upper synagogue” featuring twelve windows, a divine prototype existing in Heaven (Zohar II:251a). The synagogues of L’viv and Ostroh coined the scheme of twelve windows illuminating the prayer hall that would become a design found frequently in the Commonwealth.

This seminal design emerged in 1620s, years of messianic fervor preceding the catastrophic 1648 – the year of the Khmelnytsky uprising. In synagogues of western Europe, a similar design concept based on Villalpando’s imagery of the Temple was adopted only in 1670s. This was applied to the Great Ashkenazi and Portuguese synagogues of Amsterdam, both built in the early 1670s.

Each of these three synagogues, in Ostroh and in Amsterdam, has a spectacular historical record, an authentic built fabric, and elaborate and meaningful design, and each of them would serve as a pattern for synagogue architecture in coming centuries. All three are listed as a national heritage sites. They differ greatly, however, in their present condition and preservation perspectives.

In Amsterdam, both the Great Ashkenazi synagogue and the Portuguese synagogue remain famous and well preserved monuments of Jewish sacred architecture. Both major tourist attractions, they form part of the city’s well publicized “Jewish Cultural Quarter,” with the Ashkenazi synagogue one of four synagogues that house the Jewish Historical Museum there. The Portuguese Synagogue, or Esnoga, is still used for religious services but also serves as a venue for public cultural events and houses the important Ets Haim Jewish library.

In Ostroh it is quite a different story, thanks to different geography, different history, different economic possibilities, and different local attitudes to the heritage of the past.

Synagogue in Ostroh, 2011. Photo: Sergey Kravtsov © Center for Jewish Art

In recent decades, the pharmaceutical facility was removed from the Maharsha Synagogue, and its roof collapsed and also disappeared. The building is deteriorating rapidly, no longer protected from harsh winter weather. Descendants of Ostroh Jews who now reside in Israel came to an agreement with the regional authorities some years back to convert the ruined building into a museum, and the plan for its reconstruction was prepared. The Ukrainian side had even assembled timber for a new roof. The financial crisis of 2008, however, paralyzed all further efforts, and by now even the construction material that had been assembled has vanished.

What we have now is a synagogue, the Great Maharsha Synagogue, that – like those in Amsterdam ‒ fulfills all the criteria of being an internationally recognized built heritage asset. But it faces a far different fate. Though a concerted conservation effort is urgently needed, I’m afraid the reaction to the synagogue’s continuing decay does not go beyond airing increasingly dramatic photos by numerous visitors: we can watch its deterioration online.

Who knows? Maybe the European Union can somehow be called in to protect this monument, whose legends are so vivid and whose history is both so rich and so tragic! And maybe the descendants of Ostroh Jews can reassume their activity, working together with Ukrainian public bodies, authorities, and professionals. What can we do to get something done, to motivate action?

We’re not yet at the point of no return on this building, I just hope we don’t reach it before it’s too late.

Dr. Sergey R. Kravtsov is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Jewish Art, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous articles and books about synagogue history and architecture.

Scandal in Ramallah: Australian Delegation Asks Why PA Names Streets After Murderers”

JNi.Media

Bronwyn Bishop (L) quizzing the Palestinian Education Minister (R).
Photo Credit: Tweeter

A minister in the Palestinian Authority says an Australian-led delegation that included Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Christopher Pyne, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Bronwyn Bishop, Labor MP Tim Watts and Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson came to Ramallah last Sunday bearing “false information” about the PA, and its members were “not well-educated,” several Australian media outlets reported this week. The delegation also included British MPs, apparently as “uneducated” as the rest of them.

Wilson tweeted that the group “quizzed” Palestinian Education Minister Dr. Sabri Saidam about a range of topics. “A curious meeting with the Palestinian Education Minister this morning, after meeting with their Prime Minister …” Wilson twitted, adding a picture of “Bronwyn Bishop quizzing the Palestinian Education Minister in a delegation led by Pyne.”

Saidam for his part said the meeting was “very explosive and very challenging” and said the group had asked “rude and blunt” questions. You go, Aussies…

Dr Saidam said the group repeatedly asked questions about Palestinians naming schools and venues after people who had killed Israeli civilians, to which he responded that “one man’s hero is another man’s terrorist.”

The honors to these “one man’s heroes” include, most recently, terrorist Muhannad Halabi who stabbed and murdered 2 Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Bennett, and injured Bennett’s wife, Adele, and their 2-year-old son in the Old City of Jerusalem on Oct. 3, 2015. That hero has a street named after him in his home town of Surda-Abu Qash. And Dr Saidam’s own ministry of education has dozens of schools named after terrorists. Three schools are named after Dalal Mughrabi, ‎who led a bus hijacking in 1978 in which 37 civilians were killed, 12 of them children. ‎Three schools are named after Abu Jihad, who planned the 1978 bus hijacking ‎that killed 37. ‎Another three schools are named after Salah Khalaf, who planned the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics (Sept. 5, 1972), and the murder of two Americans in Sudan (March 1, 1973). So much heroism, so few schools to name.

Focusing on Pyne’s behavior at the meeting, Saidam quipped, “I thought the Minister of Innovation would come with innovative ideas, but instead he came with a list of complaints.”

Pyne’s office issued an official statement, saying, “Members of the delegation are responsible for their own comments and behavior. The Minister personally engaged in constructive discussions centered around understanding Palestinian attitudes to the peace project.”

Dr Saidam said he gave the group a “textbook on education” on Palestine and encouraged members to pose their same questions to the Israeli Government.

Wasn’t going to happen. The fact is, Pyne and the rest of the Australian and British delegation were visiting mainly to garner business opportunities in Tel Aviv, and the Ramallah visit was mostly out of politeness—according to reports. This is Minister Pyne’s seventh trip to Israel, and he used it to launch a new initiative called “landing pad’ to help Australian startups get a foot in the door of the Israeli tech industry. Just that last line should warm any Zionist’s heart, never mind the Ramallah brouhaha.

“I very diplomatically asked the Prime Minister and the Higher Education Minister questions which I thought would be useful for understanding the Palestinian attitudes to the peace process,” Mr Pyne told the Australian ABC, adding, “I didn’t quiz anyone.” But he was willing to admit that “other members of the dialogue were slightly more robust and could be accused of quizzing them.

Minister Pyne received a warm welcome at a lunch he hosted for business and tech executives at the Hilton in Tel Aviv (probably no shrimp on the barbie, though). And Pyne and Attorney-General George Brandis had a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that also went very well. “We had a 45-minute chat which was scheduled for 30 minutes so he was obviously happy to be talking to us,” Pyne told ABC. He added that after Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister, three months ago, “Mr. Netanyahu was one of the first people” he rang.

How can Ramallah beat that?