Catholics, Jews, Humanists and Muslims Meet: Confronting Interfaith Dialogue 50 Years Later

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Posted on January 29, 2016
By Ben Greenberg

This past year marked the 50th anniversary of one of the most important documents of the 20th century. It has profoundly shaped the contours of human relations since its publication in 1965. The Second Vatican Council in the work Nostra Aetate set forth a new paradigm in interfaith dialogue between Catholicism and other religions, particularly Judaism. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks remarking on the 50th anniversary of the document in our current global context of inter-religious strife and violence wrote:

“We need, if anything, another and larger Nostra Aetate, binding together the great world religions in a covenant of mutuality and responsibility.”

In the days and months leading up to the declaration by the Catholic Church much ink was spilled by people from all faiths contemplating what a new era of interfaith relations meant for them and for their faith community.

In the pages of Tradition, a journal of Orthodox Jewish thought, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik offered a way forward succinctly titled, Confrontation (Tradition, Spring 1964). The essay is far more than only a how-to guide on interfaith interaction but rather presents a sweeping thesis on the nature of human existence, the suffering and triumph of free will and agency and the utter uniqueness of the human being in “confronting” the rest of creation. Rabbi Soloveitchik, in what I believe to be a central argument to the entire essay, extends this notion of uniqueness to the encounter between any two people:

“In fact, the closer two individuals get to know each other, the more aware they become of the metaphysical distance separating them. Each one exists in a singular manner, completely absorbed in his individual awareness which is egocentric and exclusive. The sun of existence rises with the birth of one’s self-awareness and sets with its termination. It is beyond the experiential power of an individual to visualize an existence preceding or following his… The gap of uniqueness is too wide to be bridged. Indeed, it is not a gap, it is an abyss.”

I recently began reflecting on this essay again as Maggid Books put out a new edition of a collection of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s essays “Confrontation and Other Essays“. It is a wonderful resource to add to one’s library for easy reference to some of the most important philosophical and theological ideas from Rabbi Soloveitchik conveniently put together in one slim volume. In my previous readings of Confrontation I did not spend as much time studying the parts that develop his central idea before delving into his prescriptions for interfaith dialogue. Whether for my own study or for preparation for classes I was teaching it was those prescriptive ideas that were the most compelling during those times I read the essay. However, as I re-read and focused in on the development of his idea before the guidelines were presented, I was struck by his notion that an individual is entirely “egocentric and exclusive” and that the “gap of uniqueness is… an abyss.” Is that truly so?