May/June 2005 Feature

Personal Reflections on Pope John Paul II

“When a righteous person dies it is as though all are considered to be his relatives.”

The Talmudic rabbis never imagined that these words would one day describe a Pope. The gathering of 80 heads of state, including the President of the United States and millions mourning Pope John Paul II showed the impact of this righteous leader beyond his own flock, upon all humanity.

At the invitation of the Vatican, I attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II whom I first met in 1967 during an Appeal of Conscience Foundation mission to Poland on behalf of religious freedom when he was the Archbishop of Krakow known as Karol Wojtyla.

In greeting some of the heads of state and religious leaders, among them President Katsav of Israel, I was embraced by my friend King Juan Carlos I of Spain. As a Jew, I was struck by the profound irony of a Pope’s funeral engendering this touching moment. Here was the King of Spain, a descendant of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella who in 1492 with the blessing of the Catholic Church expelled the Jews of Spain, reaching out to a rabbi in mourning over a man they both respected. How much has changed!

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we pray u-v’chen ten kavod l’amecha—-give honor to your people. The respect accorded to President Moshe Katsav, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, and the Jewish delegation at the funeral proves that the Jewish people treated as pariahs in the past now occupy a place of prominence on the world scene.

Indeed, Pope John Paul II was a trailblazer in the reconciliation between Catholics and Jews. He followed the guidelines of Nostra Aetate issued by Vatican Council II in 1965 with personal commitment that was shaped by his childhood experiences under the Nazi rule. Living in proximity of Auschwitz, the graveyard of millions, including my grandparents and other members of my family, he understood the tragedy of the Shoah; he never forgot and never let the world forget the annihilation of men, women, and children because they were Jews. Later on in his travels through the countries of Europe where the Jewish population was decimated, he would condemn antisemitism as “the greatest sin against humanity.”

The funeral, however, was only part of a whirlwind experience. The next day, on Shabbat, I was invited by Chief Rabbi Di Segni to address the Rome synagogue. In the congregation was Chief Rabbi Emeritus Elio Toaff who sat with the Pope in that same sanctuary in 1986, and was one of only two living people mentioned in the Pope’s will. In the 2000 years of history of the Catholic Church, no pope had ever entered a Jewish place of worship until John Paul II.

He also understood the significance of the State of Israel to the post-Shoah Jewish world and thus in 1993 established diplomatic ties between the State of Israel and the Vatican. This was highlighted dramatically when he visited the Kotel and sought forgiveness for the atrocities perpetrated through the ages by Catholics against the “people of the Covenant.” While for two thousand years Christians saw the destruction of the Temple as God’s punishment of the Jewish people, John Paul II declared: “Jews are the older brother.” Of course, these actions marked a significant social and theological change in the relationship of the Catholic Church to the Jewish people.

His outreach to the Jewish people was only one part of the larger legacy he left to the world----a commitment to peace and human rights. While President Ronald Reagan was the political force behind Communism’s downfall, it was Pope John Paul II, traumatized by the Communist suppression of freedom and religion, who provided the spiritual authority and with his message “be not afraid,” inspired the oppressed masses to bring down the walls of tyranny.

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On my return from China in 1986, in bringing Pope John Paul II greetings from his flock, he warmly welcomed me as “My nuncio from China.” The Appeal of Conscience Foundation and I received the support of the Pope for the International Peace and Tolerance Conferences we organized in Berne (1992), Istanbul (1994), and Vienna (1999) to energize religious leaders in the Balkans to halt the bloodshed and bring about reconciliation.

In January 2002, I joined this “bridge builder” in Assisi where he gathered leaders of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths for a Day of Prayer for Peace in the World. He was deeply affected by the terrorist attacks on 9/11. I heard him confront the scourge of terrorism saying: “To offend against man is, most certainly to offend against God. There is no religious goal that can possibly justify the use of violence by man against man.”

In one of my final meetings with him, the Pope realized it was Friday afternoon and was nearing Shabbat. As I excused myself, he looked at me and said smiling in German, my mother tongue: “Ich wunsche Ihnen Shabbat Shalom.”

The world mourns the loss of a deeply spiritual and righteous person who humbled himself before God and man like few other leaders in history. As we mourn the loss of John Paul II, a friend of the Jewish people, we bid him Shalom—-Peace be with you! In his memory, may we build on the foundation he laid to work together for better understanding and cooperation facing the challenges of the 21st century. •

About the author
Arthur Schneier, Chairman of the Editorial Board of Midstream, is President of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, which he founded in 1965, and the rabbi and spiritual leader of Park East Synagogue in New York City. (For a fuller biography of Rabbi Scheier, please see page 38 of the Nov/Dec 2004 issue of Midstream.)

Albert Einstein on the Violin
Leo Haber

(In honor of Albert Einstein on the 50th Yahrzeit of his death [1879-1955] and the 100th anniversary of his annus mirabilis—1905—wherein he published four landmark papers in physics that changed our concept of the universe.)

David sang “holy” with his harp,
I with my violin.
He would string melancholy apart,
I would let sadness in.
He didn’t play Mozart,
I didn’t know Tehilim.

David played fast with the girls,
I the atoms unsealed.
He would explore love’s rules,
I would encompass a field.
Both battled God like fools
To tie Him to our shield.

This then the sweetest art,
Music sans parallel:
To question God from the heart
Of the antechamber’s pell-mell
To the world-to-come depart
Where discordant formulas jell.

(This poem, somewhat revised above, originally appeared in the July 1957 issue of Commentary and is here reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.)

Notes:
1. Tehilim—Hebrew name for the Biblical book of Psalms attributed in large part by Jewish tradition to the pen of King David.

2. antechamber; the world-to-come—“Rabbi Jacob says: ‘This world is comparable to an antechamber leading to the world-to-come; prepare yourself in the antechamber so that you will enter the salon.’” (Mishnah: Pirkei Avot [Ethics of the Fathers] IV, 21.)