c. 1996 Religion News Service
(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)
(UNDATED) I’ve been writing a weekly Religion News Service column for five years, and this anniversary provides a convenient excuse for some personal reflections. It is also a chance to publicly answer readers’ letters.
My favorite column? Don’t have one. After 260 commentaries, it’s like asking parents which child they love the most.
Where do I get my ideas? My answer to this frequently asked question is simplicity itself: Just look around, observe society, watch a little TV, read a few newspapers, listen closely to sermons, and best of all, talk to strangers on buses, subways, and in barber shops.
But never speak with fellow airplane passengers because chats at 33,000 feet provide no grist for columns. People who are pampered by cabin attendants, seated in air-conditioned comfort generally provide shallow and, worst of all, relentlessly optimistic conversations _ until the plane hits severe turbulence. Then I must shift from columnist to working clergy, calming fears and comforting the terrified.
But I always get excellent ideas for a column when trapped in a crowded subway train or bus during rush hour. True human nature, for better or worse, is always evident during such moments of transit gridlock. In such situations, a writer in search of material can always find expressions of wit, wisdom and human frailty.
Karl Marx liked to say that everything was political, including art, culture, music, architecture, and, of course, economics. Marx had his own set of positive political values, and his enemies represented negative politics.
I believe everything is theological in human existence, even when people don’t recognize it. Everybody has a set of values, ethics, and codes to guide behavior. Most are positive and based, however remotely, on their ideas of God.
But evil, nihilism, anarchy, corruption, and a hundred other negative attributes also exist; these, too, are theological. Hitler, after all, believed he was an agent of Providence who had been divinely chosen to redeem the world. Because nothing human is alien to me, my columns, hopefully, reflect the entire human condition.
During the past five years of column-writing, I received strong reactions from readers on two of my favorite themes: family memories and the fascinating interplay between Christians and Jews.
There are always poignant letters when I devote a column to my deceased parents and brother, or to recollections of growing up in Alexandria, Va. Those commentaries clearly tap into a universal memory bank for readers.
As adults, we may frequently change our spouses, names, jobs, residences, the color of our hair and the wrinkles in our faces, even our religions, but we can’t change our grandparents, parents, and siblings. They are immutable and forever fascinating.
Another guaranteed source of mail are commentaries about Christian behavior towards Jews and Judaism. Christian letter-writers invariably criticize me for presenting an excessively bleak picture of the first 2,000 years of Christian-Jewish relations. And Jewish readers frequently tell me I am too optimistic about the recent positive changes that are taking place within many churches regarding Jews and Judaism.
My response is that victims always perceive history quite differently from the victimizers or their descendants. Women, blacks, and American Indians know all about this. While I seek to lay no guilt trips upon Christians for the brutal anti-Jewish record of the past, I do urge them to develop a genuine sense of responsibility to prevent such terrible events as the Holocaust from recurring.
My Jewish critics may be right when they charge that”Christians can never change their attitudes towards Jews”, but without ever allowing for the possibility of”teshuvah,”the Hebrew term for repentance, humans are condemned to repeat all the errors and sins of the past.
MJP END RUDIN
