c. 1998 Religion News Service
(Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee.)
UNDATED _ In early September”Religion & Ethics Newsweekly,”the PBS-TV news program hosted by Bob Abernethy, asked me and many others to select the”most influential and inspiring”spiritual leaders of the 20th century.
I happily responded and was pleased several of my choices made the final list which was aired on a recent show.
Here are my top ten picks in alphabetical order:
1. The 14th Dalai Lama is both a global religious leader and a living rejection of the 1950 Chinese occupation of his native Tibet. The Dalai Lama’s long exile, though painful for him, provides many people with their first authentic contact with Buddhism. And his natural curiosity about other religious traditions has created a unique series of ongoing dialogues. Above all, he remains the world’s foremost”prisoner of hope.” 2. C. Melvyn Helfgott was my childhood rabbi in Alexandria, Va. He deeply influenced my life and steered me to the rabbinate. I include him not because he was one of the giants of the century, but as an example that one doesn’t have to be a global figure to be both”influential and inspiring.”Thank you, Rabbi Helfgott.
3. Abraham Joshua Heschel was the human bridge between the Jewish religious civilization of Europe that was destroyed during the Holocaust and the American Jewish community. The master of four languages, Heschel wrote extensively and taught two generations of rabbis in the United States. His extraordinary combination of mysticism and social justice profoundly influenced many Christian leaders as well.
4. He wasn’t a nice guy, but Ayatollah Khomeini inspired his followers in Iran, and his enormous influence throughout the world reflects the growing power of Islamic extremism. His ruthless use of religious ideology in the late 1970s to gain total political power is the quintessential model that others will surely emulate in the new century. World, beware!
5. Martin Luther King Jr., blessed with one of the greatest names possible for a Christian leader, combined incredible oratory with nonviolent civil disobedience. Despite his well-known personal flaws, King’s energetic leadership in behalf of civil rights forced a national reckoning of the soul upon an unwilling and self-satisfied America. His 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial is the best sermon of the century.
6. Reinhold Niebuhr was the 20th century’s most important American religious thinker. A longtime professor at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary, he demanded that Christians actively participate in the political issues of the day including fierce opposition to Nazism and support for Israel. His dynamic”Christian realism”was a healthy corrective to the mushy spiritual pablum offered by some of his fellow Protestants.
7. Giuseppe Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) was pontiff for only five years, but his leadership in convening the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s opened the window of modernity and reform for millions of Catholics. As a bishop during the Holocaust, he provided Jews with false baptismal certificates in an effort to save their lives from Nazi mass murder.
8. Thirty-nine-year-old Menachem Schneerson arrived in the United States from war-torn Europe in 1941 and became a lifelong resident of the country. However, under his charismatic leadership, today’s growing Lubavitch Hasidic movement had become by the time of his death in the mid-1990s, a worldwide religious phenomenon. Some of his followers view Schneerson, the beloved”Rebbe,”as the Messiah.
9. Mother Teresa was much more than a petite nun who physically cared for India’s poor and diseased population. Because she was a superb organizer, at her death in 1997 she left behind an effective organization to continue her work. I remember meeting her at the United Nations where she used the power of”creative guilt”to remind her affluent audience what it means to serve God’s children on earth.
10. Karl Wotyla became Pope John Paul II in 1978 and, despite deteriorating physical health, he eagerly anticipates greeting the new millennium. Tempered and tested by 50 years of brutal Nazism and communism in Poland, the pope provides a strong moral compass for Christians while also making positive Catholic-Jewish relations a central part of his papacy. His active role in destroying Communism guarantees him a prominent place in 20th century history.
Of course there are many other deserving candidates. I am also aware that Mother Teresa is the only woman on the list and King the only black. And just two of my picks are outside Judaism or Christianity. I plead guilty to all such charges and urge you to send me your nominations. I promise to include them in a future column.
END RUDIN
