NEWS FEATURE: Scholar urges Jews to look to mainline Christians to ease millennial fears

c. 1999 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ At best, the turn of the millennium may turn out to be a massive display of Christmas consumerism and media extravaganzas. At worst, there are latent fears among some American Jews that an eruption of Christian messianic urges could somehow boomerang on them, either at home or in […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ At best, the turn of the millennium may turn out to be a massive display of Christmas consumerism and media extravaganzas. At worst, there are latent fears among some American Jews that an eruption of Christian messianic urges could somehow boomerang on them, either at home or in Israel.”When you channel surf, what you tend to see is the Christian TV network broadcasting programs on messianic predictions, and the role of Jews in the fulfillment of those end-of-days prophecies,”according to Michael Signer, a University of Notre Dame professor of medieval history and Jewish thought.

Still, according to Signer, Jews looking for a way to respond to the hoopla surrounding the upcoming date should take a closer look at Roman Catholic and mainstream Protestant millennium statements.”There are responsible Christian approaches to the year 2000 and these approaches aren’t getting much publicity because of the groups that are waiting for the end of times,”Signer, author of a recent paper on the”Christian Millennium in a Jewish Historical Perspective,”said in an interview. “Churches like the Presbyterian and the Lutheran and the Catholic Church are talking about this as a time for reflection and a time to work together for social justice and world peace,”Signer said on a recent visit to Jerusalem. “The pope and the bishops are not asking Jews to be part of the celebration. But they are inviting us to engage in a serious dialogue, as Jews, looking at what has gone on in the past 1,000 years.” Many Jews, with their keen awareness of history, still shudder at the memory of the pogroms and persecutions of Jewish communities that marked the first Christian millennium era of 1000, when the millennial fever of some Christians expecting the return of the Messiah ultimately inspired the Crusades and a wave of European persecution of Jews, Signer said.


And even some liberal Jewish rabbis are having trouble deciding whether they should acknowledge the arrival of the year 2000 in some sort of original prayer or liturgy _ a date which happens to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath.

In fact, Pope John Paul II’s document”On the Coming Third Millennium,”calls on Christians to”purify”themselves for past errors, and even to”repent”in acquiescing to intolerance, an appeal that from the Jewish point of view can be a reasonable basis for interreligious dialogue about the millennium,Signer said.

The papal document, which was issued in the mid-1990s, also describes the celebrations for the year 2000 in terms of the Hebrew biblical celebration of the”Jubilee”which occurred every 50 years in ancient Israel, Signer said. This jubilee theme, with its emphasis on social justice and human rights, is an approach that Jews can relate to as well.”In Western culture, we think of jubilee as a big celebration. But when you look at the relevant passages in the biblical book of Leviticus, the concept of jubilee has some very serious social and economic implications,”Signer noted. He said that in the biblical jubilee year debts were forgiven, indentured servants were freed and work even ceased on agricultural lands in order to grant the earth a”sabbatical.””Jubilee in the biblical tradition inspired the inscription on the Liberty Bell which says `proclaim liberty throughout the land,'”he added.

Jews, who will be observing the Hebrew calendar year of 5759 when the millennium rolls around, won’t see 2000 as a jubilee in literal terms. But they can appreciate the Catholic attempt to shape tradition around the Jewish roots of Christianity.”The pope’s paper on the millennium, after all, doesn’t start with a reflection on church teaching or with a reflection on apocalyptic messages in New Testament books like Revelation, it starts with the (Hebrew) biblical text,”he said.

The jubilee theme has spurred Catholic and a number of mainline Protestant denominations to call for joint Jewish-Christian action on issues of human rights, poverty and the environment during the millennium.

Both Jews and Catholics, Signer said, share the same”prophetic imperative for pursuing justice for those who have no voice. We can help one another further develop a theology of hope and celebration.”DEA END FLETCHER

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