A time of joy.
A time of refl ection.
A time of s aring with family
and friends.

Metro

Cover Story

Jews: People Of The Covenant

0

The Unaffiliated Jewish
Community of Detroit

ne of the young
adults of my
parish who
attends a Jesuit
Midwestern university
made a reading sugges-
tion this summer. One
of his professors is
FATHER someone who taught
JOHN WEST me in theology about
Special to the 30 years ago and whose
Jewish News writing continues to be
prolific (Ronald
Modras, Ignatian Humanism, Chicago:
Loyola Press, 2004). The subtitle of this
excellent book about Ignatius Loyola and
six of his companions throughout the
years is "A Dynamic Spirituality for the
21st Century."
Modras' thought is a provocative
attempt to craft a contemporary
approach to ministry and life rooted in
the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
Loyola. He wrote them during the influ-
ential personal years of his spiritual jour-
ney before he founded the Jesuits. In
fact, Modras narrates how he experienced
a couple-monthlong retreat based on the
exercises that inspired his book.
One of the aspects of contemporary
spirituality that Modras paints is an
engaging commitment to ecumenical
dialogue and interfaith rapport. In our
multicultural settings, and as we rub
shoulders in different aspects of our life
with persons of world religions, our hori-
zons can be broadened, all the while -
coming to new appreciations of our
Catholic tradition.
It was against this backdrop.of reading
a great book about expanding the hori-
zons of our religious identity that I
learned about a troubling development
that could negatively affect our inter-reli-
gious efforts at understanding in the days
ahead.
Jews for Jesus is a fundamentalist
Christian sect that targets Jewish com-
munities for direct proselytism and "con-
version." The Web site for Jews for Jesus
announces a multi-city campaign for all
communities outside of Israel that have a
concentration of more than 25,000 Jews.
The metropolitan Detroit area will be
the focus of this so-called "direct evangel-
ism" for the period of Sept. 3-24, which

is invited to attend
special spirited & spiritual

High Holy Day Services

conducted by Dr. Mitch Parker

Congregation Shaa
Irving & Beverly
Education & You

2075 Walnut Lake Ro
West Blom fi

Rosh Hashanah

Thursday September
10 am -I. m

Kol Nidre

Friday, September 24
6:30 - 9 pm

Yom Kippur

Saturday, September 2
10 am - 2 pm

$90 per adult
$45 per college student
Free for children
Babysitting is available fo

Jli

8/27

To receive your tickets, m your chec pay--
able to Congregation Sha y Zedek
to CSZ, 2075 Walnut Lake oad
West Bloomfield, MI 483
For more
information, please call
Gail at 248/357-5544.

Father John West is a theologian for the
Archdiocese of Detroit. He serves as the
pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows in
Farmington and as ecumenical and inter-
faith advisor in the Department of Parish
Life and Services. This column is reprint-
ed with permission from the originating
newspaper, the Michigan Catholic.

2004

20

879340

corresponds with the High Holy Days
this year, especially Rosh Hashanah and
Yom Kippur.
The advance materials for this cam-
paign promise "street evangelism, secular
media campaigns, phone calling, person-
al visits and Bible studies to draw peo-
ple's attention." Operation "Behold Your
God" (Isaiah 40:9) promises to be very
confrontational and, from a Catholic
(and ecumenical) perspective, very offen-
sive.
For many years, and especially since
the landmark documents of the. Second
Vatican Ecumenical CoUncil, we have
grown in our understanding and respect
for the Jewish community as a people of
the Covenant. Even though individual
Christians have embraced Judaism, John
and some Jews have found their way to
the Christian faith, we are not interested
in "converting" the Jews.
Instead, through the efforts of many
local, national and international groups,
we grow in our appreciations of each
other, summoned by the same God.
These admirable efforts at dialogue espe-
cially help us to better understand the
context of our own Scriptures, the per-
son, message and ministry of Jesus, as we
continue to prize the Jewish Scriptures in
our Bible and worship.
There is a pressing pastoral concern
here, given the fact that Jews for Jesus
will probably show up at Jewish venues
in our community at a time when the
heart of Jewish faith is being celebrated
this September. It is especially important
for us, pastoral leaders and faithful mem-
bers of Christian communities who have
developed an impressive working .rela-
tionship of esteem and respect with the
Jewish community, to not naively stand
by, or worse, somehow support this .
offensive religious project that in no way
can be squared with our sensitive and
mainline approach to Christian evange-
lization.
An important resource from the
USCCB, a collection of Catholic docu-
ments entitled, "The Bible, the Jews, and
the Death of Jesus," was published earlier
this year during the flurry of concern
about anti-Semitism and the release of
the movie The Passion of the Christ. This
excellent, and short (about 100 pages)
collection is a good review of the high
level of respectful encounter between our
communities that can help contempo
rary Christians like ourselves to resist,
counter and proactively oppose disrup-
tive and dangerous projects that threaten
the mutual respect between Jews and
Christians. El