Podcast Series "Voices on Antisemitism" - Christopher Leighton (Executive Director, Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies, Baltimore)
March 26, 2009, Christopher Leigton (Voices of antisemtism - a podcast series at the U.S. Holcaust Memorial Museum, Washington)
"I came to Jewish-Christian relations in large measure because my closest friends belonged to different religious traditions. And they had a way of raising doubts and generating confusion that simply had to be addressed if I was going to hold fast to what my ancestors had passed on to me. Christians and Jews share some of the same narratives. And the question that haunts us is whether we can learn to honor the distinct ways that we each read these stories, and dismantle those understandings that have given rise to very serious and anguished relations between our communities. And so, the challenge of living in a religiously plural world is developing the habits and reflexes that allow us to celebrate that diversity and be enlarged and expanded by understandings that don’t belong to us.
For centuries, Christians have made triumphal claims that were profoundly dismissive of those who do not agree with them. And as a result, the church can become ingrown. It can fail to develop an aptitude for self-criticism. And if there is not an ability to see oneself through the eyes of the other, then one ultimately ends up blinded to larger truths that might inspire us to do better and to improve and to ennoble our tradition.
I think that what happens through the interfaith dialogue when it’s done well, is that one has the rude realization that the tradition that one thought one knew, that one has been living, is far more mysterious and complex than one ever imagined, and that one may have to go back and learn how to reread and reinterpret it anew. So in a sense, to live in a tradition is always to call it into question." (fragment of the transcript)
"I came to Jewish-Christian relations in large measure because my closest friends belonged to different religious traditions. And they had a way of raising doubts and generating confusion that simply had to be addressed if I was going to hold fast to what my ancestors had passed on to me. Christians and Jews share some of the same narratives. And the question that haunts us is whether we can learn to honor the distinct ways that we each read these stories, and dismantle those understandings that have given rise to very serious and anguished relations between our communities. And so, the challenge of living in a religiously plural world is developing the habits and reflexes that allow us to celebrate that diversity and be enlarged and expanded by understandings that don’t belong to us.
For centuries, Christians have made triumphal claims that were profoundly dismissive of those who do not agree with them. And as a result, the church can become ingrown. It can fail to develop an aptitude for self-criticism. And if there is not an ability to see oneself through the eyes of the other, then one ultimately ends up blinded to larger truths that might inspire us to do better and to improve and to ennoble our tradition.
I think that what happens through the interfaith dialogue when it’s done well, is that one has the rude realization that the tradition that one thought one knew, that one has been living, is far more mysterious and complex than one ever imagined, and that one may have to go back and learn how to reread and reinterpret it anew. So in a sense, to live in a tradition is always to call it into question." (fragment of the transcript)
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