Features
The late Rabbi Zalman Schachter’s time in Winnipeg recalled at lively evening hosted by Jewish Heritage Centre
(This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21, 2016 issue of The Jewish Post & News) By BERNIE BELLAN
It was billed as an evening that would be devoted to “Rabbi Zalman Schachter and the Winnipeg origins of the Jewish Renewal Movement”.
Like just about everything else associated with the late Rabbi Schachter (who died in 2014 at the age of 90), it was an evening not without controversy.
The Jewish Heritage Centre promoted the program, which was held Monday, Dec. 12, in the Multipurpose Room of the Asper Campus, as part of “its synagogue series connected with the Synagogues Exhibit at the Asper Campus.”
With the ever-clever Prof. Dan Stone serving as host, the audience of over 100 was treated to a series of reminiscences about Rabbi Schachter’s 19 years spent in Winnipeg (from 1956-75) – a time that paralleled the advent of the “New Age” movement, also a time during which the use of hallucinogenic drugs became highly popular among young people.
The evening featured three main speakers: Rabbi Alan Green, who was given his “smichah” by Rabbi Schachter; Prof. Justin Jaron Lewis, an expert on Hasidism and the organizer of an interview project centering around Rabbi Schachter’s time in Winnipeg; and Alexandra Granke, a graduate student at the University of Manitoba in the Department of Religion, whose Masters thesis dealt with the influence Winnipeg’s Jewish community had on Rabbi Schachter’s thinking.
There was also a contribution from Murray (Moish) Goldenberg, who was a protégé of Rabbi Schachter’s. Goldenberg read a poem devoted to the late rabbi’s memory.
Following the speakers’ presentations, Dan Stone invited anyone in the audience who wanted to tell of their own experience with Rabbi Schachter to speak up. One by one individuals told stories about how Rabbi Schachter touched their lives.
Lest anyone reading this think that the evening was nothing more than a love-in for Rabbi Schachter, however, there were some negative notes struck as well. Although he was undoubtedly a man of great charisma, Zalman Schachter had his detractors. Two themes mentioned several times, both by the featured speakers and audience members, coursed through recollections of his time spent in Winnipeg: his faithlessness when it came to his relationships with women, and his overt championing of drug use.
Following is an account of some of what was said:
Rabbi Green who, Dan Stone told the audience, will be leaving Winnipeg in 2018 to move to Fairfield, Iowa – the centre of transcendental meditation, described first meeting Rabbi Schachter in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
In time, Green became a devout follower of Rabbi Schachter’s, culminating in his receiving his smichah from Rabbi Schachter in Philadelphia, where he found the rabbi “surrounded by a bunch of old hippies” – some of whom “were leaders of the New Left in the 1960s.”
“My first class with him,” Rabbi Green said, “was kind of a Sinai movement for me. It literally took my breath away.”
Rabbi Schachter had a multitude of interests, including “Jewish mysticism, humanism, and modern psychology” among others, noted Rabbi Green. As well, “he was fluent in many languages.”
What impressed Rabbi Green quite deeply, he said, was how Rabbi Schachter “brought together Judaism and Indian mysticism”.
“How often we let fear get in the way of Jewish mysticism,” Rabbi Green said Rabbi Schachter once told him.
Turning to the subject of the Jewish Renewal Movement and Rabbi Schachter’s central role in that movement, Rabbi Green observed that “there are now hundreds of Jewish Renewal rabbis – most of them ordained by Rabbi Schachter.”
It was in Winnipeg, Rabbi Green noted, that Rabbi Schachter “created the first rainbow talit”. It was also here that “the interface between psychedelic drugs and spiritual practice” first took root among Rabbi Schachter and his many followers.
Rabbi Green commented, however, “that I always found this phase of Rabbi Schachter’s life to be somewhat embarrassing”.
Following Rabbi Green’s presentation, Justin Jaron Lewis took the podium to offer some observations about Rabbi Schachter’s time in Winnipeg. Lewis noted that Rabbi Schachter’s own autobiography has relatively little to say about the time he spent here, even though it was a fairly lengthy period. As well, the Wikipedia article about the rabbi barely mentions his time spent in Winnipeg, Lewis also observed.
It was partly because of that vacuum, Lewis explained that, at the behest of his colleague in the Judaic Studies program at the University of Manitoba, Ben Baader, Lewis embarked upon the creation of an oral history project devoted to gathering “memories of Rabbi Schachter during his Winnipeg years.”
With contributions from 28 different individuals, all of whom whose lives were touched by Rabbi Schachter at some point during his time spent in Winnipeg – as the director of Hillel, as the representative of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, as a Professor of Religion, and in the many other roles he played, interviews were gathered. Those interviews now reside in a collection put together at the University of Colorado in Boulder (where Rabbi Schachter spent the final years of his life).
(If you would like to listen to any of those interviews simply Google “Winnipeg Jewish renewal”. According to Lewis, however, some of those interviews are not entirely positive in the impressions some interviewees had of Rabbi Schachter.)
The fact that Winnipeg seems to have been almost deliberately obscured in any writing, either by Rabbi Schachter himself or others writing about him, is somewhat of a puzzle for Lewis. After all, he observed, it was here that Rabbi Schachter “began the chaotic and colourful phase of Judaism that became so important in his later years.”
Perhaps it was the shroud of controversy that surrounded him while he was here that led to Rabbi Schachter’s downplaying the time he spent here but, as Lewis suggested, “over time the world has forgiven him even though he left Winnipeg under a cloud”.
It was left to Alexandra Granke to fill in some of the blanks that others have found when it comes to knowing more about the time Rabbi Schacter spent here.
As Granke explained, she was “the first person to have listened to all 28 interviews about Rabbi Schachter” that Winnipeggers gave. (By the way, if you have something you’d like to tell about Rabbi Schachter, you can still get in touch with Justin Jaron Lewis, who said he would love to hear from anyone else who might have something to contribute to the oral history project. He can be reached at Justin_Lewis@umanitoba.ca .)
In analyzing Rabbi Schachter’s often controversial stay in Winnipeg, Granke observed that “there was an air of inevitability about Rabbi Schachter’s break with the Lubavitch movement.”
Granke referred to an interview given by Abe Anhang, who talked about Rabbi Schachter’s use of LSD as the reason for his departure from the Chabad movement.
“His use of LSD runs through many of the other interviews,” Granke noted. Yet, she was “surprised by the relative nonchalance of many of the interviewees” toward Rabbi Schachter’s prolific drug use.
In fact, one interviewee mentioned how she was first introduced to “weed, mescaline, and cocaine” by Rabbi Schachter.
Rather than simply dwell on this aspect of Rabbi Schachter’s life though, Granke observed that many interviewees spoke of how he “opened up his group of followers to a different understanding of Judaism.”
“Doing drugs for him was not something fun,’ Granke noted. Rather, “for him it was about a way to reach a higher level of spirituality.”
Turning to yet another oft-criticized component of his life, Granke did refer to Rabbi Schachter’s having “fathered ten children with a variety of women.”
Yet, despite his somewhat notorious reputation, Granke suggested that others “were willing to overlook his lapses in moral judgment because he was so accepting of others.”
Although Reb Zalman, as he came to be known affectionately by his devoted followers, may have “been the opposite of what was expected of rabbis in Winnipeg,” his “dedication to people” is what seems to have been the mark that he left most often upon others.
“Reb Zalman always had time for others,” was a common refrain through the interviews, Granke said.
As one interviewee suggested, Rabbi Schachter’s form of spirituality, which he formulated while he was in Winnipeg, was “Buddhist chakra meeting Jewish sphirot”.
“He was a Jewish practitioner in a universal soul,” said one interviewee.
Granke referred to the interview given by Len Udow, who suggested that the pain of Rabbi Schachter’s wartime experience (when he fled first from Vichy France, then to Belgium, where he was “one step ahead of the Gestapo”) dissipated during moments in which he was engaged in prayer. “It was as if all the pain of the war was dispelled by the sudden connection with his many ancestors.”
Murray Goldenberg mentioned Rabbi Schachter’s having taught him the blessing for marijuana: “shehakol neheyeh b’dvaro” (who brings about everything by his word).
Yet, as I noted earlier, not everyone was so rosy-hued in their memories of Rabbi Schachter. David Wilder suggested that “the reason he (Rabbi Schachter) doesn’t mention Winnipeg in his writings is because of his situation with his family. His kids didn’t speak to him,” Wilder said (because of their father’s having left their mother to take up with the daughter of a well-known Winnipeg radio announcer).
Justin Jaron Lewis did say though, that “the kids reconciled with him at the end.”
As audience members after audience member spoke up to recall their own experience of Rabbi Schachter, it was easy to understand the enormous impact that this man had on so many Winnipeggers. As Jerry Cohen said, “There was no greater influence on my life Jewishly than Reb Zalman. He was a great influence to many of us in those early years in Winnipeg.”
#1 Mr. — Ernest Seinfeld 2017-07-09 11:15
This is the first time I am reading about this rabbi. I also read an article about him today in the Jerusalem Post and made the following comment:
“I remember Rabbi Schaechter as a fellow student in Vienna at the Sperlgymnasium (high school, the same Sigmund Freud atttended) in 1937.
In Austria classes in one’s religion were mandatory.
He kept trying to upstage our religion teacher by frequent interrupting him with “Raschi said”.
The rest of the students who had no idea of the teaching of Raschi and hardly were even aware of this great Talmud scholar, after a while gave him the nickname ‘Raschi’. The teacher obviously did not enjoy these interruptions but remained quiet and polite.
Ernest Seinfeld
es893columbia.edu”
I attended three years with him in the same classes. He sat always in the first row and tried to ‘shine’. He craved for attention, a trait his fellow students did not exactly find appealing.
In our January 18, 2017 issue we also printed this letter from members of Rabbi Schachter’s family, in response to the original article:
Response to article on Reb Zalman Schachter
We are the widow and children of Reb Zalman Schachhter-Shalomi, z”l. We want to recognize the initiative of the Jewish Heritage Center in convening a public forum honoring our father and Winnipeg origins of the Jewish Renewal Movement. While none of us live in Winnipeg any longer, we treasure the time that the family had in Winnipeg and are sorry that we were unable to be present for this forum. Had we been present, we would have contributed to this retrospective in the following ways.
- The article “The late Rabbi Zalman Schachter’s Time in Winnipeg Recalled at Lively Evening Hosted by Jewish Heritage Centre” misstated the tone of his family situation. Our father was wholehearted in his relationship with his wives and children. His marriage breakdowns were certainly not caused by lapses in moral judgment. Divorce almost always is difficult for the marital partners and children. In the case of Reb Zalman and Feigle, the decision to end their marriage was understandable as, much earlier, they recognized that their relationship was unsustainable. They had drifted apart as a result of the differences in their spiritual visions and only intentionally stayed together until their youngest child reached her Bat Mitzvah so that she would have the capacity to deal with family breakdown. None of the children harbor any resentment to children from other mothers. It is a testament to Reb Zalman’s love for his children, and our love for him, the that we are all in touch with one another to share each other’s joy and provide support in times of need.
- There is an element of physical harshness in the name Schachter, which has its origins in Shochet (slaughterer). Reb Zalman was someone who was deeply concerned with the increase in violent conflict in the world. He adopted a typical Jewish response to his concerns by adding a name that would bring to our consciousness the need to pursue peace, Shalom. For many years now, he has been known and called Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.
- The relatively limited material in the University of Colorado archives on Jewish Renewal on Reb Zalman’s time in Winnipeg is not based in any way on any deliberate action on his part or because of an alleged cloud causing him to leave the city. Reb Zalman moved to Philadelphia because it had a larger Jewish community and was closer to other large Jewish centers in North America. Reb Zalman had begun providing rabbinic training in Winnipeg, but few students were willing to come to Winnipeg to study. The move to the east coast enabled many more students to access his training and become rabbis. As for the gap in current literature concerning Reb Zalman’s time in Winnipeg, we applaud Professor Lewis’s initiative in collecting oral histories to be added to the archive at the University of Colorado. Regarding the claim that Reb Zalman ignored Winnipeg in his autobiography, it should be noted that 97 pages of the 186 page “My life in Jewish Renewal,” (aside from the Appendices), are devoted to years living in Winnipeg. It is crucial to note, however, that much that happened during this period took place during his numerous travels outside Winnipeg.
We are aware that some of his views and activities were challenged by some elements of the Winnipeg Jewish community. Reb Zalman, as we all are, was human. However, for those who focused their comments at the forum on his imperfections, we wonder what standard they were holding him to. On the first Shabbat of the secular year We read Parshat Va’yigash. The story of our ancestor Ya’acov is drawing to a close. Yes, Ya’acov had issues with his wives, with his children, and with neighbors in the broader community. Those flaws, however, are not the major part of his remembrance. We remember him as a Jewish ancestor whose legacy was that all Jews now are known under Ya’acov’s second name, Yisrae. We are all B’nai Yisrael.
We, his widow, his daughters and sons, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all feel that we have been blessed by being the spouse and offspring of one of the 21 century’s greatest rabbis. Each of us, in our own way, is seeking to continue the contribution to society that he has made. May our actions and the actions of Winnipeg Jewry give our father’s neshama an aliyah!
Blessings,The Widow and all the children of Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi
Eve, Miriam, Rabbi Shalom, Josef, Yale, Chana Tina, Jonathan, Lisa, Shalvi, Rabbi Shlomo Barya, Yotam & Rossi
Features
Arnold Zeal – the road from Kenora To Jacksonville
By GERRY POSNER For Arnold Allan Zeal, his journey through life, though it officially started in Winnipeg in 1943, really began in Kenora, Ontario. Arnold and his sister Marilyn, children of Charlie and Sula ( Bernstein) Zeal, were raised in their early years in Kenora, where Charlie had set up business as owner of a department store: Zeal and Gold. He later became a hotel proprietor (the Kenricia Hotel, still standing to this day and familiar to readers who know Kenora). When Arnold was 12, the family moved to Winnipeg so that Arnold could have a bar mitzvah there. The family lived on Cordova in River Heights.
Arnold soon integrated into Winnipeg life. Oddly, he did not attend Kelvin, where most Jewish kids in the south end of Winnipeg went to high school at that time – since Grant Park High School was not yet built. Zeal attended Gordon Bell High School across the Assiniboine River. At the time he was one of only five Jewish students there. (The others were: Les Allen, Ivan Brodsky, Larry Leonoff and Allan Berkal.)
After high school, Zeal made his way to the University of Manitoba, where he took Science and graduated – first with a BSc, later a Masters of Science in Microbiology/Biochemistry. Following completion of his Masters degree he was accepted into medical school at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 1970.
In those days, once you finished your formal schooling, you had to do a rotating internship. Arnold did his at the Winnipeg General Hospital (later the Health Sciences Centre). He found himself attracted to neurosurgery, one of the most demanding areas in medicine.
It was then that he came under the tutelage of the renowned Drs. Dwight Parkinson and Rankin Hay, also occasionally another famous doctor, Norman Hill – when he came to HSC to do paediatric cases. Zeal completed his residency in neurosurgery at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre, followed up by successfully passing the American Board of Neurological Surgery written examination. He then left to take a research fellowship in Microvascular Neurological Surgery at the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1976.
In 1977, Zeal moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he became acting chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at University Hospital, an affiliate of the University of Florida (now called UF Jacksonville). After 2 1/2 years there, he left to enter private practice in neurological surgery in Jacksonville.
Over the next couple of years, he became qualified to sit for the oral portion of the examination for the American Board of Neurological Surgeons and the result was that Arnold Zeal was then “ Board Certified in Neurological Surgery.” (Just the names of these boards scare me; no wonder I never entered that field.)
Zeal subsequently obtained fellowships from the American College of Surgeons, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and the American Heart Association. To say Arnold Zeal was well qualified would be an understatement.
Along the way, he took out memberships in various medical associations, including the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, in addition to belonging to multiple regional medical societies in Florida. In 1977, Zeal entered into private practice in Jacksonville, Florida. He became chairman of the Neurosurgery Department in several Jacksonville hospitals, primarily Baptist Center, the largest medical centre hospital in Northeast Florida, where he served as chairman for 15 years. As well, Zeal wrote several prominent papers in peer-reviewed journals. In short, he was a busy guy. Also, something else of interest – starting in 1995, Arnold served as the neurological consultant to the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL, filling that role for the first eight years from the team’s inception.
It was during his residency that Arnold married his wife Janet, then a Surgical- ICU Nurse at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre. They became the parents of four highly accomplished sons. Given the demands of neurosurgery, Arnold was not able to spend as much time parenting as he might have preferred and he is quick to point out the fact that the boys turned out as well as they did is directly attributable to his wife of 52 years, Janet Zeal. Janet herself managed to obtain an additional college degree, develop her own business, and manage Arnold’s practice, all in addition to raising the four boys and supporting Arnold.
For over 40 years, Arnold was occupied in Jacksonville as a neurosurgeon. With his busy schedule he was often having to perform surgery at late hours for long periods on his feet, all with total concentration. As one can imagine, sometimes those surgeries are complex, requiring careful decisions in advance of and during the surgery, also leading the surgeon to make instant decisions if things changed during the course of the surgery. (I get nervous just writing about that kind of situation.)
Due to a shoulder injury, Arnold retired from operating, but he continued to evaluate office patients. He remained focused on Gamma Knife surgical procedures until his full retirement in late 2017. Even after retiring from the operating room, he remained active in the field, participating in conferences with his partners and colleagues. He says that he has now managed to get used to getting a full night’s sleep without receiving a call to get to the hospital for an emergency operation.
I asked Arnold what the key qualities were to becoming a successful neurosurgeon? He didn’t hesitate in answering, saying you have to be caring and have what he calls the three “A’s”- Availability, Affability and Ability. He added that you must possess lots of stamina, have good hands (I’m eliminated on that count alone), plus be dedicated to your work. He had them all. Ask anyone who knew Arnold Zeal and what you would hear about him was that he was an excellent diagnostician and had great manual dexterity.
Arnold has no lack of activities these days. Janet and Arnold have their four sons living not far away and, with five grandchildren, they are kept occupied. Aside from all that, he loves to come back to Winnipeg when he can – especially for medical reunions. And – he truly treasures the opportunities to return to his youthful days in Kenora. He knows the Lake of the Woods as if it were the inside of a brain. In short, he is quite comfortable operating a boat as well as operating on the brain!
Features
Expelled Oberlin Chabad rabbi says he ‘made a mistake’ with explicit social media chats
A police report obtained by the Forward sheds light on the removal of a Chabad rabbi from the campus of Oberlin College last week, after the school administration became aware of a police report that alleged he engaged in sexually explicit conversations online concerning minors.
Rabbi Scott (Shlomo) Elkan, former co-director of Oberlin Chabad, allegedly received sexually explicit texts, photos and videos through the messaging app Kik concerning three young people, ages 7, 12 and 13, according to the report.
In December 2025 messages to an adult on the platform, Elkan allegedly responded to photos of someone giving a child a bath. The person he chatted with alluded to touching the child’s genitals and said he had been aroused when the child was sitting on his lap, the report stated.
According to the Oberlin Police Department report, Elkin shared photos of girls as part of the chat. The department closed the case after a 20-day investigation, with no charges filed.
In a phone interview with the Forward, Elkan said he regretted his participation in the chat, but that his messages were not based on real events. He did not address the photos.
“To be clear, what had happened was an online chat with an anonymous adult on purely fictional, you know, fantastical things that’s not rooted in any kind of reality whatsoever,” Elkan said. “And I entered that, and I should not have, and I take responsibility for that.”
Elkan added that he has been engaged in “professional care and spiritual counseling to deal with all of the stresses and all of the factors that led me to engaging in an unhealthy behavior.”
According to the report, in an interview with police, Elkan confirmed the Kik account belonged to him and said the chats were “escapism” from the stress of his everyday life. He denied ever viewing or possessing child pornography.
Elkan told the Forward that “oftentimes people think of rabbis as godlike and infallible,” and he “made a mistake in one of the weakest few moments of my life.”
“There was no crime. Nothing illegal. Poor judgment, yes,” Elkan said. “And there’s not a victim. The victims here are the Jewish community and my family.”
The fallout on campus
Oberlin president Carmen Twillie Ambar wrote an email last week alerting students and staff of the news that Elkan, who had worked at Oberlin Chabad since 2010, had been banned from campus — without sharing specifics.
“In the police report, Elkan admits to egregious actions in his personal life — including engaging in online sexual conversations concerning children and objectionable behavior,” Ambar wrote. “This behavior violates Oberlin’s values, shocks the conscience, and makes it clear that we cannot allow him continued access to our campus and community.”
Elkan criticized how Oberlin handled the situation, saying the email that the college sent to the community about his departure was vague and allowed speculation to spread. He also said the email was made public during the meeting in which campus officials informed him that he had been banned.
“That’s where my hurt, and I think so much of the hurt of the community lies. Because every time we stuck our neck out for the college, and every time we work for the best interest of them and the community, what feels like the very first opportunity they had to show us that same support, they chose a very different route,” Elkan said. “So I take responsibility for my actions, and I hold the college incredibly responsible for how this has played out.”
Andrea Simakis, a spokesperson for Oberlin, said in a statement that representatives of the college met with Elkan via Zoom just prior to releasing the campus message “to let him know we were going to send it, why we were sending it, and that we were banning him from campus.”
Simakis added that the language in the campuswide email “reflects the information in the police report, which we obtained through a public records request.”
Along with serving as a Chabad rabbi, Elkan also certified Oberlin’s kosher kitchen and sometimes led Passover services and other religious celebrations on campus, according to Ambar’s email.
Chabad rabbis are not typically employed by universities, instead operating independently through the Chabad umbrella, with Chabad functioning as recognized campus religious organizations.
Elkan resigned from his position with Chabad last Friday, a Chabad spokesperson told the Forward. Chabad did not provide further comment.
In the email to the community, Ambar said Oberlin had not previously received reports concerning Elkan’s behavior and was now asking a third party to investigate whether members of the campus community had been affected.
Ambar added that the news would be especially difficult for “those who sought spiritual leadership and guidance from Elkan,” but “the seriousness of this matter requires clear and swift action.” Rabbi Allison Vann, who had led High Holy Day services on campus with Cleveland Hillel, will work with students for the remainder of the semester.
The post Expelled Oberlin Chabad rabbi says he ‘made a mistake’ with explicit social media chats appeared first on The Forward.
This story originally said that Elkan posted images of children in a bath. He was a recipient.Features
A Christian Debate About Israel
By HENRY SREBRNIKThe Western neo-Marxist attacks on Israel, in league with Islamism, are of course a grave political and military danger, but their ideology can be rebuked by anyone with the slightest knowledge of actual history. “Jesus was a Palestinian”? “Israelis are white settler-colonialists”? These are almost jokes.
Such people don’t even know that the Zionist movement in fact rejected what was called “territorialism,” the project to build a Jewish homeland anywhere – in Argentina, western Australia, and elsewhere in the world. This included the so-called “Uganda Proposal” in east Africa, which was voted down at a World Zionist Congress in 1905.
Another territorialist plan, pushed by Communists in the 1920s, was for a Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Union known as Birobidzhan. This came to fruition but ended up a complete failure. Jews were not interested in places outside their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.
Antisemitic rhetoric today appears on the progressive left in rhetoric that casts Zionism as malevolence, but also on the populist right in conspiratorial language about hidden power and divided loyalty, some harkening back to religious language we though was long gone.
The left’s arguments are shallow and, while extremely concerning, are fallacious. But the theological debates on the right are more alarming, because they will affect America’s relations with Israel. They go right back to genuine issues regarding the place of Jews and Christians in their respective religious worldviews and interactions. They are at the heart of “everything” in western history.
So-called Christian Zionism, found particularly in Protestant theology, sees the creation of Israel as part of God’s plan to hasten the coming of Jesus as the messiah at end times. Obviously, this is not congruent with our understanding of the messianic age, but politically it has been largely beneficial to Israel.
There is a deeper theological divide separating Catholics and evangelicals, the latter among the Jewish state’s most fervent supporters. Evangelicals tend to see Israel as the fulfillment of God’s pledge to the Jewish people, and they view that fulfillment as intertwined with their own religious identity. In contrast, most Catholics do not believe they have a theological obligation to support Israel.
Classical Christian antisemitism (really, anti-Judaism) is rooted in two propositions: that Jews bear the guilt for Christ’s death, and that when the majority of Jews rejected Jesus (who was a Jew, as were all his early apostles), God replaced the covenant with the children of Abraham with a new covenant, with Christians. This idea of a new bond that excludes the Jewish people is called “supersessionism” or “replacement theology.”
It consists of the claim that the Church has replaced the Jewish people as God’s covenanted, or chosen, people. According to supersessionism, Jesus inaugurated a new conception of “Israel,” one open to all, Gentile as well as Jew, because it was predicated on faith rather than the rejected markers of biological descent and observance of the law.
The Roman Catholic Church modified this stance with its historic document Nostra Aetate, promulgated in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council. It expressed some recognition of the Jews’ special relationship with the God of Israel. Though the statement recounts the fact that most Jews did not “accept the Gospel,” it also declares that “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their fathers.”
This has been further elaborated. Pope John Paul II said that the Catholic Church has “a relationship” with Judaism “which we do not have with any other religion.” He also said that Judaism is “intrinsic” and not “extrinsic” to Christianity, and that Jews were Christians’ “elder brothers” in the faith.
Pope Benedict XVI explicitly rejected the idea that the Jewish people “ceased to be the bearer of the promises of God.” The Catholic Church states that “The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked.”
But now we see some of those earlier positions re-emerging, and not just among antisemites like Tucker Carlson. This is troubling and should not be ignored. On Jan. 17, for example, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches of Jerusalem, an assembly of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leaders, released a statement referring to Christian Zionism as a “damaging” ideology.
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, a Catholic commentator with more than two million YouTube subscribers, released a video in which he reiterated the older position on Israel: “I don’t think that the Jews are entitled to the Holy Land because of some religious premise. I don’t think that’s true. In fact, being Christian, I believe the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament; Christ is the new covenant.” Catholics are not supposed to believe that Jews have a divine right to the Holy Land because, Knowles stated, Jews do not enjoy God’s favour and are not in fact God’s people any longer.
As Liel Leibovitz, editor-at-large for the website Tablet Magazine, cautions, in “Letter to a Catholic Friend,” published Feb. 16, “What happens if good men and women don’t take up the fight and vociferously reject” such comments? “What starts with the fringes soon takes over the supposed mainstream.” For Jews, for Israel, and for America, that would be an unmitigated disaster.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.