BREAKING: Pope Benedict Makes History At Park East Synagogue
Moving Moment for NY Rabbi, Holocaust Survivor
by Walter Ruby Special to the Jewish Week
Pope Benedict XVI and Rabbi Arthur Schneier / Photo byDianne Bondareff
On Friday, Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope ever to set foot in an American synagogue, and he said, fittingly, "Shalom."
Yet the most moving moment during his heavily choreographed 25-minute-visit to the exquisite 120-year-old Park East Synagogue on Manhattan's Upper East Side about an hour before the onset of Shabbat and a day before the arrival of Passover, came after Benedict had already left the building.
Fielding questions from reporters in the wake of the pontiff's departure, Park East's Senior Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a normally composed and diplomatic presence, teared up when a reporter asked how it felt
for him as a survivor of the Holocaust to receive in his shul the head of the world's largest religion, who as Josef Ratzinger was himself a member of Hitler Youth during his teenage years in Bavaria.
Standing with several of his grandchildren, the 78-year-old Rabbi Schneier -- who rarely talks in detail about what he endured during the Nazi round up of Jews in Budapest in 1944, a city to which he escaped with his mother and other family members from his native Vienna in 1939 -- spoke emotionally of how he managed to escape, but his beloved grandparents were placed on a train and sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. According to Rabbi Schneier, "During that time, at the end of 1944, I never thought I'd live to see another day, but God spared me. … I resolved to keep a promise I made to my grandfather, who was a famous rabbi and who always worried who would succeed him, that I would study and be ordained as a rabbi."
Noting that he greeted Benedict upon his arrival at the synagogue in the German language native to them both by saying; 'I thank God that both of us survived," Rabbi Schneier told the assembled media: "When you go through the ravages of war that Josef Ratzinger went through and encounter hunger, pain, suffering and death, it reshapes your world and you resolve to make sure such a human tragedy will not happen again…That (sentiment) brings us together."
Rabbi Schneier said that while "It is a mistake to forget, we must also not be paralyzed by history." He added that the pope's first-ever visit to a synagogue in the U.S. "was a momentous occasion" that "basically says to me, 'You have embarked on the right road. 'Go forward; don't stop; continue.' "
Earlier, members of the Park East Synagogue Children's Choir greeted the entrance into the synagogue sanctuary of Benedict, who was celebrating his 81st birthday that day, with a singing of Jewish liturical standards like "Hevenu Shalom," "Shema Yisrael" and "Oseh Shalom." Resplendent in his trademark white robes and matching white skullcap, Pope Benedict walked up the aisle to the bima, escorted by Rabbi Schneier, who was clad in a black robe with black kipa and trailed by a group of about a dozen Catholic cardinals and other high officials, who wore black robes and red skullcaps. It was only the third visit to a synagogue by a pope, following John Paul II's visit to the main Rome synagogue in 1986, and Benedict's visit to the Colonge Synagogue in his native Germany soon after becoming pope in 2006.
Benedict opened his brief remarks, delivered in English with a lilting south German accent, with a viscerly articulated "Shalom" and then intoned, "It is with joy that I come here, just a few hours before the celebration of your Pesah, to express my respect and esteem for the Jewish community in New York City." In a clear affirmation of his awareness of the Jewishness of Jesus Christ, Benedict said, "I find it moving to recall that Jesus, as a young boy, heard the words of Scripture and prayed in a place such as this." Urging his listeners in the packed synagogue, including synagogue members and assorted Jewish leaders and V.I.P.'s, "to continue building bridges of friendship with all the many different ethnic and religious groups present in your neighborhood, the pope concluded, "I assure you most especially of my closeness at this time, as you prepare to celebrate the great deeds of the Almighty, and to sing praises of Him who has worked such wonders for his people."
In greeting the pope, Rabbi Schneier, a globe-trotting diplomat-rabbi for over 40 years who has met with presidents, kings and top religious leaders in his role as founder and president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, a New York-based foundation dedicated to the principles of religious liberty and human rights, said to Benedict, "Your visit today to Park East Synagogue is a reaffirmation of your outreach, goodwill and commitment to enhancing Jewish-Catholic relations." Rabbi Schenier, who has known and cultivated Benedict for decades, especially in his pre-papal role as Pope Jon Paul II's closest associate and keeper of Vatican dogma, told the pope: "In Jewish history we were painfully cast aside and suffered persecution and degradation. A turning point in Catholic-Jewish relations was the Second Vatican Council, the guidelines of Nostra Aetate, which have brought us closer, facing each other with mutual respect and understanding. ... Your presence here gives us hope and courage for the road we still have to travel together…"
Rabbi Schneier concluded by stating that the Pope's visit represented, "a message of hope for inter-religious dialogue as an instrument of cooperation in the pursuit of peace, freedom, human rights and security."
After the two religious leaders spoke, there was an exchange of gifts, with the rabbi presenting the pope with a large sterling silver seder plate designed by Menahcem Ben Ari Berman, an award-winning artist from Jerusalem. The pope presented Schneier and his congregation with a replica of a 15th Century Hebrew parchment manuscript, the original of which is in the Vatican archives.
Lindsay Dresbach, a bat mitzvah alumna of the Park East Synaogue then came forward and presented Bendict with flowers and Passover "Haggadah." Russell Rutter, who recently celebrated his bar mitzvah at the synagogue, presented the pope with a box of matzah, for which the pontiff heartily thanked the youngster and promised, "I will eat it tomorrow evening [the onset of Passover]. That remark brought forth cries of "Betaivon" [good appetite] from Rabbi Schneier and others in the sanctuary.
The pontiff briefly visited with members of the Children's Choir and then shook hands with many of the guests in attendance, weighted toward heavyweights in the worlds of business and finance; some Jewish leaders apparently begged off attending the event because they would not have enough time to get home to prepare for the advent of Shabbat and Passover. Among these who greeted the pope at Park East included Israeli Consul General in New York Asaf Shariv; former New York City Mayor Ed Koch; Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress; Judge Ellen Heller, president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; James Wolfensohn, former chairman of the World Bank, Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs; Howard Rubenstein, chairman of the public relations firm Rubenstein Associates; Stuart Subotnick, general partner and COO of Metromedia; Jerome Lauren, senior vice president of Polo Ralph Lauren; Harris Lis of RFR Holdings LLC, Bruce Mosler, president and CEO of Cushman and Wakefield; Jeffrey Marcus, managing director, Crestview Advisers LLC; and Stephen Schwartzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group L.P.
Asked why Benedict chose to make the first-ever visit to a synagogue in the U.S. to Park East, Father Dennis McManus, consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Catholic-Jewish Affairs, said: "The pope has a long relationship with Rabbi Schneier and admires the work he has done together with individual American bishops on behalf of social justice."
Noting that Benedict held an ecumenical meeting in Washington the day before his visit to Park East Synagogue with leaders of various American religious bodies including Jews, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists (but not Sikhs, who were nixed by the Department of Homeland Security when they refused to attend the meeting without small ceremonial daggers) and followed up that event with a special meeting with over 50 Jewish communal leaders, McManus said, "In participating in these events, Benedict is extending John Paul II's legacy. He wants the outreach of John Paul to the Jewish people reaffirmed under his own pontificate. Pope Benedict is affectionate toward the Jewish people and wants to show the Jewish community in the U.S. his esteem and respect."
Rev. James Massa, executive director of the Secretariate for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for Conference on Catholic Bishops, noted: "The relationship between the Church and the Jewish people is theologically significant and not simply a matter of intercultural exchange or trying to find commuon ground on issues of justice and peace. Judaism is internal to Catholicism. It's different from any other kind of relationship with another religion."
The Pope's outreach to American Jewry came in the wake of a controversy concerning Benedict's recent reintroduction of the Latin Mass, dropped by the Vatican from Catholic liturgy during the reforms of the early 1960's, including a prayer recited on Good Friday calling for the conversion of the Jews to belief in Jesus Christ. After a storm of protests from worldwide Jewish groups, Benedict personally rewrote the prayer in question, dropping such offensive lines as "Almighty God, You drive not even the Jews from your mercy…Hear our prayers for the blindess of that people (may be removed) by acknoweldging the light of your truth, which is Christ…that they may be rescued from their darkness." According to McManus, "The pope took out language that was negative in tone and placed the conversion idea at the end of the world; a time during which we believe there will be conversion of all human beings."
One of the Jewish leaders who attended the Washington meeting with Benedict XVI, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, described that event as "show rather than substance." But he noted, "In Vaticanese, show is very important. It is very significant that the Jewish leaders were not just lumped in as one of the constituencies represented at the interfaith meeeting, but were singled out for a separate encounter with the pope. Yes, that encounter was essentially about his wishing us Gut Yuntuv [Happy Holiday], but even that was significant because if we were to be converted to Catholicism [as called for in the Good Friday prayer], our faith's holidays and traditons would be meaningless."
Foxman expressed satisfaction that Benedict not only amended the language in the "conversion prayer" prior to his arrival in the U.S. to eliminate esepecially objectionable phrases, but that he also recently put on the back burner an effort within the Vatican to accord sainthood to Pope Pius XII. Pius XII has been widely condemned in the Jewish community for allegedly having stood by silently during World War II while Adolph Hitler carried out the massacre of European Jewry. Foxman remarked, "While I still want the pope to say explicitely that the Vatican is not interested in converting Jews, I must acknowledge that everything that he has been saying and doing in the past few weeks has shown that he is intent on not changing trhe positive relationship with the Jewish people, established at Vatican II [in the early 1960's] and continued by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. Thus, it was not necessary for us to press the pope on these issues during our meeting in Washington. He knows exactly how we feel because we had already raised them publicly in recent weeks."
In comments after the Park East Synagogue event, Ronald Wurzberger, a trustee of the shul and a manufacturer of men's clothing, said, "It was tremendously exciting and deeply moving to receive the pope in our synagogue and see history being made."
Wurzberger's wife, Israeli-born and bred, Danielle Karten, commented, "It happens that I lost my youngest brother, Sharon, who was kidnapped by terrorists while serving in the IDF. Seeing the pope in shul today gave me hope that despite the bitter experience I went through, perhaps it is possible, after all, for different religions to live together." The couple's 9-year-old son, also named Sharon, said, "It was amazing to see the pope and get to sing to him. He was about to leave the synagogue but then I waved to him and he came over to the choir and talked to us. I got to shake his hand, which was a big thrill."
Herman Hochberg, president of the Park East Synagogue, hailed the event as a "truly momentous occasion," and brushed off questions from the media as to whether the pope's brief speech had been of a too-general nature. "I believe it was a major step for him to come to a synagogue in the U.S.," Hochberg said. "The scholars in both faiths already understand the positive developments between the Vatican and the Jewish community over the past 45 years, but an event like this one brings home that awareness to lay people in both communities."
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