A Jubilee For All Time [Hardcover]

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council formally issued a historic document titled Nostra Aetate (In Our Time). It was an attempt to frame the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish people. Never before had an ecumenical council attempted such a task. The landmark document issued by the Council and proclaimed by Pope Paul VI precipitated a Copernican revolution in Catholic-Jewish relations and started a process that has spread to the Protestant and Orthodox worlds as well. This volume, consisting of essays and reflections by Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Jewish scholars and theologians, by pastors and professors from the United States, Canada, Ireland, Great Britain, and Israel, is an evaluation of what Nostra Aetate has accomplished thus far and how Christian-Jewish relations must proceed in building bridges of respect, understanding, and trust between the faith groups. A Jubilee for All Times serves as a source of discussion, learning, and dialogue for scholars, students and intelligent laypersons who believe that we must create a positive relationship between Judaism and Christianity. The document Nostra Aetate, issued at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, changed the relationship of Jews and Christians more profoundly than any event in the two-thousand-year encounter of those two communities of faith. Now as we near the fiftieth anniversary of that document, Gilbert Rosenthal offers us a veritable banquet in the form of A Jubilee for All Time. Like any good celebration, it offers us significant food for thought and the company of some of the foremost thinkers about Jewish-Christian relations. This is an invitation well worth accepting. --Daniel Polish, rabbi, Congregation Shir Chadash, Poughkeepsie, NY Combining personal reflections, historical observations, practical pedagogy, and theological sensitivity, the authors of this marvelous collection celebrate Nostra Aetate, even as they continue its work. --Amy-Jill Levinlãb