Madame Ambassador by Herzl Tova;

Author:Herzl, Tova;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Christianity

Get Me To the Church on Time

Haunted as they are by memories of crusades, inquisitions, and blood libels, for generations Jews avoided voluntary contact with the Church, its officeholders, and its buildings. The boycott has shrunk but still exists in some circles, whose adherents refrain from entering churches.

Well, I love churches! Sleepy country churches, deep, heavy crusader churches, elegant Catholic, ornate Eastern, soaring, stained-glass-illuminated churches—it doesn’t matter; they all interest me, many thrill me. It was a treat to have worked as a tour guide in Israel, with its unparalleled variety, and then to have switched to a career that exposed me to more abroad.

However, I helped with the postmortem publication of my father’s book, Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry, to which he dedicated his last years, and I am conscious of past and present issues. Dealing professionally with churches was challenging, but work is work.

In September 1993, a few weeks after I became Israel’s Ambassador to Latvia, Pope John Paul II traveled to the Baltic countries. It was his first trip to the former Soviet Union. Although Lithuania is predominantly Catholic, Estonia and Latvia have Protestant majorities, and the visit was not entirely pastoral. It was largely designed to pay homage to the populations of three small countries for the role they played in overthrowing the dual tyranny of atheism and communism.

Latvia was new to statehood. The impending visit was cause for elaborate organization. Detailed plans were reported in the press; it was enthusiastically discussed everywhere. At the same time, I was new to ambassadorhood. Everything I did was a novelty. No wonder that the entire experience, not only its religious aspects, is imprinted in my mind.

The Latvian Foreign Ministry invited all foreign ambassadors to attend much of the pontifical program. What concerned me most was this: What will I do at the event in Riga Cathedral when everyone around me will kneel? We Jews do not kneel, certainly not in church. Remain seated? That will not show respect for the faith of others. Stand? And stick out more? Obviously not. I had no choice but to wait and see. To my relief, at no point during those proceedings, or at any other church service I attended thereafter, was that an issue. When some knelt, many remained seated.

What allowed me to focus on my knees and push away my bigger historical discomfort was that Pope John Paul II did much for reconciliation between our faiths, including by highlighting the origins of Christianity as Judaism’s younger sister. I suppressed thoughts such as what would my ultra-Orthodox grandparents feel if they saw me entering churches of my free will.

Maybe they would understand that in some cases it was to satisfy cultural interest. In others, it was dictated by the demands of my position, and let me presumptuously add, for the good of the Jewish state. I was an Israeli diplomat who served in countries with Christian majorities. Religion had an important presence. Ignoring that would be a disservice to my employer, the Israeli taxpayer.

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