CHRISTIANS AND JEWS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21863, 17 August 1936, Page 2

CHRISTIANS AND JEWS

AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM BISHOP APPEALS FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING The promotion of a better understanding between Christians and Jews is the principal work directed by fee Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt. Rev. Dr. G. F. Graham-Brown, who is now visiting Christchurch. Dr. Graham-Brown, in explaining fee missionary work of the church in Palestine during an interview yesterday, suggested that the existing differences between Jews and Christians were more fee fault of the Christian people than of the Jews, and said that the Church had taken upon e very difficult task in its attempt to promote a better understanding betweerv them. Bishop Graham-Brown said that m 1935 62 000 Jews returned to Palestine. The Jewish population, was now reckoned at 375,000 and it was claimed by some Jews that more than £100,000,000 had been used in one way or another towards the establishment of the national home, but it was not true that the Jews were returning as a nation to Palestine. The Jew had ever been a neighbour to the Christian, the Bishop said, but Christian people had not learned to fulfil fee second commandment mat they should love others as they loved themselves. As the Jew entered Palestine he left fee ghetto life and enjoyed a freedom he never had in Christian nations. Attitude of Jews Palestine had become the key P°?i* tion for the Christian Church m its endeavour to bear witness to the Jew. The flower of Hebrew intellectual thought was centred in Jerusalem, and these men were prepared to revise their views towards Christ, though he doubted whether they would revise their attitude towards the Christian Church. x ... That, he said, was not so much the fault of fee Jews as of the Christians. The Christians had never tried to bear witness to the Jews as they should. The whole Christian Church must be prepared to face this problem. One in every 15 persons in America was a Jew, and there were nine times as many Jews in New York as there were in Palestine. Christians must try to break down the barriers and overcome the isolation in which the Jew found himself. The Church must break down the Christian ingrained apathy to the Jew. Problems of fee Church The problem confronting the Christian Church in its missionary work in Jerusalem, the Bishop said, was how to open and keep open channels of Christian influence which would take the place of old channels. It was necessary to create means of contact between Christian and Jewish persons and ideals. It was necessary to remove from Jews misconceptions which they had long held, sometimes unfortunately with good reason, and to instil into the bulk of the Christian flock a better understanding of the Jews and a more sympathetic realisation of Jewish difficulties in life and Christianity’s part in Jewish history. These, Bishop Graham-Brown said, were nbt easy tasks, and the course of present-day social and political changes was making them daily more difficult.