JERUSALEM — Give the pope credit for what he said rather than criticism for what he didn’t, say a number of Jewish leaders.
For many, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church standing in the Jewish state to express sadness for Christian contributions to Jewish persecution was a moving sight.
But did Pope John Paul II utter the combination of words that would tell the Jewish people, a half-century later, not only that the church is saddened — but also sorry for its silence during the Holocaust?
In a memorial ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem on March 23, the pope spoke somberly.
“I have come to Yad Vashem to pay homage to the millions of Jewish people who, stripped of everything, especially of their human dignity, were murdered in the Holocaust,” the pope said. “More than half a century has passed, but the memories remain.”
The 79-year-old pontiff was clearly touched by those recollections, noting that “my own personal memories are of all that happened when the Nazis occupied Poland during the war.”
His nine-minute speech broke no new ground in the realm of theology, but his historic presence at Yad Vashem was nevertheless seen by his supporters as the culmination of his 22-year campaign to reconcile Catholics and Jews.
“I assure the Jewish people that the Catholic church, motivated by the Gospel law of truth and love and by no political considerations, is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place,” he said.
Many Jewish groups and leaders said the pope could have gone further during his long-awaited speech at Yad Vashem.
Rabbi David Rosen, director of the Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League and a veteran interfaith activist, said he would have been pleased if the pope had used stronger language about the Holocaust and issued a call for repentance for the church’s silence during that period.
“Nevertheless, it was a very important moment,” Rosen said. “The significance of the event was that it happened.”
Rosen and other Jewish leaders say Jews should acknowledge the contributions of Pope John Paul II to Jewish-Catholic reconciliation and how far the Vatican has come in acknowledging its history of anti-Semitism.
“The drumbeat of negative criticism over the last month” gives the impression that “what was omitted was more important than what was included” in the pope’s recent comments on the church’s role in fostering anti-Semitism, said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations.
The pope’s speech at Yad Vashem was watched closely, coming just weeks after the pope issued a broad apology for sins committed by the church throughout the ages. That speech, delivered at the Vatican, included sins against the Jews, but did not specifically mention the Holocaust.
Many who criticized those remarks for stopping short of a specific apology for the Holocaust had hoped to hear more from his speech at Yad Vashem.
“This apology was quite fine…but I wait for chapter No. 2,” Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau said.
The rabbi added that, while he realizes the pope could not criticize Pius XII, John Paul should have addressed the church’s silence.
Seymour Reich agreed. “We need the condemning of the silence of some during World War II, not for the victims, not for the survivors even, but for the future, for the young generations to come,” Lau said.
Likewise, Seymour Reich said the speech didn’t go far enough.
“I was disappointed that he did not address the silence of the church during the Holocaust,” said the chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, the main Jewish partner in formal dialogue with the Vatican.
“It was a lost opportunity. Maybe our expectations are higher than they should be, but they are still there and they haven’t been met,” Reich said after attending the Yad Vashem session.
But Rosen of the ADL believes that it was “unrealistic” for the pope to say anything more.
“Anybody who expected him to distance himself from the church or Pius XII doesn’t understand the theological frame of reference of this pope,” Rosen said.
Rabbi A. James Rudin, interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee, said the pope’s statement had “enormous power.”
“This is a denunciation and a repudiation of anyone, anywhere, who would minimize, trivialize or deny the reality of the Holocaust,” said Rudin, who was also in Jerusalem for the event.
Rudin added that the speech did not break any new ground, and some things were left unsaid. The next step, he said, would be for Jewish and Catholic scholars to fully explore all relevant Vatican documents relating to the wartime period.
At the memorial, Prime Minister Ehud Barak spoke of his grandparents Elka and Shmuel Godin, who were sent from Warsaw to their deaths in Treblinka. He also hailed the pontiff’s efforts in Christian-Jewish relations.
“You have done more than anyone else to bring about the historic change in the attitude of the church toward the Jewish people…and to dress the gaping wounds that festered over many bitter centuries. And I think I can say, your holiness, that your coming here today…is a climax of this historic journey of healing.”
Barak called the pope’s visit to Yad Vashem a “noble act” but said that healing will take time.
“The silence was not only from the heavens,” Barak said of the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust.
“It is impossible to overcome all the pains of the past overnight,” said Barak, calling for reconciliation between Jews and Christians. “It is our wish to continue productive dialogue on this issue, to work together to eliminate the scourge of racism and anti-Semitism.”
During the ceremony, Yad Vashem officials presented the pope with reproductions of illustrations of the Bible drawn by a Belgian Jewish painter who died in Auschwitz, but whose daughter survived.
The pope also met with Holocaust survivors, including a childhood friend, and a woman whom he aided while a young priest in Poland.
In a brief relaxation of protocol, immediately following the memorial service the pope was reunited with some 30 Jewish friends from his hometown of Wadowice, Poland, some of whom he has kept in touch with.
Also on Thursday, the pope met with Israel’s two chief rabbis at their offices in Jerusalem.
The rabbis presented the pope with a Bible, inscribed with a dedication from the book of the prophet Micah:
“For all the people who will walk, everyone in the name of his God, and we will walk in the name of the Lord, our God, forever and ever.”