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Speech in honour of Rabbi Rosen by Walter Cardinal Kasper
Our modern era has been marked by immense change and has also seen a fundamental shift in relations between Jews and Christians, between Jews and the Catholic Church. Since the groundbreaking declaration Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council, of which in these days we are celebrating the 40th anniversary, these relations have developed on the basis of a new understanding. The Council deplored every form of anti-Semitism and emphasised the Jewish roots of Christianity.
This change can be related to real people, including many names from our own respective traditions. They are the names of men and women who have prepared and worked for this breakthrough and the names of those who have passed on the torch of collaboration and friendship by working patiently and with courage. Among them is the name of the person we are honouring this evening in a special way: Rabbi David Rosen.
His biography has a very international character and is marked by an ongoing commitment in the field of interreligious dialogue. His activities are so numerous that it is hard to enumerate them in the short time I am allowed to speak here.
David Rosen was born and educated in Great Britain, continuing his advanced rabbinic studies in Israel, where he received his ordination. After his military service and having served as a Chaplain to the forces he was from 1975-79 the Senior Rabbi of the largest Jewish congregation in South Africa and also the chairman of the Inter-Faith Forum, the Council of Jews, Christians and Muslims. From 1979 to 1985 he was the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, where he founded, together with the Christian Primates of Ireland, the Irish Council of Christians and Jews.
He returned to Israel in 1985 to take up the appointment of Dean at the Sapir Centre for Jewish Education and Culture in Old City of Jerusalem, later becoming professor of Jewish Studies at the Jerusalem Centre for Near Eastern Studies.
Having served as the Anti-Defamation League's Director of Interfaith Relations in Israel in 1997 he was appointed Director of the Anti-Defamation Israel office.
Rabbi David Rosen is a founder of the Interreligious Co-ordinating Council in Israel (ICCI) that embraces more than seventy organisations involved in interfaith relations. He is a member of the Permanent Bilateral Commission of the State of Israel and the Holy See created after the establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1994. He serves as a member of the Chief Rabbinate's Commission for the dialogue with the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.
On the international level, he is President of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP) and a charter member of the International Advisory Committee of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions (CPWR). He is honorary President of the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ), the umbrella organisation for nearly 40 national bodies promoting Christian-Jewish relations. Since August 2005 he has been the President of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), which oversees interfaith activities. The Holy See's "Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews" has organised since 1971 conferences with the IJCIC in different cities around the world, the last taking place in Buenos Aires in July 2004.
In pursuing his important responsibilities, Rabbi David Rosen has participated in many significant international meetings. I would mention only two in particular: the Interfaith Summit in Alexandria and the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi in 2002. In Alexandria the Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders issued a landmark declaration which condemned violence in the name of religion as a desecration of religion itself. They pleaded for co-existence in the Holy Land in a respectful and peaceful way. In Assisi terror and violence were condemned as an offence to God and the whole of humanity.
These responsibilities and commitments are very impressive, but they do not tell us a lot about his personal style in undertaking the task of promoting reconciliation and peace. I admire the capacity of Rabbi Rosen, like all the rabbis that I know, to explain difficult and tricky things by telling compelling stories from the Bible and the Talmud. One example comes to mind that I heard in September 2005 in Lyon where together with him I participated in a meeting organised by the community of Sant'Egidio. David Rosen told the well-known story of the Genesis of Abraham, our common father in faith (Gen 18), recounting how the patriarch received three men as guests and prepared for them a meal. After the meeting it was clear that these men were angels. According to a Jewish interpretation, Abraham is an example of hospitality, an example of the co-existence of peoples, cultures and religions in an respectful and peaceful way.
Through this story Rabbi Rosen expressed his main intention: promoting a culture of peaceful co-existence. For me it is more than a humanistic intention, it is an expression of a common motif of the Jewish and the Christian tradition, it has to do with the "Imitatio Dei". Together we are adoring God who is compassionate and merciful, and who is the father of all human beings. The culture of co-existence should be realised in the land that all of us call the Holy Land, and the culture of living together in friendship and peace should have its first place in Jerusalem, the city of peace.
For his numerous merits in promoting a culture of co-existence and peace
the "Mount Zion Foundation" is honouring David Rosen with the
"Mount Zion Award 2005". My best congratulations! Shalom!
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