Chance to Meet With Pope Viewed as Breakthrough by Jewish Leaders

American Jewish leaders, meeting Friday in New York to prepare an agenda for talks with Pope John Paul II and top Vatican officials, said the invitation to discuss issues that have created sharp tensions in Catholic-Jewish relations is a unique breakthrough.

Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of New York, director of international relations for the American Jewish Committee, said in a telephone interview that the willingness of the Pope to talk with Jewish leaders about a broad range of issues on a worldwide scale “man-to-man, heart-to-heart,” is “unprecedented.”

“It has never done before in history, to my knowledge,” Tanenbaum said. “It’s a very encouraging sign.”

The first projected meeting, which Tanenbaum said will “take the better part of a day,” will cover the Nazi Holocaust, anti-Semitism, the sensitivities of Jews to Hitler’s so-called “final solution”--the German leader’s plan to exterminate the Jewish population--and the “fallout of the Waldheim affair,” Tanenbaum said. A second session will be held the following day.

Jewish leaders worldwide were outraged over the Pope’s audience on June 25 with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, who has been accused of complicity in Nazi war crimes during World War II and of attempting to cover up his wartime activities.

The invitation for the Vatican meeting between Jewish leaders and the Pope followed overtures by Jewish and Catholic authorities in Rome and the United States last month when it appeared that the furor over the Waldheim affair might seriously harm Catholic-Jewish relations. Some Jewish leaders had threatened to withdraw from participation in two interfaith dialogues with the Pope when he visits the United States Sept. 10-19 unless such a meeting was arranged.

The touchy matter of the Vatican not extending full diplomatic relations to the Jewish state of Israel will be discussed with the Pope, Tanenbaum said. The issue has generally been avoided in meetings between Jewish leaders and the pontiff.

Said Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress: “Part of the problem in the Catholic-Jewish dialogue is it has has been superficial or ceremonial in nature. The meetings are often two monologues where the Pope reads a statement and Jewish leaders read a statement. The upcoming meeting in a sense may be a breakthrough . . . because . . . it represents an elevation to the political and social plane on which we will be operating.”

The dates of the two-day meeting have not been set, but will be at the end of August or the first of September. Tanenbaum said “about eight” Jewish leaders and an equal number of Vatican officials including Cardinal Jan Willebrands, head of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state, will attend the first session.

Willebrands extended the invitation through Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, by telephone on Tuesday.

Tanenbaum said Casaroli proposed that the Jewish delegation include Waxman; Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, president of the Synagogue Council of America; Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, and Tanenbaum.

The second session will include the Pope and last an hour to 90 minutes, according to Tanenbaum, who added that there “will be no prepared statements and no conditions attached.”