For Jews, interfaith activity has been conducted primarily with Christians. Dialogue with Islam---or trialogue among the three---has been very limited, partly because of the nature of Islam, which does not encourage such relations, and partly because of the issue of the State of Israel, which is basic to both sides and on which compromise has not been reached. On the other hand, the dialogue between Judaism and Christianity has become a significant feature of Jewish and Christian life in the Western world since World War II.
Prior to that war, there was virtually no interfaith activity. Western Jewish thinkers from the time of the Emancipation, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, had shown an openness to Christianity, culminating in the teachings of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber, who saw both Judaism and Christianity as valid roads to God. There was no parallel movement on the Christian side, where the churches continued to maintain their anti-Jewish teachings and prayers.
Christian thinking changed only as a result of the impact of the Holocaust. It was realized that centuries of Christian anti-Jewish indoctrination had contributed to an atmosphere in which the Holocaust became possible. This led, over the following decades, to basic revisions in Christian thinking on the subject, especially in the Catholic and mainline Protestant churches (the Eastern Orthodox churches ignored the subject, set in their traditional ways).
For the Catholic Church, the turning point began with the adoption of the Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions) by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Abandoning the long-held Church doctrine of the continuing responsibility of the entire Jewish people for the death of Jesus, it inaugurated a process in which it removed anti-Jewish teachings from Catholic prayers and textbooks, ceased its missions to convert Jews, condemned Anti-Semitism, and fostered Christian-Jewish relations throughout the world. The Protestant Churches moved in a similar direction, although due to lack of the monolithic structure of the Catholic Church, there have been variations among them. Thus, for example, not all have abandoned missions to the Jews, and certain Protestant circles continue to ascribe the dispersion of the Jews and the supposed termination of the Jewish role in the Divine scheme to the rejection of the messiahship of Jesus.
The new Christian thinking has evoked various Jewish responses. In general, Jews have welcomed the new openness and have entered into dialogue and interfaith activities. Abraham Joshua Heschel pointed out that common concern for the world has replaced the mutual isolation of the respective faith communities. Heschel stressed the interdependence of all men of faith in view of the challenges of atheism and nihilism. Reservations about interfaith activities have been expressed in Orthodox circles, notably by Joseph Dov Soloveichik, who opposed any faith dialogue on the grounds that the inner life of faith must not be exposed to interreligious encounters. However, he approved dialogue directed to humanitarian and common cultural concerns. An extreme viewpoint has been put forth by Eliezer Berkovits, who finds dialogue futile in the light of the Christian historical record, culminating in the Holocaust. Other Jews have expressed their suspicions of dialogue for what they believe is the hidden agenda of Christians who continue---by the nature of Christianity---to hope for the eventual conversion of the Jews.
A frequently recurring obstacle in the Jewish-Christian dialogue is the State of Israel. Jews believe an appreciation of the position of Israel in Jewish self-determination to be paramount. The Catholic attitude (including the continuing refusal of the Holy See to establish diplomatic relations with Israel) is officially based on political and pragmatic considerations, but Jewish suspicions of the residues of the theological objection to the Jews' return to Zion have not been fully allayed. Many of the Protestant Churches tend to be highly critical of Israeli policies, while traces of the doctrine of dispersion also affect their attitudes. Evangelical churches have been highly supportive of Israel because the return of the Jews to the Promised Land accords with their own eschatological expectations, which also include great hopes of Jewish conversion to Christianity.
While theological issues prevail in the dialogue of elites, the main progress of interfaith relations is to be seen at the grassroots level. Rabbi, priest, and minister frequently work together on social issues and in promoting mutual understanding, with joint Christian-Jewish activities, visits to one another's houses of worship, etc. An important role in breaking stereotypes has been played by the media, which have brought Jews, Jewish history, and Jewish religious life into the homes of millions who would otherwise never have encountered a Jew and whose concept of Judaism had been fashioned by anti-Jewish teaching, especially of a religious nature.
Theologically, one of the most encouraging developments is that the two sides no longer look upon each other as objects. There is an awareness that the dialogue has limits with ultimate barriers on either side that cannot be overcome. There is also an assymetry between the Jewish and the Christian approach. For Christians, the relationship to Judaism has elements of dependency and causality absent from the Jewish relationship to Christianity. Jews for their part have special expectations, often motivated more by history than by theology.
A basic premise for Jewish participants in the dialogue is that the new understanding be founded on the self-definition of the other, which each side seeks to comprehend but not to change, and that the dialogue is entered into with the acceptance of the principle of equality.
