Why should catholics avoid all contact with Jews?

Answer 1

Currently, the Catholic Church supports Nostra Aetate and therefore believes that Catholics should have warm and constructive relations with Jews, including a ban on trying to convert Jews to Catholicism. As such, at present, there is no reason for Catholics to avoid contact with Jews.

Historically, the Catholic Church taught that Jews were ritually impure and there were a number of decrees made by European Kings specifically rebuking this impurity, such as the law by Polish King Boleslaw the Pious that Jews were permitted to touch bread (in contrast to the Catholic teaching at the time that if a Jew touched bread that he would "contaminate it"). It was also argued that since Jews did not have correct beliefs about Jesus and salvation that a Catholic could, while talking to a Jew, lose his faith in Christ and, therefore, his eternal salvation. As a result, conversation with Jews was to be limited a priori in order to prevent such a loss of faith. Of course, in today's day and age, we know that Jews who touch food do not contaminate it in any way and we know that simply having interfaith dialogues does not turn the participants into members of the other religion.

In recent history, especially in the Middle East and Europe, Jews and Catholics have consistently worked together to advocate for each others' rights. In the Lebanese Civil War, Israel, the Jewish State, fought alongside the Lebanese Phalangists, the Maronite Catholic Army. As the current Assyrian Christian Genocide rages in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, it has been Jewish leaders like French Chief Rabbi Haïm Korsia who have been clear that what the Assyrians are facing is a genocide based on their faith. (Assyrians consist of a number of different Christian denominations, but there are Chaldean Catholics and Syriac Catholics among them.) Conversely, the Catholic Popes have taken strong stands against Jew-hatred and incitement across Europe, especially as such sentiments have been growing in Europe.

Answer 2

They should not, and that question has no validity. Next.

Answer 3

Catholics and Jews believe in the same God, so they have a lot in common and should be friends.