c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Rabbi A. James Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED_ I’m probably one of the few Jews who has attended Good Friday services each of the last 15 years.

I follow the same drill every year: At the beginning of Holy Week, I randomly choose a Roman Catholic or Protestant church in New York to visit, but never tell the minister or priest that I am coming. And I always sit in the back of the church.

These visits have taught me first-hand how profoundly Good Friday affects Christian worshipers, who commemorate the death in Jerusalem of a 33-year-old Jewish man at the hands of a brutal Roman occupation army.

There is always a heavy silence at a Good Friday service, not unlike the stillness that accompanies another holy day of intense introspection, Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. For the faithful Christian, Good Friday is a mystical leap across nearly 20 centuries to another time and place.

Good Friday forces Christians to ask what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? Who, what, why, where is God? Clearly, Good Friday can inspire and enrich their lives.

But for me, Good Friday is a spiritual and liturgical barometer that accurately measures how Christians perceive Jews and Judaism. I have attended services where the clergy utilized the New Testament Book of John in an incendiary way to indict, prosecute, judge, and convict Jews for killing Jesus, for being”Christ-killers.” Whenever I attend such hostile services, I painfully recall the poignant stories my grandfather told me of the Good Fridays he remembered as a youngster before he fled his East European home for the freedom and security of America. For him, Christianity’s most solemn day was always a time of dread.

My grandfather described how Christians in his community would each year rush from their churches at the conclusion of Good Friday services to do harm, sometimes to murder and rape their Jewish neighbors. Tragically, fiery Good Friday sermons frequently provided a religious mandate to assault Jews.

Because my grandfather was a young child when he experienced the Good Friday attacks, he never forgot the pillage of his centuries-old community of faith. He remained deeply perplexed, even angered, by the Christian religion that on the one hand proudly proclaimed universal love and peace, but which also provoked a murderous reaction among its adherents.

He never resolved this contradiction, and toward the end of his life, he simply stopped trying.

But, happily, I have attended Good Friday services that were totally free of anti-Jewish animus or venom. The clergy at those services, both Catholic and Protestant, fully recognized the potency of Good Friday and its particular ability to transmit toxic language and attitudes about Jews.

But they also understood their responsibility to prevent that from happening, while still fully affirming their Christian faith.

One minister graphically described the challenge that thoughtful clergy face on Good Friday.”If I do not handle the liturgy and sermons carefully,”he said,”it can poison my congregation and provide religious justification for hating Jews. It’s like dealing with radioactive material.” I have been at some services where the stirring music, the Good Friday liturgy, and Bible readings, including the”seven last words”of Jesus were not employed to bash Jews and Judaism. Instead, the congregation was inspired to move toward spiritual liberation.

I always contact the officiating clergy a few days after Good Friday and Easter, applauding those who have adopted the constructive teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the various Protestant documents that repudiate the”Christ-killer”charge and offer positive new ways to interpret the Book of John and the death of Jesus.

And, of course, I also speak with the clergy who continue to perpetuate an anti-Jewish bias in their Good Friday services. In many cases, those priests and ministers are genuinely surprised when I offer my strong critique because they are frequently unaware of the malevolent impact of their messages.

One minister lamely confessed:”That’s what I learned in seminary about the Jews, and I’ve never thought about it since.”I replied by asking if he would use physicians who”never thought”about new insights and knowledge following their medical school education.

This Good Friday, I’ll be in a Protestant church. I wonder what I’ll hear?

MJP END RNS