The Views of Rabbi Moses Feinstein, Rabbi Abraham Joshua ...

Contemporary Implications
The approaches toward interfaith dialogue advocated by Feinstein, Soloveitchik
and Heschel provide a useful framework for grappling with Christian-Jewish relations in
modern times. It can be somewhat difficult to accept a one-size-fits-all approach for
determining how Jews should relate to the Christian world. In September 2000, a number
of Jewish academics, philosophers, and theologians living in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Canada, and Israel signed a document known as Dabru Emet (Speak
the Truth), ―A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity.‖
A number of
interpretations of the positions of the rabbis mentioned in the present thesis have been
offered, programs facilitating Christian-Jewish learning have been established, and a
variety of books on the subject of interfaith dialogue have been written. There are even
texts that have been, or are in the process of being, written that offer compilations of
biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern approaches from which Jews in our day can
construct, individually and collectively, systematic theological conceptions of other
religions if they so choose.
I agree and disagree with certain aspects of the positions toward interfaith
dialogue discussed in the present thesis. I believe that Feinstein‘s position is somewhat
extreme in terms of the terminology employed to describe those Christians and Jews who
seem to be genuinely interested in religious reconciliation, especially given the existence
of alternative rabbinic interpretations regarded as equally authoritative as, but less hostile
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