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April 8, 2005/Adar II 28 5765, Volume 57, No. 32
Pope was trailblazer for peace
ARTHUR SCHNEIER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
"When a righteous person dies it is as though all are considered to be his relatives."
The talmudic rabbis never imagined that those words would one day describe a pope. Yet that's precisely the legacy of Pope John Paul II.
Having first met the future pope in Warsaw in 1967, when he was still known as Karol Wojtyla, I am convinced that his worldview was shaped by having grown up a few miles from the hell on earth that was Auschwitz.
As a Holocaust survivor, I was touched by Wojtyla's sensitivity to the Shoah and its lessons for the preservation of civilization.
When he was pope, he never forgot and never let the world forget. In his travels to European countries with decimated Jewish populations, he would affirm "anti-Semitism as the greatest sin against humanity."
While President Ronald Reagan was the political force behind communism's downfall, it was John Paul, traumatized by communism's suppression of freedom and religion, who provided the spiritual authority: His message to "be not afraid" inspired the oppressed masses to bring down the walls of tyranny.
John Paul was a trailblazer. He was the first pope to enter a synagogue, visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and establish diplomatic ties with the State of Israel. But it was his visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem that stands out.
For 2,000 years Christians saw the destruction of the Temple as God's punishment of the Jewish people.
John Paul prayed at the Kotel. As he put a note into one of its nooks and did teshuvah, or repentance, for the Catholic Church's wrongs against the Jewish people, a viewer could not help but realize the social and theological significance of his actions.
He was telling the world that a new age was on the horizon, one in which Jew and Christian could live side by side, respecting each other's differences and together helping to perfect an imperfect world.
As we mourn the loss of John Paul II, a friend of the Jewish people, we bid him shalom. Peace be with you and the glorious legacy you have given this world.
Rabbi Arthur Schneier is president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation and spiritual leader of Park East Synagogue in New York City.
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