Jewish leaders said they hope Pope Benedict XVI's visit to a Cologne synagogue will help improve Catholic-Jewish relations.
"We hope that the visit will be a sign for the future," said Michael Rado, a member of the board of the Cologne synagogue, which the pope is scheduled to visit Aug. 19.
"In spite of the efforts of the church in recent years, there is still anti-Semitism based on religious grounds in the minds of some people. If the pope takes the step of visiting a synagogue, it will make once more clear that the movement in the church is away from such anti-Semitism," he said.
Synagogue board member Ebi Lehrer said the fact that it is a German pope who is visiting is not a major issue.
"We see him as the pope, as the head of the Catholic Church, and not so much as a German," he said. "Perhaps it even makes it easier for him to visit a community in his home country."
"We're here not just as the Cologne community, but as the Jewish people," said Rabbi Natanael Teitelbaum. He said although there will be speeches and some liturgical texts with not much time for conversation, the two sides will be able to demonstrate mutual respect.
"We can all learn from each other, not necessarily about religious issues, but about other issues, like how to live together, or the moral issues which we must all hold to, or the issue of peace. We have to work together, not just with speeches, but actions," he said.
Shortly after Pope Benedict was elected, the Cologne Jewish community wrote a message of congratulations and said its members would be happy to greet him when he visited the city for World Youth Day. The pope is due to be in Cologne Aug. 18-21.
"We are very happy that he accepted the invitation," Lehrer said.
The Cologne community is the oldest recorded Jewish community north of the Alps, with documents confirming its existence in A.D. 321. It suffered severely from anti-Semitic persecution during the Middle Ages, and for many years Jews were not allowed to live in the city.
Religious anti-Semitism was one of the sources for the racist anti-Semitism of the Nazis, who destroyed the Cologne community as well as much of the rest of European Jewry. During the Holocaust, 11,000 Cologne Jews were killed. After the war, the community was rebuilt and now numbers 5,000 members, of whom nearly 4,000 have come from the former Soviet Union over the last 15 years.
Hans Hermann Henrix, director of the Catholic Academy in Aachen and consultant to the German bishops and the Vatican on Catholic-Jewish issues, said he does see a certain significance in the fact that a German pontiff, Pope Benedict, will visit the synagogue.
"It's an expression of the significance of Jewish existence in German history, and this is especially meaningful after the horrible experience that we have had in the last century," he said. "The fact that the German Pope Benedict will visit the synagogue of Cologne has its own force, but the path was already trodden by John Paul II, and this pope will confirm that commitment from his own perspective and with his own personality."
Pope John Paul was the first pope in nearly 2,000 years to visit a synagogue when he visited the Jewish community in Rome in 1986.
Henrix said he believes Pope Benedict's visit will help transmit Pope John Paul's message that relations are based on "solidarity, respect and even love."
"We have good structures for dialogue, especially here in Germany," he said, "but the reception needs deepening in the communities. Normal Catholics should realize it's not the private agenda of some people in our church, it's a characteristic attitude of the church itself." ---CNS
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