Rabbi Leon Klenicki, RIP

We received word today that Rabbi Leon Klenicki, a pioneer of Catholic—Jewish relations, died yesterday . Rabbi Klenicki and Father Neuhaus co-authored Believing Today: Jew and Christian in Conversation . As its title suggests, the book is a conversation between the two of them written in dialogue form. Its introduction ends with a summary of their vision of that dialogue, and of interreligious dialogue in general:

At the risk of being misunderstood, we should say at the outset that our primary aim in publishing this book is not to advance the Jewish—Christian dialogue. Our primary aim is to advance the argument that, if Jews and Christians who are “believers today” are more faithfully Jewish and more faithfully Christian, the dialogue will take care of itself. Put differently, the dialogue is not something that is in addition to being Jewish and Christian; it is an integral part of being Jewish and Christian today. The dialogue is not a hobbyhorse for “people who happen to be interested in that sort of thing.” We are called to this enterprise by God, and it is his enterprise before it is ours. The dialogue is most fully served by our becoming more fully Christian and more fully Jewish. It is served by our disagreements as well as by our agreements. In sum, we think that the late Abraham Joshua Heschel put it well when he said, “Interfaith dialogue begins with faith.”

Rabbi Klenicki, rest in peace.