Home Home / Letter from Dr. Dienstag about "The Cas…

Correspondence

Apr. 20, 1967

Letter from Dr. Dienstag about "The Case Against Dialogue" (1967)

Interfaith
View The Text

This content is currently available in its original PDF format. As we expand the library, we plan to add a text version as well.

RELATED CONTENT

Article

The Case Against Dialogues (1967)

Dr. Jacob Agus’ advocacy of “The Case for Dialogues” (NJM September 1966) is a welcome relief from the torrent of saccharine and slightly breathless propaganda to which we have been subjected these last several years by the professional “dialogicians” who have taken it upon themselves to represent “the Jewish side” in addressing the Christian community. Dr. Agus’ presentation is calm, reasoned, and persuasive — albeit, in my opinion, his thesis is fundamentally and even dangerously wrong. To a large extent, we have become the willing victims of semantic legerdemain. I confess to being bewildered at the sudden urgency with which “dialogue” is being pressed upon us, and wonder in what essential ways it is different from intelligent conversation which we have carried on in the past. I suspect that for some people, to whom we shall return later in this article, the word is not much more than a linguistic disguise for the old "good will” activities which I thought we had hopefully outgrown. Yet words have fashions and fates, and the recent prominence given to “dialogue” in the writings of Martin Buber, and the recommendation of “fraternal dialogues” in the Vatican schema, have made it an acceptable “in” term. "EVERYTHING IS RISKED" Certainly this is not the sense that Dr. Agus seeks to convey in his article. Were it nothing more than the old, vacuous, superficial camaraderie with a face-lifting, it would merit neither the determined opposition nor even the worried attention given to it by those of us who dissent from the popular trend. I prefer to think that by "dialogue” its serious proponents mean more than polite interfaith conversation or interreligious scholarly colloquia, both of which have not been lacking in the past. Dialogue means a two-way logos, the encounter of the most intimate and cherished commitments. Dialogue is a total engagement of two personalities, a no-holds-barred confrontation in which everything is risked, no predetermined results assured, and …
Interfaith

Correspondence

Letter from R. Joseph Lookstein about "The Case Against Dialogue" (1967)

My dear Rabbi Lamm: Thank you for sending me the reprint of your article on the subject of the Dialogue. I read it with a great deal of interest, and I am in full agreement with your position. A very happy and kosher Passover to you. Very cordially yours, Joseph H. Lookstein, JHL
Interfaith

Correspondence

Letter to Isidore Bookbinder about "The Case Against Dialogue" (1967)

Dear Is: I was truly delighted to hear from you, and not at all displeased to receive your gracious and enthusiastic endorsement of ray views on Dialogue. Your neighbor, Msgr. [redacted], is a real ״tachshit.״ In two previous articles I had done for Jewish Life, I made a number of references to him and his overt missionary efforts. We are in complete agreement on this point. Once again, my devoted thanks and my warmest personal regards – as well as from Mindy and my folks – to you and yours.I look forward to not only hearing from you again, but to meeting you personally. Of course, if you decide to attend the Talmud lectures next year, plG., it will be a great source of pleasure to me.Warmest regards,Cordially yours,Rabbi Norman LammRNL/fz
Interfaith