Psalm 87 may be interpreted many ways, but for Rev. Petra Heldt, Ph.D., Lutheran pastor and director of the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity in Israel, it contains “something very precious.”
The psalm offers a theological way to understand the relationship between Judaism, Christianity and the modern state of Israel, she said.
Moreover, in her talk on Dec. 8 about “Peoples of God and God’s People Israel: The Relationship between the Churches and Israel,” Heldt set this understanding against “forces that are trying to divide Jews and Christians.”
These forces, she said, are seen in two endeavors: the development of a “liberation theology” that “replaces the people of Israel” with Palestinian nationalism; and the movement to get Protestant movement churches to divest from Israel.
Speaking to about 50 people at Bay Shore Lutheran Church, at an event co-sponsored by the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, the American Jewish Committee-Milwaukee Chapter, and the church, Heldt first analyzed the psalm.
At one point, the psalm states how “it shall be said of Zion, ‘Every man was born there’” (verse 5); but later says that God will “register” or “inscribe” those who were born there (verse 6).
To Heldt, these verses describe two groups of people: The first are Christians who are the “peoples of God” symbolically born in Jerusalem; and the second are the Jews who are “God’s people” actually born in the land of Israel.
And both peoples are “called by God” to perform a common task of “renewal” of humanity, “based on God’s actions, not those of man,” a task that makes both “eschatological communities” (i.e., communities concerned with the ultimate fate of humanity) that are “preparing for redemption.”
However, the Palestinian “liberation theology” is a “distortion of the word of God” that has become increasingly influential, she said. This is particularly articulated in the book “Justice and Only Justice” (Orbis Books, 1989) by Rev. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Anglican priest who directs the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
Heldt said that Ateek, among other things, tries in the book to negate the Jewish connection to the land of Israel by pointing out that many key Jewish historical and religious/holiday events happened outside the land — Passover took place in Egypt, the giving of the Torah in the Sinai Peninsula, the Babylonian Talmud was compiled there (Heldt pointed out that Ateek neglected to mention the Jerusalem Talmud), etc.
Heldt said that other Protestant theologians, like Karl Barth, have a far more “wonderful record” in their views of Israel; but “I cannot understand why these people are not more read.”
In addition to this, the divestment efforts, like that of the Presbyterian Church USA in 2004, have “terrible effects,” she said. They not only cause Protestant Christians in Israel to be “looked at as fools,” but they often divide the rank and file from the leaders in the hierarchy.
Both these efforts do “no good” for the Palestinians, and are “instrumental in the slow motion self-destruction of the Christian community,” she said.
Moreover, Heldt, a native of Germany, said that at least one German Protestant group “took a clear stand” against divestment, saying in effect that “We’ve already gone through a ‘Don’t buy from Jews’” campaign and “we don’t want to again,” she said.
According to a pamphlet Heldt provided, the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity was founded in 1966 “to deepen the Christian relationship with Jews, Judaism and Israel,” “to draw together the different Christian traditions into a theological fraternity,” and “to be a catalyst in Christian-Jewish dialogue and reconciliation worldwide.” MORE STORIES
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