RESOLUTION ON JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

WHEREAS the Gospel of God celebrated among us has come to us through the people of Israel; and

WHEREAS the God who we know as the God and Father of Jesus Christ is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendents; and

WHEREAS the call and promise of God to Israel has never been revoked; and

WHEREAS the Hebrew Scriptures are a precious treasure and word of God to us; and

WHEREAS Christians tend to be painfully ignorant of the faith, hopes, joys, sorrows and experiences of their Jewish sisters and brothers;

            BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

· Local LSM groups and individuals be urged and encouraged to initiate dialogue with Jewish sisters and brothers; and

· The LSM Council collect and disseminate material to local groups – including this resolution – to further Jewish-Christian dialogue; and with the goal of implementing a national study conference for Lutherans and Jews along lines similar to the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Study Conference of 1969 and that projected for 1976; and

· That LSM communicate by registered letter to the boards of publications of the three Lutheran bodies in the United States the recommendation that all materials of Christian education be reviewed by members of the Jewish Community so that inaccurate and scurrilous references to Jews to excise from our churches’ literature; and

· The same letter express the LSM’s desire that a course on the Holocaust¹ be prepared for the use in our churches; and

· Local LSM groups seek ways to celebrate Yom Ha Shoah (The Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust) with their Jewish sisters and brothers as an event in Christian as well as Jewish history.

¹ Holocaust: Term used by the Jewish community for the extermination of European jews by the Nazis in World War II.