[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 56 (Monday, May 5, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E829]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              FIGHTING WORLDWIDE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives



  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I am submitting for the Record remarks made by 
Rabbi Irving Greenberg at a recent conference sponsored by the Center 
for Jewish and Christian Values. The conference examined the lessons 
learned from the Campaign on Soviet Jewry and how they can be applied 
to combat the growing problem of Christian persecution.
  Rabbi Greenberg spoke eloquently about the obligation all people of 
faith have to defend the rights and freedoms of other people of faith.
  I commend it to the attention of all Members of this body.

              Fighting Worldwide Persecution of Christians

       Rabbi Greenberg. Good afternoon. As a rabbi, I'm here 
     because of my long-standing admiration and friendship for 
     Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who's the president of the 
     International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and a parent 
     of the Center for Jewish and Christian Values, which sponsors 
     this conference. But, of course, most of all I'm here to 
     express solidarity as a rabbi for your protests, our 
     protests, at the persecution of Christians worldwide. And I 
     believe, as you do, that ``whatever you do unto the least of 
     these, you do unto me,'' and as a Jew, we have not forgotten 
     the suffering, not only the suffering but also the suffering 
     of being abandoned in your suffering. Nor have we forgotten 
     the gratitude we feel to Christians for helping Jews in 
     distress and travail in the Soviet Union come to Israel. I 
     really do believe that your time has come, our time has come, 
     for this issue to achieve the intention and the help that it 
     truly deserves.
       This is a meeting sponsored by the Center for Jewish and 
     Christian Values. It seems to me this issue is simply and 
     fundamentally a test of values. One of the fundamental values 
     is that the human being, at least in the biblical tradition, 
     is created in the image of God. The Talmud says that to be in 
     the image of God bestows three fundamental dignities which 
     every human being as an image of God is entitled to. The 
     first is the dignity of infinite value, and that is why they 
     say saving one life is like saving a whole world. The second 
     is the dignity of equality. No suffering is less important, 
     for we are all equally precious. And uniqueness. No human 
     being can be replaced, should be replaced, or their suffering 
     standardized or in some way dismissed as less important.
       If I recognize another as a fellow human being in the image 
     of God, then I recognize them as my own family, flesh of my 
     flesh, bone of my bone, connected and in the image of the God 
     whom I also am deeply grounded in. Under those circumstances, 
     we feel an obligation if they are hungry to feed them, when 
     they are enslaved to free them, and when they are 
     persecuted to release them from the chains of oppression. 
     That is why charity, in the Jewish tradition, is referred 
     to not as ``charity'' but as ``righteousness'' or 
     ``obligation.''
       So this is a very simple test of values. Do we believe in 
     these values and do we practice them? Or do they remain 
     words? In the biblical tradition, which Christians share with 
     Jews, we are partners with God in the perfection of the 
     world. Partners with God in the abolition of war and the 
     overcoming of oppression from war. Our love is backed by 
     commitment or obligation, not just a feeling of love but a 
     recognition that I am committed and obligated to act on that 
     love.
       And, of course, the third quality that follows from that is 
     a steadfast persistent quality. That is to say, I do not stop 
     at obstacles, nor am I simply a fair-weather friend.
       We are obligated to our neighbor. The neighbor is the one 
     who is inside my universe of moral obligation. Of course, 
     many political figures have argued that that obligation stops 
     at the border. Just as many in the name of or the spirit of 
     economics would argue that the value and the importance of 
     business means we must give a very narrow definition of the 
     neighbor, lest our business and our jobs and our economy be 
     hurt by application of moral standards to international 
     trade. People are afraid, and this is a very powerful force 
     in American foreign relations.
       But, in fact, the contribution of our country and our 
     people great American contribution of the 20th century, has 
     been the opposite of this. That is to say, the contribution 
     to recognize that the moral tradition, influenced by 
     religion--and this is a country powerfully shaped by 
     religious values--is to define the neighbor across national 
     lines. The neighbor does not stop at the national border. And 
     the neighbor is my family, and if I have a family I have a 
     right to intervene and intercede for them even in foreign 
     countries, so called. Now, when this started, the Soviet Jew 
     movement was laughed at, but that's what happened. At the 
     end, the United States government, through its laws, invoked 
     the right to intervene in dictatorships and insist upon moral 
     standards.
       I would add one little footnote on the third value we're 
     talking about today: the lesson of the Holocaust. Many 
     studies have been done as to the survival rate of Jews during 
     the Holocaust, and it's important and worth repeating. 
     Ninety-five percent of the Jews in Poland and Lithuania died; 
     95 percent of the Jews in Denmark were saved. The difference 
     was not the behavior of the Nazis, who, in each case, tried 
     to kill, nor was the difference in the behavior of the Jews, 
     who did the best they could to escape but mostly could not. 
     The difference was the behavior of the bystanders. In those 
     countries where the population turned its back and said, 
     ``That's not my concern,'' they died. In those countries 
     where the population stood up and said, ``This is bone of my 
     bone, flesh of my flesh,'' they were saved.
       I have a belief one should never underestimate the American 
     people. Not only have they already shown remarkable 
     achievements in this area in insisting upon moral standards, 
     but I'd also like to add that the workers are not fools 
     either. They see that in standing up to help the persecuted, 
     that out of this confrontation came the erosion of 
     dictatorship. Much of the breakdown of communism and the end 
     of the nuclear threat to the world started from this standing 
     up for the civil rights and the human and religious rights of 
     Jews and other groups under Soviet domination.
       This afternoon, therefore, we shift our picture, our 
     concern from vision and recognition of the issues to 
     practical and applied ways of action on the basis of that 
     vision, and we have an extraordinary panel for you, for us to 
     hear.

     

                          ____________________