It should be clearly understood that the purpose of dialogue is not to produce some symbiotic world spiritual body that is achieved by melting down our unique faith commitments, to water them down to their lowest common denominators. Neither is the goal of authentic dialogue to convert the other community out of religious existence. The world has had enough of such conversionistic tactics.

Rather, dialogue is an opportunity for people of faith to speak out boldly and honestly to each other, to come to know and understand one another as real people and not as spiritual abstractions, and above all to prevent the violence of the past from reoccurring.

During the medieval period in Europe, "one society, one religion" and "error has no rights" became rallying cries, unfortunately, in a large number of Christian societies. But after centuries of such ugly intolerance, people are weary of being the victims or the transmitters of these caricatures, and people are also weary of viewing the beliefs and teachings of the other person or the other religion from a distance colored only by hostility.

True, real Christian-Jewish dialogue is an open-ended process with the potential to free people of faith from the tight chains of the past. Dialogue also means encountering the other person without pre-conditions or without a hidden agenda. Dialogue is a process not a goal.

At the heart of the Christian-Jewish dialogue is the principle of something called pluralism. What is the meaning of this highly charged and important term? Why is pluralism a necessary component of positive interreligious relations, and why does pluralism represent a challenge for so many people?

For me, pluralism is similar to a large symphony orchestra of many members who play different musical instruments. By themselves, singly, they are only talented soloists, but playing together as a pluralistic and cohesive group, the individuals make harmonious, beautiful music.

By definition, pluralism implies that no one individual or group of players is more important than any other orchestra members. Pluralism means that all religions and all individuals have a distinctive contribution to make to the well being and enrichment of the total society.

Pluralism also implies that a majority religion - majority in population - is not intrinsically superior to a minority religion. In addition, a majority religion can not be permitted to dominate or persecute a religious minority. Obviously, the principles of pluralism have not been fully accepted throughout the world. They remain distant and elusive goals for many societies.

As a result of the religious strife in Europe, especially the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, and the terrible excesses committed in Great Britain against religious dissenters and minorities during the 17th and 18th centuries, the framers of the American Constitution, meeting in Philadelphia, took great care to provide specific guarantees for religious liberty.

Indeed, Article VI of the Constitution specifically forbids any "religious test" for public office, and the First Amendment provides a legal guarantee for the free exercise of religion as well as the non-establishment of any one group as America's established religion. One of the great hallmarks of American life is its emphasis on religious freedom and religious liberty.

But religious pluralism is very challenging because it affects people of deep religious faith. Religion offers ultimate answers to eternal questions about life and death, about the very purpose of why we're here on Earth. To believe there are many, but nonetheless authentic, religions and religious responses to these questions is a challenge for any believer.

Religious pluralism, at its core, asserts there is a plurality of authentic spiritual paths for humans to follow. Pluralism also suggests that each path is legitimate, and each religious expression represents specific spiritual truths that must be honored and respected.

Ultimately, religious pluralism compels men and women to acknowledge there are various ways - yes, to be saved - to achieve a spiritually fulfilling life. Of course, all religions are true for their believers: Christians believe in Christianity, Jews in Judaism, Muslims in Islam; but pluralism teaches that no one religion contains all the truth for everyone everywhere throughout the world. With such bold assertions, is it any wonder that religious pluralism can affirm our deepest faith commitments, but also challenge them at the same time?

Now there are some people, you know them, who warmly embrace religious pluralism. They falsely believe that it somehow minimizes the role of religion within society. Nothing is further from the truth. Pluralism does not weaken or depreciate religious affirmations, but rather it honors the many different spiritual commitments of the human family. Pluralism accords to religion a key role in human society, but pluralism abhors the violence and excesses that some followers of religion have made throughout history. The Jewish people especially have felt the bitter sting of anti-Semitism.

Some individuals unnecessarily fear pluralism believing that it undermines their own particular religious beliefs. Once again, nothing is further from the truth. And finally, there are still other people who grudgingly recognize a kind of "de facto" pluralism exists, especially here in the United States. Such people are well aware of the many forms of religious expression and identity that exist in America, and are keenly conscious of the many, many religious options that are available. While they may recognize these facts, they do not integrate them into their personal belief systems.

Let me put it as simply as I can: Some individuals may acknowledge theological diversity, but do not accord any religious meaning to those differences. It is as if someone said, "I recognize that many kinds of people live in the world, but if I truly had my way, I would want everyone to share my particular faith commitment. I would want everyone to be like me." Yet, if there is to be true dialogue in this world, we must move beyond the basic recognition that there are many religions "out there". That is, of course, a necessary step, but by itself, it is insufficient. What we really need is to accord full spiritual legitimacy to the other person's religious faith without abandoning or weakening our own.

Now, it is not enough that we live together as unique faith communities; rather our faiths must sustain and anchor our shared existence in a pluralistic setting. Unless that happens, the cruel winds of bigotry and extremism, when combined with possible economic turbulence and dislocation, could spell disaster for the many constructive interreligious efforts that have already shown such rich promise.

Believers - Jews, Christians, Muslims or whatever faith - have no trouble attesting to the truth and singular importance of their own religions. It is much harder, but equally important, for those same people to acknowledge the truth and singular importance of other religions.

A religious foundation for pluralism is absolutely needed to ensure its permanence no matter what the political, economic, or social conditions of a society may be. Pluralism rooted to religious affirmations is better able to survive than a person's mere tolerance of different spiritual beliefs among one's neighbors. After thousands of years of religious strife, forced conversions, violence, hatred and bigotry, perhaps, just perhaps, religious pluralism may in fact reflect the will of God. Just perhaps...

Finally, for too long Jews and Judaism were falsely defined by members of other religions, notably by Christians who held convenient, but very inaccurate definitions of their Jewish neighbors. For example, among some Christians, there have been attempts to describe Jews only as an ecclesiastical body or simply as members of a confessional community of faith, and not as a people.

Nor can Jews and Judaism be accurately perceived by Christians solely in ancient biblical categories. Two thousand years have happened since the Bible. The contemporary Jewish community, in its totality, must be experienced and understood as it really exists today.

Such futile efforts to define the other person or the other religion violate a basic principle of Christian-Jewish relations: participants in the dialogue have the absolute right to define themselves. Others cannot and must not do it for them.

Lydia Talbot: Rabbi Rudin, you stir things up with the subject of Jewish-Christian dialogue. You call it a new frontier, and you have the gift of being able to look back over time to compare where we've been.

A. James Rudin: And where we're at now and where we're going.

Talbot: You use the term "fresh, new breeze stirring". How fresh is that breeze?

Rudin: Well, in Christian-Jewish relations it's pretty fresh. Right after World War II, when you talked about Christian-Jewish relations in this country, you talked mostly about Protestant-Jewish relations. In 1965, we began real Catholic-Jewish relations. In fact I like to say since Vatican II, 1965, the Second Vatican Council, there have been more positive Catholic-Jewish encounters, as I call it, than there were in the first 1900 years of the Catholic church. Now it's with Evangelical Christians, with Muslims, with Orthodox Christians, so when I say a "fresh breeze," certainly since World War II, and especially the last 25 or 30 years.

Talbot: You provide a distinguished leadership in interreligious work in this country and internationally as well, but there are some who say that the conversations come to an abrupt halt when the discussion turns to Israel - the plight and clash of rights between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, where the land and survival are inextricably linked. How do you respond to that?

Rudin:  Well, first of all the good news is that since September 1993, with the famous handshake on the south lawn of the White House between the Prime Minister of Israel and the head of the PLO, the fever on that issue has really dropped. Because we all come from traditions with "Blessed are the peacemakers..." "You should be pursuing peace...". What can you say about the Israelis and the Palestinians? They are at least trying to pursue peace. But Israel is really - here I mean the modern state of Israel - at the center of any authentic Christian-Jewish dialogue. I think neither Jews nor Christians are familiar with the Jewish state in the Middle East. It's only been since 1948. I think Christians have had to reassess their own theological understanding. They may have defined Jews off there on the side as always the minority, and always the refugees, and always persecuted. Well now, Israel is a Jewish state with an overwhelming Jewish majority. For Jews, for my community, it's also changed. We've been very critical of governments and Tzars in the past who were filled with their own power and didn't know what to do with it and hurt people. We don't want Israel to make the same mistakes that were done to us. So it's for both Christians and Jews, and of course for Muslims, they've had to all rethink, in the light of Israel.

Talbot: For many in the Christian community, the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German-Christian martyr who went to his death in opposition to Hitler's atrocities against the Jews during the war, is a model for what is central about the cost of discipleship in the Christian faith. What does that name and example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer mean to the Jewish community these days?

Rudin: Well, he's become better known - you put it very nicely - of course he didn't just go to his death; he was executed, tragically in the very late months of the war, almost when the war was over, early 1945. I think he's beginning to be seen as one of the Christian anti-Nazi leaders. And Jews desperately want to see that committed Christians were not just idle, or passive, or neutral or collaborative with the Nazis. So, Bonhoeffer takes on this role as one of the, in this case a Lutheran Pastor, who with his very life was an anti-Nazi. Would that he had lived after the war, I think he would have become - he was emerging and rethinking his own attitude toward Jews and Judaism - he would have been one of the world's leaders in Christian-Jewish relations if he had not been executed by the Nazis.

Talbot: There are some in the Jewish community who are concerned about the decline in Judaism through intermarriage. Is that a threat? What is the Jewish community doing to prevent that?

Rudin: Well this is our single most critical problem here in the United States - Jewish education. We use the word Jewish continuity. After the holocaust, where we lost one out of every three Jews in the world, we want there to be Jewish children; we want there to be Jewish grandchildren. As I said just a few minutes ago, every community has a right to define itself. So we define ourselves and one of them is that we want to survive. And intermarriage is a challenge, I think. In an open society we will have intermarriage, but I think we want to be sure that our own unique tradition continues. So I think through Jewish education this is the best, really the best efforts we can make.

Talbot: In our final moment, you have two daughters about whom you must be very proud. One will be a Rabbi...

Rudin: One's studying to be a Rabbi, that's right. And the other's very active right now in the theater world. She's been a child actress and her interest, interestingly enough, is a combination of Jewish-Feminism and the Holocaust. And this is a person born in the 1970's, long after the Second World War is over, and she's very interested in women and Jewish women and Christian women during the holocaust, how they acted, how they didn't act.

Talbot: Sounds about empowerment.

Rudin: Empowerment and importance of taking positions and acting out your religious beliefs.