San Diego, CA (special) -- A priest soon may be teaching at the San Diego Jewish Academy, while a rabbi is instructing students at the Catholic-run University High School under an exchange program sponsored by the American Jewish Committee

Rabbi Laurence Edwards, AJC associate national director for interreligious affairs, was in San Diego last week to negotiate the details of bringing a Catholic-Jewish Educational Enrichment Program (CJEEP) to San Diego.

He told HERITAGE that the exchange program has been operating successfully in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, and that the hope is to start it this year not only here but also in Pittsburgh, Washington D.C. and Houston.

Edwards, a former Hillel rabbi at Dartmouth University and Cornell University, recently has participated in the exchange program in Chicago, where rabbis have taught at 15 different high schools.

"The basic model is that a rabbi goes to teach classes in one or more Catholic high schools, and a Catholic priest or educator comes to a Jewish high school to teach there also," Edwards said during an interview to which he was accompanied by Sam Sokolove, AJC's regional director in San Diego.

"It's not just one shot, to show up for one class, answer questions and leave, but to try to build a relationship in which that person becomes a familiar presence in the school, and gradually comes to be integrated into the curriculum and the expectations-so that we will be learning more about each other."

The prohibition of any form of proselytization "is very clear in our guidelines and that does not go on - it is not what this is about," Edwards said.  Although concerns about proselytization are almost invariably expressed before the program gets started in any city, there are no causes for complaint once the program begins, he added.

The idea behind the program is "learning about the other's tradition," the rabbi said.  "For Catholics, it is learning more about the Jewish background of Christianity.  I have done this teaching for three years and I have been asked to talk about the Jewish background of Jesus, rabbinic interpretation of the Bible, the Holocaust, Jewish holidays, life cycle events-a whole range of things."

The Catholic educator meanwhile, explains "what Christianity is, how it is related to Judaism and how it is different from Judaism."  The priest or educator will answer questions "with the intention of getting across the fact that we are in a different kind of relationship than we were for most of our history."

Edwards noted that "Catholic teachings about Jews and Judaism have changed and we have a lot to learn from each other."

As the rabbi and the priests are teamed with teachers in the host classrooms, there is an opportunity to correct any inadvertent misinformation.

Not only that, said Edwards, but the host teacher "occasionally will ask questions, and sometimes I will turn to that teacher for some clarification."

The exchange program in San Diego will be partially funded by a grant from Steven Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation made to the AJC to help implement interreligious dialogue nationally.

The program is expected to begin in the spring.  The planning committee includes Dr. Richard Kelly of University High School (affiliated with the University of San Diego); Rabbi Ralph Dalin, the dean of Jewish studies at San Diego Jewish Academy, and Mark Berger, chairman of the local AJC's interreligious committee.

Of all the other faith groups in the United States and the world, the Roman Catholic religion is the one with which the Jewish community has been able to forge the most structured, or institutionalized, relationship.

"We have really witnessed an extraordinary revolution in the last 40 years or so in this relationship," Edwards said.  Whereas once the Catholic Church blamed Jews for killing Jesus, and viewed Judaism strictly as a religious precursor to Christianity, today church teachings assign no theological blame to Judaism and also stress that God has a continuing covenant with the Jewish people.

"It doesn't mean that everything is fine, that we agree about everything, but the Catholic Church has made a 180 degree turn in terms of attitudes toward Judaism and Jews," Edwards said.  

One recent controversy deals with the Vatican's refusal to permit a panel of three Jewish and three Catholic historians to examine all the material in its archives concerning the conduct of Pope Pius XII, who served as pontiff during World War II.  Pius has been nominated for canonization by some church officials, drawing strict protests from Jewish groups who believe he failed to oppose the nazi campaign of genocide against the Jews.

Although some documents were made available to the joint panel of historians, others were held back.  The Church's official explanation, that the materials were not catalogued and required more work before release, did not satisfy either Catholic or Jewish panel members.  "The historians jointly said, 'well, then, we can't go further with our work; we will just have to suspend it for now.'  

"It kind of disintegrated back and forth, and there were some pretty nasty things said, particularly on the Vatican side, but for all the conversations on that, no one of the Jewish leadership that has been involved in this ever said, 'Oh my God, this is a crisis that is going to unravel the entire relationship; it is the end of dialogue.'  Nobody thought that.  Mostly the consensus was 'this is unfortunate; this is serious; this is an issue; but there are also other issues that we keep talking about and keep working on, so this won't be the end of the relationship."