Presbyterian and Jewish leaders held a press conference after a three-hour closed-door conversation on the PC(USA) divestment decision in New York on Sept. 28. At the table are (from left) Moderator Rick ufford-Chase; Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president, Union for Reform Judaism.
Photo: Alexa Smith

New York City — Top-level Jewish and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders held strained but polite dialogue here Tuesday about the PC(USA) General Assembly’s decision earlier this summer to divest from companies who profit from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

While the two parties agreed on a mutual commitment to peace in the Middle East, there was little yielding on divestment issue.

“The Christian community tends to focus on the suffering of the Palestinian people. We in the Jewish community ten to focus on terrorism. Both are legitimate concerns. The suffering among Palestinians is deplorable. At the same time, there is a terrible terror against Jews in the Jewish State,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, who moderated a press conference after a formal three-hour meeting ended.

“We need to focus our concerns to be more sensitive and aware of each other.”

At the close of three-hour, closed-door meeting, Yoffie told reporters that the conversation did yield five agreed-upon actions to further Jewish/Presbyterian dialogue at both national and congregational levels:

• Encourage a study process in local congregations — called “Open Doors, Open Minds — that was already under way between Presbyterians and Reform Jews when the divestment controversy emerged in July;

• Create seminary-based programs for Christian and Jewish theological students to converse;

• Coordinate advocacy efforts on issues in the Middle East where there is mutual agreement;

• Develop a joint trip to Israel/Palestine between top-level Jewish and Presbyterian leaders to see the region “through each other’s eyes”; and

• Continue dialogue, nationally as well as locally.

Tension escalated between the Jewish Community and the PC(USA) in early July when the General Assembly voted to “initiate the process of selective, phased divestment” of stock in corporations within its $8 billion portfolio who profit by supporting violence in Israel and Palestine.

That process includes engagement of targeted companies in dialogue, shareholder resolutions and public pressure to conform to more socially responsible practices. If corporations comply, actual divestment is not undertaken.

Caterpillar, Inc., has repeatedly been identified as a potential target for PC(USA) divestment. The church has nearly $3 million invested in the heavy equipment company whose bulldozers are being used by the Israeli Defense Forces to build a controversial separation barrier and to demolish Palestinian homes and orchards.

Other religious groups have pushed Caterpillar for years to stop those sales.

Specifics of the PC(USA)’s strategy will not be determined until a Nov. 6-8 meeting, again in New York, of the Committee on Mission Responsibility through Investment (MRTI). At that meeting MRTI is expected to establish its criteria, tactics and timeline for the divestment process.

Jewish leaders also protested the denomination’s decision not to ban funding of messianic congregations such as the controversial Avodat Yisrael in Philadelphia. Rather than decrying the proselytization of Jews the Assembly opted to study how interfaith relations impacts Christian evangelism.

But for most Jewish groups, divestment in Israel is the foremost concern.

PC(USA) policy has consistently opposed the ongoing expansion of settlements, house demolitions, the uprooting of orchards and vineyards and, as of its July meeting, the Israeli government’s construction of the concrete and razor-wire barrier between the Palestinian and Israeli populations.

Israel contends the barrier is necessary for security and has dramatically reduced suicide bombings.

Palestinians argue that the wall, which in several places encroaches far into Palestinian territory established after the 1967 war, is part of a strategy for grabbing land that has not been negotiated by any political settlement.

“The conversations here put us on the road toward a more constructive pattern of dialogue,” Kirkpatrick told the Presbyterian News Service after the meeting. “While nobody’s mind was changed, there was important progress in dealing with each other with respect … while we continue to disagree about divestment.

“The core issue for us is the desperate situation of the Palestinian people. And if that’s not addressed, we believe there will be no security for either Israel or Palestine.”

Yoffie told reporters that Jewish leaders see the PC(USA)’s actions as unbalanced and that a “boycott” only ends up undermining Israel’s legitimacy. “Israel will not be more open. It will be less conciliatory.

“There’s a fundamental unfairness in that there are no sanctions against Palestinian … terror or anything else. That fundamental disparity has brought a visceral response from the Jewish community, “ he said.

Kirkpatrick reiterated the denomination’s action as targeted divestment ? not a blanket boycott or sanctions. He said Presbyterians have a long tradition of using investments for social change, mostly recently in Sudan. “We’re seeking, first, change. Divestment is a last resort.”

He also said the PC(USA) would target corporate interests that support Palestinian terror, if it is possible to do.

Kirkpatrick and Rick Ufford-Chase, the moderator of the 216th General Assembly, where the divestment decision was made, told reporters they continue to back the Assembly’s decision. But both agreed that more consultation with the Jewish community is wise, and probably should have occurred earlier in the Presbyterian process.

Ufford-Chase said that one of the underpinnings of Presbyterian polity is that the Spirit of God moves among the Assembly as it works and that the openness of the process allows church-goers to bring to the Assembly what is “on their hearts and minds.’” (The divestment overture originated in a church in St. Augustine Presbytery in Florida.)

“I certainly believe that God is at work in this moment, in this process, at this time,” he said.

Jewish leaders said they are concerned that the Presbyterians’ actions will prompt other churches to take similar action. A delegation from the Angelical Communion’s Peace and Justice Network announced last week that it will recommend that the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) do so.

Yoffie said he doesn’t believe divestment’s an effective strategy because the church doesn’t have enough money invested to significantly impact corporate policy. Nevertheless, he continued, Jewish leaders are working in pre-emptive ways to stop any more divestment decisions.

“This is not an incidental matter,” he said, adding that he hopes Presbyterian reconsider this action down the road. “Its an absolute top priority.”

In a post-meeting interview, Kirkpatrick told the PNS that he hopes divestment will be unnecessary. “But the way for it to not happen is for the injustice to end.”

Presbyterians’ integrity is at stake, he said. “I don’t want the money that pays my pension and medical benefits to be invested in companies that profit from bulldozers that demolish Palestinian homes or are building parts of this wall.”

Kirkpatrick said the Presbyterian delegation told Jewish leaders that the Assembly did not intend to the Jewish community pain. “The pain of our Jewish brothers and sisters is painful to us. That is not our goal. Our goal is peace with justice.”

The Rev. Jay Rock, the denomination’s director of interfaith relations, said the divestment action is reopening Jewish-Christian dialogue both nationally and locally by putting the hardest issues on the table.  There had been, he said, “a kind of lull” in the relationships.

Both sides said the national-level dialogues will continue, but no specific dates have been set.

Besides Yoffie, the Jewish community was represented at the meeting by Mark Pelavin, director of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs of Reform Judaism; Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of Interfaith Affairs of the Anti-Defamation League; Rabbi Jerry Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; Mark Waldman, director of Public Policy, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; Rabbi Gilbert Rosenthal, executive director of the National Council of Synagogues; Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis; Judith Hertz, co-chair of the Commission on Interreligous Affairs of Reform Judaism; Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Rabbical Assembly; Rabbi David Elcott, U.S. director of the Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee; and Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

Presbyterians were Kirkpatrick, Ufford-Chase, Rock and the Rev. Robina Winbush, associate stated clerk; Sara Lisherness, director of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program; Catherine Gordon of the Washington Office staff; Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, MRTI staff; the Rev. Joe Small, director of the PC(USA)’s Office for Theology and Worship; and the Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, former moderator of the PC(USA).