(Pakistan Point News - 03rd Feb, 2019) by Muhammad Aamir ABU DHABI, 3rd February, 2019 (WAM) – A leading Latin American rabbi said today that peace in the middle East can only come when the language of aggressiveness is put aside.
"What we must create is a language and attitude of peace," Rabbi Abraham Skorka told the Emirates news Agency, WAM on the sidelines of the Global Conference of Human Fraternity.
Rabbi Skorka, who is currently a Professor in St. Joseph University in Philadelphia and Rector of the Seminario Rabinico Latinoamericano, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has worked with His Holiness Pope Francis, Head of the Catholic Church, on writing a book on dialogues between Judaism and Christianity.
He added that he had long been engaged in issues related to interfaith dialogue and that he had worked closely with Pope Francis when the pontiff was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. He said that in working on these themes, a lifetime theme, "both of us understood, and understand that one of the most important things through which we serve God is creating a reality of peace because this is what God is waiting for us." Rabbi Skorka added that he and the Pope had written a book on discussions between them, entitled ‘Our Dialogues’, and that they had together recorded 31 programmes for the Archbishop Channel in Buenos Aires.
These programmes, he said, presented a dialogue between a Jew and a Catholic, moderated by an Evangelical, in order to show how they found a language in order to understand each other.
Since then, Rabbi Skorka said, "we have communicated, and we are working. Of course he is working on a global scene, but we continued to work as friends with a common task to work in order to spread the idea of dialogue, a dialogue that leads to friendship throughout the world."
The initiative by the UAE to invite His Holiness Pope Francis, Head of the Catholic Church and His Eminence Dr. Ahmad el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al Azhar Al Sharif, transforms this country into a pioneer of peace, according to Rabbi Skorka. He added: "We are witnessing day after day, wars, and hate expression, destruction, and in communication with each other and worse than that a relationship of hate towards each other. And here is the opposite, here is the extraordinary."
Asked about how to bring peace in the Middle East, he said that the problems are not in the Middle East alone, the problems exist throughout the world. "We must create a language and attitude of peace. When, you put aside the language of aggressiveness such kind of meetings could open the door to change the language and attitude."
