In your article, “Not Getting To The Mountain Top” (Nov. 19), and in the play, “Imagining Heschel,” I fear the impression created on the rabbi’s ultimate impact on the Vatican’s Second Council, which culminated in “Nostra Aetate,” was not properly represented. To state that “Heschel failed” [as Richard Dreyfuss did] is dead wrong.
If you read the carefully prepared and well-footnoted thesis presented by Rabbi Reuven Kimmelman of Brandeis University, you will recognize that in fact Heschel’s influence was monumental and instrumental in convincing the Vatican and pope to alter the language of “Nostra Aetate.” All of which culminated in a change in Jewish-Christian relationships that we are benefiting from today.
Woodmere, L.I.
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