"In recent years, there has been a dramatic and unprecedented shift in Jewish and Christian relations," says a statement prepared by the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies, signed by more than 160 Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis, and appearing in several major U.S. papers yesterday. "Throughout the nearly two millennia of Jewish exile, Christians have tended to characterize Judaism as a failed religion or, at best, a religion that prepared the way for, and is completed in, Christianity. In the decades since the Holocaust, however, Christianity has changed dramatically. … We believe these changes merit a thoughtful Jewish response. Speaking only for ourselves—an interdenominational group of Jewish scholars—we believe it is time for Jews to learn about the efforts of Christians to honor Judaism. We believe it is time for Jews to reflect on what Judaism may now say about Christianity." The statement then outlines eight statements, such as "Jews and Christians worship the same God" and "Nazism was not a Christian phenomenon." The institute's Rabbi David Sandmel says this latter remark caused many academics and rabbis not to sign the document. Rabbi A. James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee was one of them. "I happen to think Christian teaching prepared the seedbed for the poisonous weed of Nazism," Rudin tells Baltimore's The Sun. "I would never make the statement that Christianity led to Nazism directly. But it prepared the seedbed and I don't think the statement says that directly." The Washington Postcompares the document to the Vatican's Dominus Iesus statement last week, which asserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic ...