One essential message interfaith activists intend to deliver is that the Vatican has quietly abandoned missionizing toward the Jews. Ultra-Orthodox Jews interviewed in the Israeli media in connection with the pope's visit almost invariably repeat the same refrain: "They" should stop missionizing and leave us alone. In fact, all Christian mission work aimed at Jews now comes from Protestant denominations, mostly Evangelicals.

For its part, the Vatican is hoping that this visit will stimulate the next stage of Jewish-Christian dialogue. For four decades, the premise of the dialogue - which the church readily accepted - was that the onus was on the Christian side to atone and change. But now that the Vatican has fulfilled the two major demands that the Jews first brought to the dialogue - recognition of Israel and reversing the negative theology toward Jews - church officials hope the dialogue will move on toward a meeting of spiritual equals. "They're more interested now in meeting with rabbis and Jewish theologians than with leaders of secular Jewish organizations," says Kronish.

The question most worrying interfaith activists is whether, at this point in history, Jews are psychologically capable of placing in context their remaining grievances against the Vatican - like the extent of Christian responsibility for the Holocaust and the status of Jerusalem - and acknowledging that the church has changed.

"I'd like to believe that our return to the land and to sovereignty empowers us to be gracious hosts," says Daniel Rossing, an Orthodox Israeli Jew and an expert in Christian-Jewish relations. "Will we receive the pope as a wounded minority or as a confident majority in its land? The pope is offering an opportunity for healing among the faiths, but most Jews here - and most Muslims - have no idea what he's talking about. Sadly, the way things look now, we're going to treat the visit as something to be endured, controlling political fall-out rather than rising to the historical moment. The loss will be ours."