At a recent speaking engagement at the Claremont(California) Presbyterian Church, I was thrilled to discover in the audience one of my personal interfaith heroines, Professor Eva Fleischner, an early pioneer of Catholic-Jewish dialogue. When I told Eva that I heard her speak at a conference in New York City in 1974 that changed my life, she was as thrilled as I was by our encountering one another.
Later that day, we sat in her home in the wonderful senior community, Pilgrim Place, and talked about the journey that brought her to that conference and the journey she has taken since. (Herbert Heavenrich has written a biography of Eva entitled In Search of the Sacred.)
Eva was born in Vienna in 1925 to Catholic parents. Because her father was a convert from Judaism, the rise of Hitler led her parents to send her as a young girl to England for safety. Eventually, the family was reunited in America. After graduating from Radcliffe and a Fulbright in Paris, Eva committed herself to a life of faith based service through the Grail, an organization founded in 1921 as a “lay apostolate” addressed to young Catholic women and independent of the church heirarchy.
Eva’s eventually discerned her own calling: to be a scholar of religion with a focus on the issue of Catholic-Jewish relations. In the post-Holocaust era, Fleischner was among the early Catholic writers undertake this mission. “I had found my life’s work: awakening my fellow Christians to the riches of the Jewish tradition(our roots) and the horrors of the Holocaust in which Christianity had played a part.” After earning a Phd in theology, Fleischner went on to have a distinguished teaching career at Montclair State University and other institutions.
Her most widely read contribution, still in print and still influential, is Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?, the volume she edited based on the 1974 conference that I had attended.
In our conversation, Eva and I reflected upon the 35 years that have elapsed since the last time we were together. We found ourselves returning in our conversation to the topic of Israel. Eva has been a passionate supporter of the Jewish people and, by extension, the Jewish state.
In recent years, support for Israel has become a more complex issue for Christian allies of the Jewish people, just as it has for many Jews. A case in point is a another Catholic theologian who early took up the battle against anti-Judaism in the Church(and also spoke at the conference in 1974), Rosemary Ruether. Ruether, like Fleischner, saw the connection between the Church’s failures with regard to the Jewish people and other flaws in its theology. Her 1974 book, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, profoundly influenced many to re-examine their Catholic faith and their views of Jews and Judaism. Ruether went on to write and edit many books of liberation theology, particulary feminist theology , but also books relating to the Palestinian cause.
Interestingly, Rosemary Ruether lives in the same senior community as Eva Fleischner. Recalling the revolutionary fervor of Fleischner’s and Ruether’s early years of anti-anti-Semitism work in the church, I wonder about the causes that are stirring the hearts of young Catholic theologians today.
I suppose the question might involve how two parties can learn to disagree. I must admit the rigidity sanctioned under the rubric of religion would not be acceptable in other domains. Perhaps this means there is a larger problem…