October 2022 Webinar Q&A and Resources
If you missed the October Webinar on "John Oesterreicher: A Jewish-Catholic Warrior against Antisemitism", you can now watch it on our website or our YouTube channel.
There is never enough time for Q&A, so we are providing additional interaction with our October panelists below. We also want to provide you with some resources to complement our webinar about John Oesterreicher:
From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965, John Connelly
A Portrait of Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher's work in building a Bridge between Judaism and Christianity, through the Lens of Scripture Citations in his Holocaust Writings, PowerPoint presentation © Gregory Yuri Glazov
John M. Oesterreicher papers, from the Monsignor Noe Field Archives & Special Collection Center, Seton-Hall University
Question: How did Oesterreicher relate to his own Jewish identity? Did he see himself as still Jewish? If so, how did he express it?
Gregory Glazov:
I am not aware of any texts where Oesterricher speaks directly about his Jewish identity. For me, it is implicit in his instinctive, insider empathy with Jewish standpoints, and in the vigor, strength and initiative with which he fights for these positions.
Here is an example of such empathy: “(My) essay on the rabbinic vision of God’s fidelity to His people in a time of great suffering was the fruit of lasting concern with the great problem posed by the Holocaust...When I first worked on it, I felt very much alone in seeking to make known the rabbis’vision. Am I a dreamer when I think that the teachings with which the ancient rabbis sought to answer Israel’s grief...have something to tell the anguished men and women of today?” Why does he feel very much alone in doing this work? I think the loneliness comes from the probability that gentile Catholics have not done work like this because they don’t have the impulse to look at it from this perspective. The impulse is an insider impulse expressing an insider empathy.
Perhaps this empathy is most palpably evident in the expression of the belief, shared with many prominent Jewish Zionist thinkers, that the State of Israel is a providential phenomenon. While evangelicals are wont to advance these positions, Catholics tend to be more reticent about them. Here is an example of a Zionist passage: “True sensitivity sees not only the volcano of evil that erupted in Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Bergen-Belson, but also the ultimate failure of the greatest poisoner of history; for all his success, he did not triumph. Horrible though it was, the “Final Solution” was anything but final. Six million Jews died, but the Jewish people lives. What this sentence really means is exemplified by the State of Israel…How has Israel been able to survive against all odds? I see only one explanation…They are driven by an élan that is a divine gift, for they are wedded to God; they are a covenanted people. To be His people means that they cannot get away from Him, even if they wanted to...’Israel alive’ is a wonder that should inspire Christians, first into awesome silence and then into praise.”
I would add is that there is probably a conscious reason why there are no explicit passages on how his Jewish identity impacts on his work and role in Bridge-building between Jewish and Christian communities, and that is that Jewish Christians are non-grata in this realm by either Jews or Christians.
Question: Having worked in theatre and other various mainstream arenas that have high level community engagement, how do you profile your faith to others and in your bio as a Jewish believer? Just Jewish? Messianic Jewish? Jewish and Christian? What is the response you receive?
Jill Kamp Melton:
I haven’t identified my faith in print and that will change November 4 with the publication of my new book, The Divine Woo.
In conversation, interviews, and testimonies I always share that G-d is the center of my life. For me it seems that putting a label on my beliefs would close doors and not open them. I think it is obvious to many that I am Jewish and I love the surprise I see when I tell them, when asked, that I believe in Yeshua.
When I founded my theatre company in 1983, I would brag on G-d all the time since He gave us free space to work and perform in, free lumber, paint, etc., from a hardware store, free photocopy machine, costumes worth more than $10,000 to borrow for our first production which was called, “Better than Broadway!” It was The Good Doctor by Neil Simon, based on stories by Chekov. G-d blessed our work in a mighty way.
The only trouble I had was from a traditional Jewish theatre critic. He used abusive language in a review and I instigated having lunch with him in a Chinese restaurant to tame his vitriol. It worked but he was never a fan.
I coached a Jewish Member of Congress and tried to get him to go to a Jewish Bible study since he needed more depth in his persona. Didn’t work. He became a Senator and is still there.