The arrival of Pope Francis in America and the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s landmark declaration, Nostra Aetate, have allowed us, as Jews, to marvel at the revolutionary developments in our relations with the Catholic Church in the past half-century. But while the church has taken great strides in re-examining the way it…
Pope Francis is the darling of many liberal Catholics and the world expects he will make life easier for congregants who have not been following the letter of Church law for some time. But when the pontiff comes to Philadelphia on September 26 and 27 for the World Meeting of Families, with an enormous entourage…
Dozens of medieval churches across Europe are adorned with figures of Ecclesia and Synagoga, representations of the Church and the Jews that depict a triumphant Church and a vanquished Jewish people. At the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, they can be found on either side of the main entrance. While the details differ from…
Worried bubbes everywhere, take heart: Just because your daughter (or son) is marrying out of the faith, all hope is not lost. Your daughter’s Catholic husband can still be a great Jewish father. How do I know? Because mine is. While maintaining his Catholic identity, my husband has been a true partner in keeping a…
A Vatican group is asking Israel’s attorney general to indict the head of a far-right Jewish group who recently expressed approval for destroying churches in Israel. The Custody of the Holy Land, in a letter sent to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein on Sunday, said that Rabbi Benzi Gopstein of the group Lehava poses a threat…
Soviet kids had it bad upon immigration. My fellow Soviet refugees and good friends were sent by their well-intentioned parents to a yeshiva, only to be circumcised at the tender age of 12 (Soviet Jews didn’t circumcise their kids because of military hazing). Welcome to the 12 tribes of Israel, boys. Their parents handed them…
This is the second spring that two robins became parents in a tight little nest woven on the lintel above our front door. Last year, when the nest came down, all that was left were shards of baby-blue eggs. I stood for a long time, wondering if it is sacrilegious to throw out the remains,…
Could a lengthy document, written in Latin and published after extensive theological debates, overturn centuries of animosity between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people? Closing the book on almost 2,000 years of persecution seemed nearly impossible when the Second Vatican Council adopted Nostra Aetate, the Catholic Church’s historic rejection of the notion that Jewish…
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