Fordham University Press
Abrahamic Dialogues
The largest order of religious in the Roman Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus has been at the forefront of the Church’s efforts at dialogue across religions. Understanding and improving relations between the Church and the Jewish people has been a major focus of the Holy See and the Society of Jesus for many years. This book, the fruit of a major conference on the history, nature, and dynamics of relations between Jesuits and contemporary Jewish life, brings together a rich, wide-ranging selection of essays by Jesuit scholars and pastoral leaders, a leading Jewish studies scholar, and a leading rabbi. Drawing on a variety of approaches in historical and constructive theology, literary criticism, and spirituality, the contributors explore historical, philosophical, theological, cultural, and institutional themes—from Ignatian perspectives on Halakhic spirituality and the role played in Jesuit history by Jews forced to convert to Christianity to Jesuit perspectives on Hannah Arendt, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Harold Bloom.
This book makes available in English important essays that mark the fortieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate). Surveying Vatican dialogues and documents, the essays explore challenging theological questions posed by the Shoah and the Catholic recognition of the Jewish people’s covenantal life with God. Featuring essays by Vatican officials, leading rabbis, diplomats, and Catholic and Jewish scholars, the book discusses the nature of Christian-Jewish relations and the need to remember their conflicted and often tragic history, aspects of a Christian theology of Judaism, the Catholic-Jewish dialogue since the Shoah, and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel. The book includes an essay by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and documents on the rapprochement between the Church and the Jewish people.
What does Martin Buber mean, in I and Thou, by the claim that the one thing that matters is full acceptance of presence? An attempt to answer this question led the author on a journey of exploration through Buber's early writings, to reach a clarification of Buber's predialogical concept of God. She examines Buber's first major philosophical work: Daniel: Dialogues in Realization, drawing attention to inaccuracies in the available English translation. Buber's desire for presence, she finds, began with an overwhelming experience of absence. His search is for a presence that will not let him down, that will not be a "mis-encounter"--that is, for a presence that will ensure that there is meaning. This book will be an invaluable text for the student looking for a readable guide to Buber's early writings. It will help readers to understand the rich depth and many layers of thought in Buber's masterpiece, I and Thou, and to appreciate the radical change that took place in Buber's concept of God prior to its publication in 1923.
In this study of Martin Buber's life and work, Donald Moore focuses in on Buber's central message about what it means to be a human being and a person of faith.
