Dear George,

You keep referring to Lustiger as ethnically Jewish. Ethnicity means not only identifying oneself with some phase of a people but also being part of a people.

In the US many fundamentalist Christians are Christian Zionists. They are not Jewish. A Chinese may learn Gaelic (Nobody could understand him in Dublin. Finally a Gaelic-speaker in a bar talked to him. The bartender said, “I didn’t know O’Brien knew Chinese.”), but he isn’t Irish. Boaz_David who posts to onlineopinion claims to be a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin. Christian clergymen often claim Jewishness.

Did Lustiger speak Yiddish? Did he hang out with local Jews in Paris sharing bagels and lox on a Sunday morning? He had to work at his job in the cathedral. Did he get involved in local Jewish politics? Did he hang out with his Jewish relatives? Did he go to the beth hamidrash and discuss Jewish questions with Jews? Besides ancestry in what way was he ethnically Jewish?

Israel has a Law of Return. Brother Daniel, a Catholic monk born of Jewish parents, a few years ago applied under that law. He was refused.

As far as I know nobody in the Jewish community thinks of Lustiger as a Jew. Don’t we have a say on the matter or is that reserved for gentiles? He is a Holocaust tragedy. Due to hiding from the Nazis he was lost to our people. His was a wasted Jewish life.

Apparently you didn’t mean your apology or you wouldn’t keep on. I don’t think you have ill intent, but your definition of Jewishness to me is obnoxious, racist and like that of the Nazis.

Dear Relda,

What areas of theology do you discuss with your friends? What are some of the titles of books or articles that you have found worthwhile? I have read John Shelby Spong and Hans Kung.

A man should use the spiritual heritage which he has received from the wise and holy people of the past, but he should test everything with his intellect, accepting certain things and rejecting others. Tolstoy

Dear George,

“Losing one’s faith” is a Christian concern. Mother Teresa had a dark night of the soul, as have other Christians. Christians have a multiplicity of creedal statements – the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Chalcedonian Creed etc. That is alien to Judaism.

We Jews have one creedal statement – “Hear, O, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Note that it doesn’t say one must believe in that God, but if there is a God that God is indivisible. There are no items of belief other than that.

However, there are a multiplicity of rules, laws and ethical concerns. The concerns and laws change with the times. For the orthodox they change slowest. However, even they don’t practice polygamy or slavery. They recognize we no longer live in biblical times. At present some rabbis are discussing changing the kosher laws to declare animals treated with cruelty not kosher. Others feel that one should be vegetarian to be kosher. The Talmud is completed, but the rabbinic discussions of practice and ethics still go on a body of literature called Responsa.

Both Talmud and Responsa differ from the Christian creedal statements. They record both majority and minority viewpoints of the discussion. No central authority mandates the view an individual must choose.

In Catholicism, Lutheranism and Anglicanism clergy have a sacerdotal function. Even where Christian clergy do not have that function Jesus is the intermediary. There are no intermediaries between a Jew and God. With the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE the priestly caste lost their function.

It is common English usage to equate the nouns, faith and religion. The linguistic usage reflects a definition of religion in terms of Christianity. Judaism puts much more emphasis on what one does. I prefer to use the word practice as a synonym for religion. That probably sounds strange to Christian ears.

Of course there are Christians who regard faith as less important than practice and Jews with a reverse emphasis, but that is not the norm.

My atheism is no problem in my synagogue.

Dear David f,
I am sorry to have upset you so much, and I repeat my apologies. I just could not resist the temptation to replace some words in your sentence - one of the replacements being Lustiger - but it was actually not about him but about the concept of “ethnic Jew” - something like an “ethnic Italian” who might have been born in Australia and might not even speak Italian. However, I have to accept that it is rejected not only by you but by the mainstream of Jewish thinking and feelings, so I shall leave it at that.

I repeat, I am grateful to you for the insights into Jewishness that you offered - I have had a couple of Jewish friends but I never got such an extensive insider‘s view of Jewish identity. (Of course, I knew that “lost his faith” was a Christian phrase, therefore I put it in quotation marks.)

david f,
A couple of my friends are self-acknowledged atheists and, I guess a little ironically, take the bible quite literally in the similar evangelistic zeal that a Fundamentalist 'Christian for Jesus' would be proud of. The subtle points of any meaningful theological discussion therefore quite elude them. Others in my group with religious background, prefer often the purely secular, so I look to outside of my ‘friendship group’ for discussion on this 'deeper' level. Maybe a little ironically, this certainly would not be possible without the existence of certain religious institutions – whether they are places of worship, learning or even an article from Sell's.

My draw is from various theologians in paying homage to my heritage as you do yours, even if I have ventured to explore outside of it (Buddhism and a little Hinduism). Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Karl Barth form a basis for those theologians I might more appropriately understand such as Bultmann, Brunner, Tillich, Friedrich, Bonhoeffer, and Reinhold Niebuhr – those of the neo-orthodox tradition. I also enjoy the writings of Immanuel Kant, Martin Buber, Karl Rahner and Hans Küng.

In reading John Shelby Spong’s “Resurrection: Myth or reality” I found he offered nothing particularly new or astounding in the light of those I’ve mentioned. Carl Sagan, Paul Isaac Asimov and Stephen Jay Gould, incidentally, are some of the humanist/ skeptics I’ve enjoyed reading.

The Jewish mysticism present in 'cor ad cor loquitur', where God is ‘known’ by contact of spirit with spirit is contained in the Kabalistic branch of Judaism. It gleams of a far wider, more tolerant and universalist outlook. Systematic Christian mysticism began in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Its foremost exponent was Meister Eckhart. I find both these traditions provide a syncretism that need not break the integrity of the religious, or those that are not.

There is strong synergy in Martin Buber's famous words, and undoubtedly ring true in many Jewish ears today, “From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother ... and to-day I see him more strongly and clearly than ever before..”

Dear George,

I appreciate the delicacy of your apology: “I am sorry to have upset you so much.” It would have been ok to upset me a little but not so much.

I regard Lustiger’s life as a consequence of the Holocaust. He might have stayed a more or less religious Jew had he never been forced to hide. Part of my upset is the nature of Catholic religious vows.

Judaism almost completely rejects asceticism. There is not the dualism between sacred and profane. Rejection of the good things of the earth such as food and sex is rejection of the Creator who made all.

Buddhist monks and nuns can take vows for a limited time. Buddhism recognizes that one may feel differently later.

Orthodox Christianity and eastern Catholicism have black and white priests. White clergy are married and black must be celibate. A widowered white can become a black by taking additional vows.

Western Catholicism mandates lifelong celibacy for its clergy. This seems a most unreasonable stricture to put on an idealistic young man who may suffer the torments of earth.

‘Lustiger’, I believe, is one who is merry. That may not be appropriate for one who is celibate.

In 1858 the Papal States occupied a large area of central Italy. In that year papal police took 6 year old Edgardo Mortara from his Jewish family in Bologna. A servant girl had taken Edgardo to a church and had him baptised. Because of that the Church took him away from his family, as he was now a Catholic. He eventually became a priest, and his family never got him back.

The struggle to get Edgardo back enlisted the sympathies of elements both in and outside of Italy. To those protesting clerical authority such as Mazzini, Garibaldi and others the struggle embodied the conflict of secular ideology and religious authority. The Mortara case was a factor in the reunification of Italy and the subsequent restriction of papal temporal authority.

Lustiger and Mortara. Two tragedies. Wasted lives promulgating archaic doctrines. Can’t eat archaic and have it, too.

Dear David f,
I just have to repeat my thanks for providing me with insider views of the Jewish identity and the Jewish world-view perspective, as well as for the outsider view of Christianity and Catholicism. I am well aware not only of the problems you mention, but also that it is usually the outsider who can spot and pinpoint the shortcomings or inconsistencies of an organisation or a belief system. I am not going to argue with you about the facts you mention.

Both these views, that of an insider and that of an outsider, enrich my own perspective and for that I am grateful to you. For instance, since until now I have had only positive evaluations of what Lustiger stood for, I am now better informed knowing that he comes out differently when looked at from another angle.

You mention Buddhism. The best insider view of it that I could understand I got from a friend, now deceased, a Malaysian Chinese who had been a Buddhist monk, converted to Catholicism, even studied theology in Rome (and apparently did not finish, since he married). His view of Buddhism that he formally abandoned, and Catholicism that he embraced gave me a new perspective at both religions or religious orientations. He taught me a lot about what was positive in Buddhism, and what Christians could learn from them without betraying their own identity or “belief system”. This “double perspective” makes it also easier for me to understand what e.g. the Dalai Lama is saying about science and spirituality (c.f. “The Universe in a Single Atom“, Morgan Road 2005).