SERVING NEBRASKA AND IOWA SINCE
1920 9 lyar, 5747 Friday, May 8, 1987
Jewish comrrnjnity celebrates Israel's 39th birthday San Kaplan (left) and Morris RadcnMn raise the Americaii flag daring the edebration ot Israel's 99th birthday at the Jewish Conmraaity Centtw Sanday. IVy are membw8 of Epstein-lMorgaii Post, Jewish War Vetwans.
The beatification of Edith Stein: ramifications for Catholic-Jewish relations By Judith Hershcopf Banki Associate National Interreligious Affairs Director The American Jewish Committee Edith Stein was bom into an Orthodox Jewish household in Breslau on Yom Kippur, 1891. She was the youngest of 11 children, seven of whom survived infancy. Her father died when she was not yet two years old. Her mother took over and ran the family business and she was left in the care of an older sister. A brilliant, precocious and ambitious child, she was continually tkwarted in her efforts to achieve academic recognition by on anti-Semitic headmaster who refused to award her the prizes she deserved. By the age of 21, she had emerged as an agnostic intellectual with feminist leanings. She became an intellectual disciple of Edmund Husserl, founder of the philosophical school of phenomenology, transferring from the University of Breslau to the Univerisity of Gottingen in 1913 to study under him, and eventu:ally became his assistant at the University of Freiburg, where she received her doctorate in philosophy at the age of 25. Husserl was himself a convert to Roman Catholicism, and the intellectual-philosophical circle in which Edith Stein moved included several other converts. These professors and friends influenced her strongly, as did reading the autobiography of Teresa of Avila. On January 1, 1922, she was baptized, taking the name of Teresa. Unable to secure a university position because of her feminist assertiveness, Edith Stein found a teaching post in a Dominican convent school in Speyer. She taught novices and young women. She wrote and lectured in support of women's and Catholic education; she also translated writings by John Cardinal Newman and Thomas Aquinas and attempted to reconcile phenomenology with Thomist philBophy. By 1931, she was quite well known as a feminist and a scholar. For a brief time she taught at the German Institute at Munster, but was abruptly suspended from her post in 1933 whrai the Nazi racial laws excluded Jews from public office. That year, she entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne and became Sr. Teresa Benedicts of the Cross. After Kristallnacht, she fled with her sister, Rosa—also a conirert to Catholicism—to a convent in Echt, Holland, and asked the h^lp of Swiss friends to get them into a convent ID Switzerland. However, on August 2, 1942, she and.her lister were deported, along with all other non-Aryan members of Catholic orders in Holland. Edith and Rosa were taken to Auschwitz, gassed and cremated within a few days (rf their arrival There are two major sources of Catholic-Jewish friction In the Edith Stein story. One has to do with her own attitudes towards Jews and Judaism and her understanding rf the reasons for Nazi persecution of the Jews. The other las to do with a major reason being advanced for her watiiBcatiMi. On the first point, the record is incomplete, •nd (here ai^ many assertions that cannot be proved. Stein [a reputed to have considered Nazi persecution as the fulSllnwnt of the curse whidh the Jewish people called down (Continaed on Page 91
Faculty and studeats of the Friedd Jewish Academy sing following the flag-raising ceremony at the JCC Sunday. Other Yom Ha'atanant activities took place huide the building.
Peres and Hussein have reportedly worked out elements of agreement JLIERUSALEM <JTA> -^ 1>heIsradi media reportedele- pedoing the peace process." The-statement added that niients ot an agreement reportediy reached between Foreign those efforts were doomed to failure, an impUcation that Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan on an . there was a deliberate campaign afoot to wreck negotiainternational conference for Middle East Peace. The two tions by publishing rumor. were said to have met recently in London. The media report referred variously to a working paper But Peres' office issued a strong denial later in the day. or memorandum of understanding which sets the terms of It said the report of an agreement between Peres and Hus- reference and procedures for convening an international s«un in London was "without foundation" and "part of the conference and has the backing of the United States. production of a nunor and speculation factory, aimed at torAccording to the media, the United Nations Secretary General will summon the five permanent memt>ers of the Security Council-U.S., USSR, Britain, France and the People's Republic of China—and the parties in the Middle East to a conference .aimed at achieving a comprehensive peace settlement in the region based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and providing for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. The conference will serve as an opening and introduction to meetings of bilateral committees, each composed of Israel and an Arab neighbor. The bilateral committees would attempt to resolve the outstanding differences between the parties in order to reach a comprehensive settlement. Israel Radio reported that the memorandum contained a secret annex that includes a Jordanian undertaking to Israel not to include on the Jordanian negotiating team mtoibers of the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose presence would cause Israel to immediately break off the talks. But there was no commitment that Israel would have advance knowledge of the Palestinian representatives in the Jordanian delegation, Israel Radio said. It said the annex was an American document conveyed by U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering to Premier Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister Peres. Likud has charged that the entire plan is Peres' and that Pickering in effect served as a "postman" between the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister.
Merger talks (ntt kr Mf^ StmtU
Na'amat Spiritual Adoption Governor Kay Orr prodaims June 7 as Na'amat Spiritual Adoption Day in recognition of the organization's many years of pravfding sodal services in Israel. Accepting on behalf of Shoshanna Chapter is Edith Rogert.
In separate meetings Wednesday night, Omaha's two B'nai B'rith Lodges, Comhusker and Henry Monsky, agreed to continue merger talks. Comhusker has about 200 members and- Henry Monsky about 400.
Transcript A transcript of Elie Wiesel's press conference appears on Page 5.