Catholics learn about Judaism

By CORINA KNOLL LOS ANGELES TIMES

Posted: November 26, 2009 at 7:49 a.m.

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LOS ANGELES — The challah was blessed, the Manischewitz wine poured, the candles lighted. It could have been any Shabbat dinner in Los Angeles, were it not for it taking place midweek and the room being full of Catholic schoolteachers.

The 34 teachers were participants in Bearing Witness, a seminar designed for educators in Catholic schools learning to teach about anti-Semitism and the history of the relationship between Jews and Catholics. Created in 1996 by the Anti-Defamation League, it is now conducted across the United States.

The league’s Los Angeles office is in its seventh year of running an annual Bearing Witness program. The itinerary of the three-day course can include a discussion about the Holocaust, a synagogue tour or a lecture about Judaism in the period between the Old and New Testaments.

The schedule ended with a Shabbat-like dinner at the league building, where many ate their first knish.

“I’ve been taking notes furiously, and I keep saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that,’” Katherine Dzida said as she dug into her Kosher meal of baked chicken and vegetables. “My understanding has been so enriched, and I can share that with my students.”

Dzida, 24, teaches sixth and seventh grades and looked forward to contributing some of her newfound knowledge to a class unit on intolerance and the Holocaust.

“In terms of Catholicism and Judaism, I’m not sure some of my students realize how deeply they’re intertwined,” she said.

At another table, Cynthia Madsen, 63, was discussing how moved she had been by the previous day’s events, which included the testimony of the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. The woman’s tale of her mother’s perseverance in the face of horror brought tears to the teacher’s eyes.

“It went through your heart like an arrow,” Madsen said. “I’ve been asking myself, ‘What would I have done?’ ... You begin to internalize it. It goes deep.”

Madsen attributed her emotional reaction to the program’s requirement of total immersion.

“It’s intense,” she said. “There are no distractions from the outside world. You’re in total concentration on one thing - the good and the bad.”

The history between Jews and Catholics is rugged terrain, one in which Jews say anti-Semitism was practiced and endorsed by Catholic leaders for centuries. Jews were long blamed for the death of Jesus until the 1960s when the Second Vatican Council released the Nostra Aetate, a decree that sought to create new relationships with non-Christian religions, particularly Jews.

But programs like Bearing Witness can bring uncomfortable history to light.

“The very first time I attended, I’ll be brutally honest, it was difficult for me to hear some of the things that were said, like how the Fourth Lateran Council demanded Jews wear identifying hats,” said Father Alexei Smith of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which helps develop and promote the conference. “That’s horrendous and a precursor to the Nazis’ demanded armbands.”

Smith’s colleague, Sister Angela Hallahan, believes that although the program offers a much-needed point of view, it also helps strengthen the teachers’ own Catholic faith.

“They’re coming back with a different answer to a lot of discussions, and the answers come from a place of knowledge,” Hallahan said.

Bearing Witness is less about theology and more about sharing Jewish history and culture. Attendees stay in dorms at American Jewish University where they eat in the kosher cafeteria. The seminar is heavily subsidized and costs attendees $160. All who apply are accepted, and the league is eager for more.

“If there’s anything we’re challenged by it’s that schools don’t have resources for the teachers to take time off during the week to do this,” Anti-Defamation League regional director Amanda Susskind said.

“We sit there and talk about what we’ve experienced and pick it apart and ask each other what struck them,” said Ray Nolte, 48, a high school religion teacher. Nolte said the seminar helped him understand the Gospel from the Jewish perspective.

“I’m reading the Bible with fresh eyes,” he said.

Religion, Pages 40 on 11/26/2009

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