Fifteen years after he co-founded Sacred Heart University's Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz of Stamford has retired as executive director.Rabbi Eugene Korn, an expert in Christian-Jewish relations, took the helm of the center on July 1.
Ehrenkranz, 81, said a frank conversation with Pope John Paul II in late 1990 inspired him to propose the interfaith center to SHU's new president, Anthony Cernera.Ehrenkranz's Polish parents had taught him that Poland was unfriendly toward Jews.
At an interfaith conference in Rome, Ehrenkranz asked the pope if it was true.
"I learned that there is no greater friend that we have had during any time" than the pope, Ehrenkranz said.
The pope shared the story of how he came to be devoted to forming a positive relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews.
As a young man, the pope's first calling was to the stage; he wanted to be an actor and playwright, he told Ehrenkranz. He studied drama in Warsaw, and most of his teachers there were Jewish.
In September 1939, the Nazis marched into Poland. They entered the drama school, lined up faculty members against a wall in a courtyard and shot them.
Ehrenkranz said the pope marked this as the moment he abandoned theater and devoted his life to God. He promised God that, if he were ever in a position of power, he would do all he could for the Jewish people.
The story persuaded Ehrenkranz that the time was right for improving Catholic-Jewish relations.
In 1993, he retired as leader of Stamford's Congregation Agudath Sholom on Strawberry Hill Avenue and joined the staff of the nascent CCJU as its executive director.
He had come a long way in his view toward Catholics, he said.
"We were always under the impression that Catholics were more evangelical, and their object was to convert Jews," Ehrenkranz said.
Converting Jews to Catholicism was once part of the church's agenda. But the 1965 reforms of the Second Vatican Council, documented as Nostra Aetate, repudiated anti-Semitism and refuted the former church view that Jews present at the crucifixion of Jesus committed deicide, that is, killed God.
Later Roman Catholic reforms further invited interfaith discourse. In 1985 the church officially acknowledged the Jews as the chosen people of God, and in 1995, Pope John Paul II made a public plea to the Jewish people for forgiveness of the church's role in the Holocaust.
Since its founding, CCJU has brought together top Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars and theologians. The center also has paid to bring together new clerics from around the world for interfaith discussions. About 200 future religious leaders have attended these conferences, at a cost of more than $100,000 per year, Ehrenkranz said.
"We think it's going to make a difference in the world," Ehrenkranz said.
Korn, CCJU's new executive director, was previously national director of interfaith affairs at the Anti-Defamation League and then adjunct professor of Jewish Thought at Seton Hall University.
He edits the scholarly Modern Orthodox journal Meorot, which means "illuminations" in Hebrew. He joined CCJU in January as associate executive director and has lectured at the center many times.He holds graduated from Yeshiva University, received a doctorate in moral philosophy from Columbia University and worked for years in Jerusalem at the Shalom Hartman Institute, which many consider to be the world's top Jewish think-tank.
Sacred Heart University in Fairfield is the second-largest Catholic university in New England, offering more than 40 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs, with about 5,800 current students.
"We envision an expansion of the center that's very much a continuation of what's been done before," Korn said. He praised Ehrenkranz's work at the center and said, "We very much want to build on that. "The goal of interfaith discussion, Korn said, is never to convert or to water down one's own faith.
"One of the main goals is constructive understanding of each other as people and members of different faith communities," Korn said.
"The second goal is cooperation on shared values for the creation of peace, human dignity and the sanctity of life."
Korn said the changes made during the Second Vatican Council occurred because the church began to recognize its role in the persecution of Jews throughout history, culminating in the Holocaust.
Korn said this is a new moment in history when Jews and Christians are more aligned than ever, in part because both faiths face the same threats.
"We're both fighting the same enemies of extremism, intolerance, and fanaticism," he said.
"This is a kind of rare moment when Jewish interests and Christian interests line up very closely with each other."
Secularlism on the left and religious fanaticism on the right threaten both faiths, Korn said.
And yet, Korn and Ehrenkranz expressed concern over Pope Benedict XVI's announcement last week that he would allow broader use of the traditional Latin Mass, which included a prayer for the conversion of Jews.
Korn said he believes the decision stemmed from good intentions - a desire to accommodate the wishes of older, faithful Catholics - but that the change could damage interfaith relations unless the offending prayer is removed. Whether changes will be made to the Latin Mass remains unclear.Proponents of interfaith relations often have difficulty people that understanding another faith tradition does not require watering down one's own religious beliefs.
As an Orthodox Jew, Korn said he finds often that the people who most understand his religious commitment are seriously religious Catholics.
In the 1950s, when interfaith dialogue was a new concept, many people involved in the process were secular. A joke circulated in faith communities that these people "had nothing to lose by giving up their religion," Korn said.
"People doing it now are deeply religious Jews and Christians," Korn said.
Rather than finding their faith challenged by interfaith discussions, Korn said, "We are beginning to see the image of God in the face of the other."
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