A Dramatic Encounter

FISHER, EUGENE J.

A Dramatic Encounter Catholics and Jews in Twentieth-Century America Egal Feldman Urbana and Chicago: Universty of Illinois Press, 2001. 360 pp., hardcover $34.95 REVIEWED BY EUGENE J....

...Feldman does note the way in which certain issues, such as the Spanish Civil War (which pitted Fascism against Communism) split the two communities, with the sometimes bitter feelings reflected in the pages of the Catholic press...
...While I could (and perhaps someday will) footnote, amend, and add details to this discussion, having lived through much of it as one active in the dialogue, I can highly recommend this book and express my personal and professional gratitude to have so much of the story told so well Eugene J. Fisher is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S...
...360 pp., hardcover $34.95 REVIEWED BY EUGENE J. FISHER Egal Feldman has previously written on the Jewish-Protestant encounter in America...
...There is much evidence to the contrary, including Pius's support for a plot to assassinate Hitler and the passing along of clandestine information to the Allies during the war...
...As Feldman notes, Catholics and Jews saw themselves for much of the 20th century essentially as immigrant communities in Protestant America, divided by religious beliefs and a bitter history in Europe, but freed from that history to relate to each other in a new way, a way without precedent in two millennia...
...He does, however, cite on p. 91 another scholar whose article making the allegation itself contains no evidence...
...Such a bleak picture cannot explain the consistently positive votes on Israel related issues by Catholics in Congress, for example...
...Coughlin's political forays never gained widespread Catholic support, and major Catholic journals and figures, such as Monsignor John A. Ryan, publicly condemned his views...
...Yet that remnant of European anti-Semitism among American Catholics, it needs to be stressed, never manifested itself politically as it did in Europe...
...A Dramatic Encounter Catholics and Jews in Twentieth-Century America Egal Feldman Urbana and Chicago: Universty of Illinois Press, 2001...
...Conference of Catholic Bishops...
...And he is absolutely wrong to allege without any supporting evidence that either Pius XII or American Catholics "hoped for a German victory" in World War II...
...There was no ambivalence whatsoever about that...
...Here, Feldman might have analyzed the Jewish press as well...
...Feldman notes that just as Jews faced anti-Semitism from the larger society on these shores, so did Catholics face strong social and political anti-Catholicism, with deep roots in nativist xenophobia and bigotry...
...My parents' generation fought in and supported the war wholeheartedly...
...He does not go into much detail, but it is important to note that Catholics and Jews in urban America were equally excluded from the "better" jobs, schools, neighborhoods, and professions, each meeting and overcoming the challenge, often separately, but sometimes in common, as in the American labor movement, which was, over the decades, largely a Catholic-Jewish enterprise in its leadership as well as rank and file...
...Feldman goes on to narrate on the whole quite well, the era of dialogue brought about by the Second Vatican Council...
...Here, he takes up the American Jewish- Catholic relationship and its remarkable development over the course of the 20th century...
...But it was there, among clergy and laity alike...
...Feldman sets the stage for the dramatic encounter by sketching the ancient Christian "teaching of contempt" (the phrase is that of French historian Jules Isaac) against Jews and Judaism, and how the two communities confronted and coped with their emergence from medievalism to modernism in America in the first third of the century...
...Likewise, any lingering support Nazi Germany might have had in the Catholic community in this country evaporated with Pearl Harbor...
...In doing so he has given a precious gift to both communities since this is the first extended treatment of the subject...
...Likewise, the appeal of Father Charles Coughlin is seen, I think accurately, as reflecting a more widespread anti-Semitism within the Catholic community than many of us would want to admit...
...The chapter on the "postwar ambivalence" of Catholics toward Jewish causes has it right about the ambivalence, but leans too far on the negative side of the ledger...
...As one rather deeply involved in many of the events he describes, I would commend him for his balance and sure-footedness while narrating a number of extremely complex and sensitive issues and incidents...
...It remained pretty much in the parlors and rectories...

Vol. 27 • February 2002 • No. 1


 
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