Dear parishioners,
On 15 June at 7 pm there will be a reception for representatives of the American organization Jews for Jesus.
Hilda
Dear parishioners,
A family outing is being organized to Tabgha on the Feast of Peter and Paul. Meet outside the church at 7 am.
Hilda
Dear parishioners,
Our newly organized old people’s home needs a heater, a camp bed, and several large saucepans.
Hilda
Dear parishioners,
Study and reading of Holy Scripture are canceled because Brother Daniel is away. Instead Professor Chaim Artman of the University of Jerusalem will visit us and talk about Biblical archaeology. Very interesting.
Hilda
Children’s bunk bed available. If anybody needs it, please see Hilda.
Children’s hour—drawing.
Hilda
22. 1964, Haifa
L
ETTER FROM
D
ANIEL
S
TEIN TO
W
ŁADYSŁAW
K
LECH
Dear Brother,
Apologies for the delay in replying to your letter and for not thanking you for sending the magazines. Thank you very much, although unfortunately I have not read them yet. The trouble is that I have found myself in the thick of quite different problems, far removed from issues of theory and theology. We have long known, of course, that theological controversies are invariably a reflection of the circumstances of the Church and of the people who comprise it. The people around me can hardly even be characterized as a congregation in the traditional sense, and confront me with entirely different issues. Working in Poland, I was dealing with Polish Catholics who had been brought up in a certain tradition within the framework of their national culture. What I observe here is nothing like that. While recognizing the catholicity of the Church, we sometimes forget that in practical terms we are always dealing with ethnic religion. The Christian ambience which has evolved in Israel is highly diverse. There is a multiplicity of Churches, all with their own traditions and outlooks: even Catholicism is present here in a wide variety of forms. Besides my brother Carmelites, I find myself talking to an assortment of Maronites, Melchites, and many other Christian organizations, many of them monastic “Little Brothers of Jesus” and “Little Sisters of Jesus.” each branch with its special characteristics and insight. There are pro-Palestine and pro-Israel ‘little brothers and sisters,’ and these have their own particular areas of contention. One such Jerusalem Brotherhood was even closed recently because it proved too difficult to live among the Arabs without sharing their hatred of Jews. I make no mention of the various Orthodox churches which are also unable to agree among themselves. The Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is at loggerheads with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, and so on ad infinitum. I won’t even attempt to take in the whole picture.
As a parish priest I constantly encounter problems within my own small community. Polish women and their children, Hungarians, Romanians, individual people who were unable to live their lives in their homeland but who remain loyal to the traditions of their homeland find the process of cultural assimilation in their adopted country very trying. Jewish Catholics, no matter which part of the world they live in, do not generally feel at ease there, but mine are especially uneasy.
Here, in Israel, in this Babel of nationalities, I have seen for myself that in practice a priest works not with individuals in a vacuum but with representatives of a particular people, each of which evidently has its own, national path to Christ. The result is that in the minds of that people there appears an Italian Christ, a Polish Christ, a Greek Christ, a Russian Christ.
My mission here in this land, among the people to which I belong, is to seek the Jewish Christ. There is no need to labor the point that He, in whose name St. Paul declared earthly nationality, social distinctions, and even gender to count for nothing, was, as a matter of historical fact, a Jew.
I have made the acquaintance of a young Ethiopian bishop. He said something important: “Africans cannot accept European Christianity. The Church lives within its own nationality, and you cannot impose the Roman interpretation on everybody. King David danced before the throne, and the African is ready to dance. We are more ancient than the Roman Church. We want to be as we are. I studied in Rome, and prayed for many years in Roman churches, but my black-skinned parishioners have not had that experience. Why must I demand that they renounce their nature? Why must I insist that they become the Roman Church? The Church should not be so centralized. Universalism is in delegated freedom!”
In this I agree with him. The Ethiopian Church formed before the split into Eastern and Western Christianity. Why should it concern itself with the problems which arose after that?
I can share that point of view, not as an Ethiopian but as a Jew. In Poland that would never have occurred to me. You know, in Belorussia, among the Germans, I wanted to seem to be a German, in Poland I was almost a Pole, but here in Israel it is as plain as can be that I am a Jew.
Something else: while I was showing Mount Carmel to two seminarists from Rome, we wandered into a Druse settlement and, higher up the hill, came upon a derelict church. Two monks once lived in a hovel adjacent to it but there is nobody there now. It isn’t obvious whom to ask for permission. I got my parishioners together and we set to tidying it up, clearing away all the rubbish and litter. We placed 12 stones for an altar. Of course, a great deal of money would be needed before it would be fit for holding services, but in the meantime I have written to the local authorities asking for permission to restore the church.
By the way, I have been granted Israeli citizenship, but not at all as I would have wished. I have been naturalized on the grounds of having been resident here, but they have not registered me as a Jew. I think I may have told you about this already. After I lost my lawsuit the law was amended, so that now a Jew is defined as somebody born of a Jewish mother, who considers himself a Jew, and has not converted to another religion. I have only succeeded in making matters worse than they were. Now on entering Israel an immigrant has to declare which faith he professes, and Jewish Christians can be refused citizenship.
The entry in my identification document reads, “Nationality not established”!
Dear Władek, there is a great deal of work to do here, so much that I sometimes have no time to think. Why has the Lord arranged my life this way? When I was young I hid from the Germans for a whole year and a half with nuns in a ruined monastery, not daring to poke my nose outside. I had more time for reflection than I had thoughts to fill it. Now I constantly feel a lack of that “empty” time. There is no time for reading either, but in that respect I have a request. If you should come across the works of the English biblical scholar Harold H. Rowley, not The Relevance of Apocalyptic but his old book about the faith of Israel, please send it. I found a mention of it, but without a bibliographical reference.
It has long been understood that Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” was mere rhetoric, but the question “What is faith?” is not rhetoric but essential for living. There are too many people in the world who believe in rules, candles, sculptures, and other bits of this and that. They believe in interesting people and peculiar ideas. Perhaps it is just as foolish to seek there for meaning as for truth, but I would like faith, which is the personal secret of each one of us, to be stripped of the husk and the clutter, down to the wholesome, indivisible grain. It is one thing to believe, and another to know, but most important of all is to know what you believe.
Your Brother in Christ,