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Jewish World Review / Oct. 15,1998 / 25 Tishrei, 5759
Jonathan S. Tobin
Converts, saints and Jews:
Confronting the story of Edith Stein
MY EARLIEST MEMORY of any sort of Jewish education is not the first time I
encountered the aleph-bet or learned my first prayers. It was at some
uncertain point in my early childhood hearing my mother tell me what she
herself was told as a child that I was part of an unbroken line who had
suffered and fought for thousands of years to keep their identity as Jews.
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Though I don't think my mother was familiar with the works of Emil
Fackenheim,
that writer's pronouncement, that in the aftermath of WWII, the 614th
commandment of Judaism should be, "Thou shalt not give Hitler any posthumous
victories," surely resonated in our household.
SPIRITUAL TREASON OR SPIRITUAL CHOICE
The idea of giving up our faith and our identity as Jews was the greatest
anathema and utterly unthinkable. The only converts from Judaism that I knew
of were the villains in the cartoon history lessons on the back of the
"World
Over" magazine which I read in Hebrew school, such as Johann Pfefferkorn, a
15th century German Jew who converted and helped promulgate laws which
called
for the burning of the Talmud. I saw conversion to another religion as a
form
of spiritual if not literal treason.
These childhood memories are called to mind by the strange story of Edith Stein, a 20th century German Jew who was proclaimed a saint of the Catholic church this past weekend. The hostile reaction of most Jews around the world to the Pope's action is, I think, as much rooted in our instinctive revulsion against someone who rejected Judaism as it is anything else.
Stein converted to Catholicism in 1922 at the age of 31. A student of philosophy and a secular Jew who rejected the piety of her family, Stein was influenced by the Catholic idealism of fellow German intellectuals and fell under the spell of the works of the medieval Catholic saint Teresa of Avila. She eventually became a nun and took the name Sister Teresa Benedicta. Unlike converts who used their new Christian identity to revile or help oppress the Jews, Stein spoke out against the Nazis and even tried to get an audience with Pope Pius XII to urge him to act. He did not receive her.
After
fleeing to Holland, she was arrested and sent to Auschwitz in 1942, along
with
other converted Jews. Two weeks later, she was murdered there.
ATONING FOR AN "UNBELIEVING PEOPLE"
Unlike those who converted for reasons of advancement or convenience (such
as
the poet Heinrich Heine or the composer Gustav Mahler), hers was a purely
spiritual conversion. Indeed, she conceived of her life in "Jewish" terms.
Born on Yom Kippur in 1891, she took her vows as a nun, offering her life in atonement for the sins of her "unbelieving" Jewish people. When she conceived of her mission to the Pope, she saw herself as a latter-day Queen Esther. It is a pity that Edith Stein's spiritual hunger was so unsatisfied by the Judaism offered to her by her family. Writing in a collection of essays on Stein entitled, "Never Forget," which was published this year by the Carmelite Order, Daniel Krochmalnik, a German Jewish educator, speculates, "how might the strongly mystical talent of Edith Stein have been touched by Hasidic piety?" He thinks Stein's emotional piety might have been better able to express itself in a more emotional Hasidic milieu rather than in the very Prussian and culturally assimilated Jewish life she was born into.
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer wrote in Lilith magazine in 1991 that restrictions
on the role of women in Judaism might also have affected Stein's life.
Though
she argues that there were options for "an intellectually brilliant,
spiritually ambitious woman within Judaism" in Stein's time just as it is
true today, Fuchs-Kreimer wondered whether, "The tremendous focus on family
which is so characteristic of Jewish life may have made it even more
difficult
for a single, 30-year-old, female philosopher to find adequate models within
Judaism."
A BLOW TO INTERFAITH DIALOGUE
But the problem with Edith Stein's sainthood goes beyond our feelings about
converts. If by proclaiming Edith Stein a saint, the Pope believes he is
furthering the cause of Catholic-Jewish dialogue, he is mistaken.
The notion of Edith Stein's death symbolizing the oppression of the Catholic church in the Holocaust, as some would have it, is repugnant. Stein died in Auschwitz, not because of her religious faith, but because of her Jewish origins, in spite of her nun's habit. As much as the Church has been at pains to use the Stein sainthood proclamation as an occasion for soul-searching about the Holocaust and promoting respect for Jews, making this woman symbolize Jewish suffering is offensive to most Jews. She is not, as ADL head Abe Foxman has correctly pointed out, an appropriate representative of Jewish victims.
The problem here is not ill will. Pope John Paul II has proven himself over
and over again a courageous fighter for tolerance and respect between
Catholics and Jews. His deeds speak louder than any words. But that's the
rub.
The words associated with the Stein sainthood process and Catholic notions
of
sacrifice strike Jews as inherently disrespectful of our suffering and the
integrity of our faith. Speaking about Jewish suffering in Catholic terms
which have no parallel in Jewish thought is bound to offend.
SALT IN THE WOUNDS
The Stein affair also pours salt in Jewish wounds about the inaction of the
Vatican and most Catholics during the Holocaust. Many fear that Stein's
sainthood symbolizes a Christianizing of the Holocaust which will only
desecrate history. And talk of making Pius XII a saint can only strike Jews
as
astonishing and repugnant.
In the end, it really is none of our business who is or is not considered a saint by Catholics. We need to respect their view of Edith Stein, just as we must, reluctantly, respect Stein's own intellectual integrity, even if it goes against everything we believe. All we can ask is that the Church not use Stein to denigrate respect for Judaism or the truth of the paramount Jewish tragedy of the Holocaust.
Edith Stein remains a remarkable Jewish girl who fled her faith without
rancor
and who then suffered the same terrible fate of millions of other Jews
whether
assimilated or pious. Let us mourn her not as a saint but as a branch of our
thirty-five-hundred year-old Jewish tree of life that was torn away. Neither
a
Yom Kippur offering nor a Queen Esther, she was yet another Jewish
intellectual who was lost to her
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