Story number three. It is February 2023. The setting for this final act of witness is my first-ever trip to Israel under the auspices of The Philos Project.
In the Book of Matthew, Jesus asks, rhetorically, “What did you go out into the desert to see?” It’s a question that travelers to the Holy Land of any faith can only answer for themselves. But one sight that did not exist until the second half of the twentieth century should not be missed by anyone. That is Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum.
Obviously, Israel is about much more than the Holocaust. To focus on Yad Vashem is not to detract from any of the country’s enormous historical, social, spiritual, cultural, or other riches. But for anyone who has been to Israel, and even more, for those who have not, to scant Yad Vashem in discussing anti-Semitism would be inexplicable. Let me cite the observation of the late British novelist Martin Amis. Amis, who was not Jewish, was once asked why his mind and work returned so often to the Holocaust. He replied by citing a German novelist, who said, because “no serious person ever thinks about anything else.”
"To love life as Catholics do is to love the Jews from whose roots we grew."
— @EberstadtMary, one of our speakers at @FranciscanU last week, writes on the importance of Catholic-Jewish relations in light of rising antisemitism.
Read in @firstthingsmag:https://t.co/C22ueD4Jez
— The Philos Project (@philosproject) October 28, 2023