Beyond the Walls: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Edith Stein on the Significance of Empathy for Jewish-Christian Dialogue (AAR Academy)
Book Details
Author(s)Joseph Palmisano
PublisherOxford University Press, USA
ISBN / ASIN019992502X
ISBN-139780199925025
AvailabilityUsually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank1,831,292
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
Joseph Palmisano offers an in-depth examination of the significance of empathy for Jewish-Christian understanding. Drawing on the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) and Edith Stein (1891-1942), he develops a phenomenological category of empathy defined as a way of "re-membering" oneself with the religious other.
Palmisano follows Heschel's and Stein's philosophical theory and praxis through the unprecedented horrors of the Shoah, showing that Heschel's call to Christians for a return to God is an ecumenical call to humanity to embrace perceived others: a call to live life as a response to God's pathos. This call finds a prophetic answer in Edith Stein's witness of empathy when faced with the Shoah. Stein, a Catholic, creates a dialectical bridge with the Jewish "other," neither distancing herself nor denying her Jewish roots. Stein's simultaneously Jewish and Christian fidelity is a model for interreligious relations. It is also a challenge to Catholics to remember their religion's Jewish heritage through new categories of witnessing and belonging with others.
Beyond the Walls is a critical contribution to the fostering of interreligious understanding, offering both a model of the ideal Jewish-Christian relationship in Heschel and Stein and criteria by which to evaluate contemporary initiatives and controversies concerning interreligious dialogue.
Palmisano follows Heschel's and Stein's philosophical theory and praxis through the unprecedented horrors of the Shoah, showing that Heschel's call to Christians for a return to God is an ecumenical call to humanity to embrace perceived others: a call to live life as a response to God's pathos. This call finds a prophetic answer in Edith Stein's witness of empathy when faced with the Shoah. Stein, a Catholic, creates a dialectical bridge with the Jewish "other," neither distancing herself nor denying her Jewish roots. Stein's simultaneously Jewish and Christian fidelity is a model for interreligious relations. It is also a challenge to Catholics to remember their religion's Jewish heritage through new categories of witnessing and belonging with others.
Beyond the Walls is a critical contribution to the fostering of interreligious understanding, offering both a model of the ideal Jewish-Christian relationship in Heschel and Stein and criteria by which to evaluate contemporary initiatives and controversies concerning interreligious dialogue.
