Ecclesia & Synagoga

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Ecclesia & Synagoga: then and now These images tell us something about the Today there is a move to redeem such images impact of art and image on our life of faith, to reflect the healing that has taken place in including our approach to Scripture. the relationship between Christians and Jews Depicted in these sculptures is the Church’s over the past fifty years since the Second journey out of its antisemitic past into a new Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate. era of respect and reconciliation with the The image above right shows a sculpture Jewish people. The two figures represent commissioned by St Joseph’s University, Ecclesia and Synagoga, church and Philadelphia.2 Here Synagoga and Ecclesia sit synagogue. Note the differences between the side by side, turned toward each other in artworks. friendship and as equal partners in a position The figures pictured above left are from the that suggests the chevruta method of Torah Cathedral in Strausbourg1 and are typical of study, one holding the Torah scroll, the other those which appeared repeatedly in church the Christian Bible. A miniature of this statue architecture and manuscripts of the Middle was presented to Pope Francis at the 2015 Ages. Lady Ecclesia is upright, regal, Annual Conference of the International victorious, holding a cross and the Christian Council of Christians and Jews held in Rome Scriptures. By contrast, Lady Synagoga is for the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate. downcast, blindfolded, dishevelled, holding a Pope Francis himself blessed the original broken staff, the tablets of the Jewish Law artwork on his 2015 visit to the USA. This slipping from her hand. The message taught beautiful sculpture is the work of Joshua by the Church to the illiterate masses was Koffman: www.joshuakoffman.com very clear. Photo credits: 1. Unknown artist, photo CC BY-SA 2.0 fr (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en )] 2. The original artwork ‘Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time’ by Joshua Koffman was commissioned by Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia to mark the golden jubilee of the Second Vatican Council declaration, Nostra Aetate. More information: www.sju.edu; joshuakoffman.com .

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Ecclesia Et Synagoga 50 Years Ago and Today
Ecclesia Et Synagoga 50 Years Ago and Today Temple B’nai Shalom Braintree, Massachusetts October 3, 2015 Rabbi Van Lanckton Fifty years ago this month, on October 29, 1965, a front page story in the New York Times carried this headline: POPE PAUL PROMULGATES FIVE COUNCIL DOCUMENTS, ONE ABSOLVING THE JEWS. The story began, “Pope Paul VI formally promulgated as church teaching today five documents embodying significant changes in Roman Catholic policies and structures and offering friendship and respect to other world religions.” One of the documents was a declaration “on the relation of the church to non- Christian religions. The declaration includes the dissociation of the Jewish people in Catholic doctrine from any collective responsibility for the Crucifixion of Christ and an injunction to all Catholics against depiction of the Jews as ‘rejected by God or accursed.’” I remember that day fifty years ago. I was then starting my second year as a student at Harvard Law School. I lived in Cambridge with two roommates, Jon and Harvey, both of them Jewish. As we left our apartment that morning to walk to class, Jon said, with his usual humor, “I feel so much better. Now I can walk a little taller.” At some level Jon was kidding. We did not think that Jews living in 1965 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or for that matter anywhere in the world, had any responsibility for the Romans who crucified Jesus in the First Century. But Jon also was not kidding. As I learned more about Judaism, and certainly by the time I converted to Judaism about 18 months later, I knew that the ancient libel against all Jews that we killed Jesus resulted in centuries of discrimination and persecution: the Crusades, the Inquisition, pogroms and the Holocaust in Europe and beyond, and even in America restrictive covenants and agreements that excluded Jews from some neighborhoods and jobs and entire professions.
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