A nice Jewish girl studying Catholicism?

National Catholic Reporter, April 9, 2004 by Nancy Kalikow Maxwell

My opportunity for "peoplehood representation" came when the accreditation team announced a visit to campus and requested a meeting with students. "We would really like you to be there," said the new department chair. My guess is the Catholic students did not receive such a personal solicitation.

Several basic differences and similarities between Christianity and Judaism were revealed to me during my course of study. One difference was the role of ethnic identity within the religion. As a secular but strongly identified ethnic Jew, I discovered that along with food, sociological factors such as language and political affiliation played a much bigger part in my Jewishness than my theology. The first paper I wrote for an ecumenism class on Jewish/Christian intermarriage was summarily rejected by the professor. Handing it back with so much ink it looked like the Red Sea, he chastised me saying, "You are doing sociology, not theology. You need to talk about the religious and theological issues, not the cultural issue involved in interfaith marriage."

My rewritten paper earned me an 'A' in the class--and won a national award as the best theology paper for the year--but maintained my proposition that religion and culture are fused for some Jews. When I presented this premise in an oral presentation to my classmates, they listened politely but did not seem to understand. All, that is, except for a priest from Africa, who told me after class that he knew exactly what this meant.

Likewise, there was little understanding on my part when my colleagues bandied about, concepts such as salvation, reconciliation, grace, passion and redemptive suffering. The former department chairperson had been correct in calling the program participants believers. The students not only believed but could converse using these terms as if it were a relaxed dinner conversation. I kept running to the dictionary after class because these words were not part of the parlance in my or any other liberal Jewish homes I knew. Even within Orthodox and traditional Judaism, concepts such as salvation and redemption usually refer to the community of Israel (meaning all the Jewish people), rather than the individual.

Despite these differences, there were similarities. When a class on church architecture digressed into a discussion of what parishioners wear--or more accurately, don't wear--to church, the inappropriate attire of teenage girls seemed common in both faiths. "How can their mothers let them wear those things?" one student asked. "Their mothers don't know!" responded those of us who were the mothers of teenage girls.

Conflicts over changes to liturgy and attempts to modernize sacred music were areas that touched both Christianity and Judaism. Trivial changes to the words of a prayer or tune of a song can pack a powerful wallop.

Though I never became a religious believer myself, I came away with a fervent belief in the subliminal force religion exerts on persons of faith--for both good and ill.