Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel ed. by Gavin D'Costa and Faydra L. Shapiro (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel ed. by Gavin D'Costa and Faydra L. Shapiro
• Zev Garber

Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel. Edited by Gavin D'Costa and Faydra L. Shapiro. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022. Pp. 309. $34.95.

This well-balanced, highly informative work provides a roadmap to understand the biblical dictum that Israel is the Chosen People, possessing the Holy Land, and whose divine calling, le'or goyim/"a light unto the nations" (Is. 49:6) is advanced by a democratically elected quasi-religio State of Israel. The book proposes a setting marked by Jewish and Catholic theologies of the Land and State of Israel, interwoven with interest in Jewish and Palestinian (Arab, Bedouin, Christian, Muslim) residence on the Land. By focusing on a variety of Catholic approaches and methods to Jewish thinking on God, Torah, Land, and People, the chapters discuss a number of topics (nationalism/Zionism, religion, secularism) that provide an accessible approach to understand the dynamics of a collective Jewish/Israeli view of modernity, which differs considerably from a religious/halakhic worldview. The veracity of a biblical narrative is tested by Catholic insight and teaching that often conflicts with the Torah seen by the Jews as religiohistory.

Following a preface by H. B. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the editors' introduction, the essays are in three parts. Part I is "Listening Again to Scriptures." Lawrence Feingold offers a theological, typological, and eschatological reading of scriptures sans supersessionism for the return of the Jewish people to the Land and the possibility of a renewed encounter with Jesus mandated by the State of Israel. Etienne Vetö asserts that God's presence in the return of the Jews to the Land includes the call to share the Land with the residential inhabitants, the Palestinian people. Ambiguities are noted, and many challenges remain. Catholic questions regarding Israel's relationship to the Promised Land after Christ are presented by Jean-Miguel Garrigues and Eliana Kurylo. In lieu of the scarcity of Promised Land fulfillment in the Second Testament, the essayists probe millenarian eschatology of Christian theologians from before Augustine of Hippo to post-Vatican II advances in Jewish-Catholic [End Page 273] relations, suggesting that the revival/resurrection of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel alludes to the fulfillment of the mystery of redemption carried by the Church. Isaac Vikram Chenchiah surveys passages in the Tanakh and Second Testament that connect people to a land and posits a Christian belief that Christ shines light on the Land of Israel as the center of reconciliation between Israel and the Nations.

Part II is "Mining the Tradition." Christian Rutishauser engages theological interpretations, Church writings, and papal actions regarding the Land and State of Israel as an exemplar of a truly just society, concluding that it is only in the State of Israel that Judaism can fulfill its vocation. Matthew Tapie posits Thomas Aquinas's christological views on the Land in dialogue with The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible (2002) and post-Nostra aetate views on Jews and Judaism. Gavin D'Costa confirms that Catholic theology teaches that the Jewish people are divinely promised to settle and inhabit the Land of Israel and that Catholic diplomacy recognizes that the Palestinians have a right to separate people-statehood within that greater homeland. Dirk Ansorge rejects the notion that the sacraments of the Church imbedded in Christology can affirm the State of Israel.

Part III is "Seeking Justice and Peace." Here, divided essays exclusively support Israeli and Palestinian positions of co-existence in the Holy Land. David Mark Neuhaus, a self-proclaimed Jew, Israeli, Catholic, and Jesuit, insists on the right of return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel; however, the Church cannot recognize the Jewish State since it can potentially tolerate disunity and disrespect between Jews and Arabs (Christian and Muslim) living in Israel and Palestine/West Bank. Antoine Lévy, a Dominican convert from Judaism, maintains that the Church's sense of a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians can be resolved by biblical...