Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz
Executive Director
Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding
Sacred Heart University
5151 Park Avenue
Fairfield, CT 06825 USA

Dear Rabbi Ehrenkranz,

Thank you most kindly for your faxed letter of September 27th, informing me of the forthcoming celebrations at the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding.

I am very honored to send you a short letter of congratulations on the occasion of the 7th Nostra Aetate Commemorative Awards Ceremony, and in particular for the 10th Anniversary of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University. First of all, I cannot begin but with a warm word of thanks to you, your collaborators, and your incredible work, or better the commitment of all of you, that has helped the implementation of the mission statement of the Center, with its impressive and outstanding role in Christian-Jewish dialogue.

The Center's multifaceted activities focusing on current religious thinking within Judaism and Christianity, but including also a growing participation of Muslims in the interreligious dialogue, provide forums for dialogue, vital features in response to contemporary issues and challenges. Our common heritage and patrimony should be profitably made available and be at the service of all, in witnessing that change and new beginnings are possible even after a long historical period of contempt, slander, polemics and oppression. Dialogue is only serious and honest when it withstands differences and recognizes the other in his or her otherness. From this perspective, the programs and publications of the Center inspire people to discern that it is in the countenance of the other, in confronting the otherness of the other, that we discover ourselves.

Standing shoulder to shoulder as partners, and – in a world where the glimmer of hope has grown faint – together we must strive to radiate the light of hope without which no human being and no people can live. Young people especially need this common witness to the hope of peace in justice and solidarity. Jews and Christians together can maintain this hope. For they can testify from the bitter and painful lessons of history that – despite otherness, alienation and historical guilt—conversion, reconciliation, peace and friendship are possible. May the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding be that beam of light in witnessing and fostering greater knowledge, understanding, justice, peace, equity and solidarity.

With the assurance of my heartfelt gratitude and rich blessings on all your work, I express my most cordial and fraternal greetings.

Walter Cardinal Kasper
President

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