Sixth Annual Nostra Aetate Awards Ceremony 

The ceremony was free and open to the public and was followed by a private dinner as a fundraising benefit for the Center.
 
Dr. Anthony J. Cernera, president of Sacred Heart University, Monsignor Thomas J. Hartman of the TV show “The God Squad,”  Rabbi A. James Rudin, Senior Interreligious Advisor of the American Jewish Committee, New York City, Most Reverend William E. Lori, Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, Executive Director of the CCJU.

The award, named for the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), was presented to Reverend Remi E. Hoeckman, O.P, former Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews in Vatican City, and Rabbi A. James Rudin, Senior Interreligious Advisor of the American Jewish Committee in New York City.

The Center also presented TV show hosts from “The God Squad,” Rabbi Marc A. Gellman and Monsignor Thomas J. Hartman, both of Uniondale, New York, with a Media Award for their significant contribution to furthering interreligious dialogue through the media. The Most Reverend William E. Lori, D.D., S.T.D., Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, delivered a spiritual reflection at the end of the ceremony. Arthur S. Hoffman, president of the Ridgefield foundation in New York, served as master of ceremonies.

Mr. Hoffman welcomed the group and spoke of his involvement with the charitable foundations created by Henry J. and Erna D. Leir. Although the Leirs were Jews who escaped the Holocaust, their charitable focus was not narrowed by their exposure to the evils of anti-Semitism.  Henry J. Leir received an honorary doctorate from Sacred Heart University in 1998, when he was 98 years old. It was given to him by Dr. Anthony J. Cernera, president of Sacred Heart University, because his philanthropies benefited humankind in the widest ecumenical sense. 

Mr. Hoffman said, “The importance of the mission of the Center has grown exponentially since the September 11th terrorist attack.  Suddenly our eyes were opened; day-after-day we were exposed, by newspapers and television, to the almost inconceivable fact that for years heavily endowed, purportedly religious schools have been teaching children that mass murder was an enlightened expression of religious belief, and that to kill and be killed in the process was a blessed act gaining instant admission to heaven. Interreligious dialogue is called for now, hopefully to condemn unequivocally the attempt to hijack and speak for the great and peaceful religion of Islam by bigots, fanatics and advocates of murder.  Interreligious dialogue is necessary to remind clerics of all religions, and governments of all nations, of the proven horrible consequences to humanity of unleashing hatred as a political tactic. That is why the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding and the outspoken dialogues it promotes through conferences, missions, publications and lectures are vital forces for survival. The Center dispels the deathly silence.” 

Dr. Cernera offered welcoming remarks. He recalled the “incredible progress” in Christian-Jewish dialogue over the past 36 years and said it was “almost unbelievable—except for people of sincere faith and hope.” He noted the important and necessary role the Center has played in promoting understanding and education for peace and justice—even in the midst of considerable forces that would seek to silence dialogue and understanding. 

Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, executive director of the Center, said, “Nearly three months ago, just several dozen blocks from where we gather tonight, our world was changed forever. The methods are as modern as the evening's news, but the madness is as old as Cain and Abel. We struggle to understand the enormity of this crime against humanity, and we reject utterly any assertion that this was God's will. It is blasphemy, not belief, that drives such people, and it belongs to the community of believers to be as forthright as possible in condemning such action without equivocation, without hesitation, without ceasing.” He continued, “We are living in a remarkable time, one fraught with dangers, at least as great as those of the previous era. Only honest and respectful dialogue can resolve frustration and hatred and lead us to greater understanding and harmony around the world. Tonight's distinguished honorees remind us that progress and peace are possible, but the world we live in, and the city that hosts us, reminds us that it is not inevitable, nor is it won without heroic effort.”  

Reverend Remi E. Hoeckman, O.P.

Reverend Remi E. Hoeckman, O.P., Ph.D., was born in Belgium in 1943. He entered the Dominican Order in 1962 and was ordained a priest in 1969. He studied in Louvain (Belgium) and Geneva, Switzerland, and he obtained his doctorate in Sacred Theology from Fribourg University (Germany). He specialized in ecumenical studies at the Graduate School for Ecumenical Studies of the World Council of Churches and Geneva University. He was the Director of the Dominican House of Studies in Rome as well as the Director of the Center for Coordination of Research of the International Catholic Federation in Rome. Father Hoeckman was a Professor at the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and was the first Head of the Ecumenical Studies Department.

Father Hoeckman served as a member of the Executive Commission of the Catholic Biblical Federation and an official of the Holy See's Congregation for Catholic Education. He is a consultant of the Vatican's Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He is also a consultant of the World Council of Churches' Education and Theological Formation Commission and a consultant of the joint working group between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches. He served as Secretary of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews from 1993-2001 and was one of the chief authors of the 1998 Vatican document on the Holocaust, We Remember, A Reflection on the Shoah.

Dr. Cernera said Father Hoeckman, who has returned to his native Belgium, was not able to travel because of illness, but the award would be taken to him later. Rabbi Ehrenkranz read the following remarks from Father Hoeckman in his absence: 

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Friends,

Pope John Paul II has told us several times that Catholic-Jewish relations can never be a mere academic exercise. They can never be a mere political, diplomatic, or bureaucratic exercise either, nor a purely theological exercise for that matter. To those who take these relations seriously, they are a breathtaking experience of human encounter and dialogue, involving hopes and fears and oftentimes pain, but always utterly sincere and deeply marked by mutual respect. This has been my conviction from the start, and I know how difficult it can be. It has also been the way in which I have sought to carry out a task – that is, to serve as Secretary to the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, from the beginning of 1993 until April of this current year. This Commission has its roots in number 4 of the Second Vatican Council's declaration Nostra Aetate. Those few sentences of conciliar teaching have reversed a history of almost two thousand years.

Those good friends among you who have wished to honor me with the Nostra Aetate Award, writing my name among the names of giants with whom I have been fortunate enough to share some of my hopes and concerns and counsel—but above all, my faith in the One God, Father of us all—those good friends who have also shared much with me in return, do not really want to listen to another lecture, I am sure. Instead, you might like to find out some more about my personal story, of which my Catholic-Jewish experience is an integral part. Not that this is going to do you any good, but it may help you to understand a little better why I did what I did when we still labored together in the field of Catholic-Jewish relations. Please, bear with me.

In 1984, I was a happy university professor, enthusiastically nurturing, developing and guiding my latest “baby,” that is, a new Ecumenical Studies Department at my university in Rome. I was approached by a prominent Jewish man, Dr. Joseph L. Lichten of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and by the then-director of the Centro Pro Unione in Rome, Father Charles Angell, SA, who was also a lecturer on my staff. They asked me about the possibility to organize at our University [the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, better known as the Angelicum] an international Catholic-Jewish theological colloquium, in order to mark and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the promulgation of Nostra Aetate. We did so in April of the following year, with the collaboration and participation of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. It was such a good experience that we organized a second colloquium in November 1986. On both occasions, the participants were received by Pope John Paul II in the Apostolic Palace.

These colloquia were a good experience for me too, and quite a new one at that. I had grown up as a “child of Vatican II.” In fact, in my years as a student of philosophy and theology in Louvain/Belgium, and in Fribourg and Geneva, I had fed on the spirit of the Council. I opened myself to it, and slowly but surely, discovered that by doing so, I was really surrendering myself to the will of God. I did not accomplish this in a “soft” way, prey to “spiritualizing away,” as it were, the at-times adventurous demands of the Holy Spirit, but learned it the hard way. In fact, at an early stage in my life [in 1966], I found myself as a young and inexperienced Dominican friar in the heart of Africa, in the midst of a civil war that unfortunately has still not seen its end. It was in the Congo, at that time called Zaire. It was undoubtedly there and then that I was “confirmed” in the faith. My love for a Jew by the name of Jesus, who had made me enter the adventure of religious life in the Order of Preachers, became really and concretely, even painfully, love of God and love of people: this people, all people, as it never had been before. Yet, as far as I can remember, at that time I had really never met a Jew “in the flesh,” I would say.

I was a Flemish country boy who had volunteered to interrupt his studies, in order to go to Africa to take the place of his Dominican brothers who had been murdered there by the Simba rebels. I had done so with little courage [I was no hero] but with a great deal of faith in what I took to be the will of God. When, a few months later, I took very ill and talked to God about the possibility of my own death, I became a person of faith in a way that I had not been and not known before. I changed, that is, God changed me, and made me free to respond to whatever challenge was to come my way. I began to understand that God can turn weakness into strength, not for my own use, but for the use of people of any color, creed or culture whom He wished to put on my path. This path led me back to my home country, Belgium, first, and then to Switzerland, the USA, South Africa and Rome, and from Rome again to many other parts of the world, teaching, preaching, learning, sharing, and above all, wondering about what, or who, would come next. In 1993, it was the Jews that came. Some of them called themselves “children of Vatican II” also! Since then, things have never been the same.

In the years before, my interest and attention had basically gone to the ecumenical dialogue, that is, to the concern for Christian unity and the primary role of education in this regard. It was the reason I had set up an academic program at our University, designed to form ecumenical teachers. I was soon asked to direct the Centre for Coordination of Research of the International Federation of Catholic Universities in Rome. It was from that post that the Holy See called me to the Congregation for Catholic Education, one of my tasks being to look after the relations between the Congregation and international organizations such as the Council of Europe, UNESCO, FIUC/IFCU, etc. It was during that period that I met the Jews.

The need for good interreligious relations had been obvious to me for a long time before that. As a matter of fact, although the goal of such relations is quite different from the ecumenical goal, I had seen to it that my students at the Angelicum's Ecumenical Studies Department received some preparation for interreligious work. I knew that most of them would some day find themselves wearing two hats, that is, professor in ecumenism and/or director of ecumenism and interreligious affairs. I had also included in the department's curriculum a course on the continuing significance of the Jewish People in God's plan of salvation. However, I did not teach this course myself, since I had by that time forgotten the little Hebrew that I had ever learned. In fact, to me Christian-Jewish relations were an academic exercise, until the day I found myself representing the Congregation for Catholic Education, in December 1990, at a meeting of the International Liaison Committee between the Catholic Church and IJCIC (the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations), in the offices of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews in the Vatican.

Less than two years later, I was to address the next meeting of that International Liaison Committee in Baltimore, Maryland. I spoke on “The Teaching on Jews and Judaism in Catholic Education.” In the eyes of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, I must have done a good job, for I found myself appointed the Commission's new Executive Secretary a few months later. Indeed, these were the beginnings of an iter [journey] that brought me here today. God does have a sense of humor and many things that happened during the years that I was in office, with ups and downs on several levels, political, diplomatic, organizational and personal. But an event that did stand out enormously among it all, was the six-day pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to the Holy Land in the month of March 2000. George Weigel, who served as a commentator for news agencies during the papal visit to Jerusalem, reported on what was happening just hours before the Pope's arrival. He somehow conveys the major dynamics that I have had to cope with while I was in office too. On March 20, he wrote, “Further explorations in the Israeli press and a few phone calls to friends and colleagues suggest that an incredible number of personal, ethnic, religious, ecumenical, interreligious, organizational, and, of course, political agendas are at play in the last 24 hours before John Paul arrives. Spin is everywhere. Some upstart local religious leaders are competing for market-share in what they assume will be a growing interreligious dialogue after the visit. The established figures – Jewish, Christian, Muslim – are busy trying to frame the papal visit according to their respective organizational and political agendas. The politicians, by contrast, seem relatively restrained thus far. In one sense, this entire hermeneutical rumble – trying to define what it all means before the Pope even lands – is a tribute to John Paul II, the man whose blessing everyone, or almost everyone, seems to crave. On the other hand, the struggle for interreligious turf, ecumenical precedence, and political advantage misses the essential point of the Pope's visit.”

Today, I can honestly say that it has been my concern all along not to miss the essential points on the Catholic-Jewish interreligious agenda . I have spoken on this on many occasions and in many places, and so has Pope John Paul. We can hear a good summary of it in the words he spoke during his visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Museum on 23 March 2000. He said,  “In this place of solemn remembrance, I fervently pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the twentieth century will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews. Let us build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Jewish feeling among Christians or anti-Christian feeling among Jews, but rather the mutual respect required of those who adore the one Creator and Lord, and look to Abraham as our common father in faith.” That is why I have combated any attempt on the part of some Jewish agencies to “hijack” the interreligious agenda. 

The spirituality which has nurtured me throughout my life, which has sustained me in good days and bad days, hinges on two questions that God is asking me (and all of us, I am sure) every day, and to which I do seek to respond. I have spoken of it quite often in the context of both ecumenical and interreligious relations; forgive me when I do it one more time. God, out of the abundance of His love, speaks to us as friends (cf. Exodus 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among us (cf. Baruch 3:38). According to my Christian faith, God came to live among us, whom He has created in His image, in a most eminent way in His Son Jesus Christ. In fact, God has chosen to relate to us, to speak with us, to seek us out when we go into hiding. As the Bible says, “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?” (Genesis 3:8-9). 

God is a relating God indeed, and I believe that this is what He wants us to be too, relating people, people of dialogue with Him and with one another. Did God not ask Cain, after Cain had killed his brother Abel, “Where is your brother?” (Genesis 4:9). I surely cannot answer the first question without answering the second question too! That is why I have dedicated many years of life to ecumenism and to interreligious relations. May God bless you all. 

Rabbi A. James Rudin 

Rabbi A. James Rudin has served as the leader of many interreligious conferences both in the U.S. and overseas. He is a past Chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, and he has participated in numerous meetings with Pope John Paul II. He has also participated in conferences with the World Council of Churches in Geneva and with Eastern Orthodox leaders in Greece. In 1974, Rabbi Rudin was co-leader of the first interreligious study mission to Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. In 1977 and 1980 he led interreligious delegations to the Belgrade and Madrid Conferences on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) where he worked to advance human rights and religious liberty for Soviet Jews and other oppressed peoples. He was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the 1992 CSCE Meeting in Warsaw and the founder of the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry.  

Rabbi Rubin has been awarded the “Person of Reconciliation” from the Polish Council of Christians and Jews in Warsaw, as well as the Joseph Award and the Jewish Interfaith Medallion from the International Council of Christians and Jews. He is a prolific writer and has authored several books. He writes a weekly commentary for the Religion News Service/Newhouse Newspaper Syndicate. His articles have appeared in many publications including Christianity Today, Commonweal, Encyclopedia Judaica, Judaism, The Journal of Ecumenical Studies, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Reform Judaism and Worldview. The Rabbi has contributed to the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Newsday. He has also lectured around the world and has been a frequent guest on many radio and television programs including appearances on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, Fox and PBS. He has appeared on the NBC-TV Today show, the CBS-TV Morning News, Larry King Live, Crossfire, the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, Oprah Winfrey, and Sally Jessie Raphael. The Rabbi is a frequent commentator on CBS' World of Religion and is on the Advisory Board of the PBS Religion and Ethics news program. 

Rabbi Rudin read the following remarks at the Nostra Aetate Awards Ceremony:  

I remember well when the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University was established 10 years ago, and I have watched its influence and importance grow through the years. I salute Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz, the Center's executive director. Indeed, I especially commend the Center for its excellent publication, Perspective, and its many significant programs, most notably its work with Jewish and Catholic seminarians. I am honored that Dr. Anthony J. Cernera, the President of Sacred Heart University, is here tonight. His leadership has been a vital part of the Center's success.  

I deeply regret that my Vatican colleague for so many years, Father Remi Hoeckman, is ill in Belgium and was physically unable to make the trip to the United States to personally accept his award. I wish him a “refuah shlaymah,” a full recovery, and I know you join with me in prayers for his recovery.  

I also congratulate the “God Squad,” Rabbi Marc Gellman and Father Tom Hartman, for their Media Ward. And I am pleased Bishop William Lori is with us tonight. While he was in Washington, D.C., the Bishop and I worked together on several projects, including the establishment of the Camp David Interfaith Chapel. He is a superb successor to Cardinal Edward Egan in Connecticut. 

Because of my admiration for the Center, I have taken a leaf from its book and helped establish the  Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at St. Leo University near Tampa, Florida. It seems clear that such centers represent the next phase of Christian-Jewish relations in general, and Catholic-Jewish relations specifically. The Sacred Heart Center was a pioneer in such efforts: efforts to give academic programmatic substance to the promises of the Second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate declaration of October 1965.  

Thanks must also given to the American Jewish Committee, which encouraged and supported my interreligious work since I joined its staff in 1968. It is the AJC that is the invisible co-recipient of this cherished award. Now with three rabbis working in the interreligious field, in Jerusalem, New York and Chicago, the AJC will continue to fulfill its mandate this area. 

I also salute my colleagues at the AJC who allowed me to pursue my dream of building sturdy human bridges of mutual respect and understanding between Christians and Jews. 

“Acharon v'acharon haviv”… “the last is the most beloved.” My wife Marcia personally and professionally (she taught comparative religion at William Patterson University in New Jersey) inspired me and urged me to move forward with my interreligious efforts during these past 33 years. 

Our daughters, Rabbi Eve Rudin Weiner and Jennifer Rudin, are here tonight. Unfortunately, because of babysitting problems, Eve's husband, Rabbi Robert Weiner, could not join us tonight. Eve directs the high school program of the Reform Jewish movement in North America, and Jennifer is a casting director. Both the rabbinate and the entertainment world are two rather obvious professions for a rabbi's daughters. 

One of my seminary teachers said that all authentic theology is autobiographical. So let me share with you tonight precisely how I got into this line of work—a line of work I like to call my “brush with history.” The last 30-plus years have truly been historic as two ancient faith communities reached out to one another in an attempt to reverse nearly 20 centuries of suspicion and mistrust, an historic effort to end the bitter family feud that has plagued and wounded both Christians and Jews. However, I have no illusions. My efforts at the American Jewish Committee, those of the Sacred Heart Center, those of the Vatican, we are the pioneers, we have only inaugurated what must remain an irrevocable, irreversible historic process of ending once and for all the alienation between our faiths.  

I grew up in Virginia in a friendly sea of mostly Southern Baptists. It was an area where Catholics and Jews were both minorities. My first direct interreligious experience took place when the Rudins, the only Jewish family in our neighborhood, were asked to judge the annual Christmas house decorations contest that was an eagerly anticipated annual event. We were asked to do so because the judges, all Christians, were unable to select contest winners without bitter controversy. In desperation, the contest participants asked my family to act as impartial judges since our home only featured the traditional Hanukkah menorah. My father, brother and I soon became experts in judging the quality and originality of prancing reindeer, moving Santa Claus figures, falling snowflakes, and a myriad of other Christmas home decorations. And, of course, our contest decisions were fully accepted because of our clear impartiality. For me, the often pejorative cliché is true and positive. “Some of my best friends from grade school and high school are Christians!” 

Two other defining events brought me into this work. In the 1960s I served as a United States Air Force Chaplain in Japan and Korea. I was the lone rabbi among many Christian chaplains, and it was at air bases in Japan and Korea—Itazuke, Osan and Kunsan—the latter base had bombers with nuclear weapons posed to attack Communist China—that I became aware of both the good will of my fellow chaplains and their surprisingly lack of authentic knowledge about Jews and Judaism. 

And I discovered the same lack of knowledge in my pastoral work with the military personnel who were Christians, including family counseling, prayers offered following plane crashes and public and private meetings. In such moments, I recognized first hand both the challenge and the opportunity of interreligious work. My years as a USAF chaplain took place on the eve of the Second Vatican Council,  and it is worth noting that military chaplains were engaged in positive interreligious work before it emerged with such energy on the domestic American scene.  

At the same time I regularly visited the American Jewish personnel who were stationed at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commissions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those unforgettable visits brought me into close contact with many Japanese religious leaders who were neither Jewish nor Christian. The enormous and extraordinary opportunities for enlarging the interreligious encounter beyond Jews and Christians were clear in those two Japanese cities. The Japanese religious curiosity about us and our curiosity about them remains an indelible part of my memory bank.  

The final defining event took place in early 1964 in front of the Forest County Court House in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where Christian clergy, including Catholic priests and Protestant ministers, and rabbis marched together in behalf of voting rights for American citizens who were black.  

That illustrious chapter in interreligious relations should not be forgotten, not simply because I was a part of it, but because it represented such relations at their best…rabbis, priests, and ministers, mostly white clergy…linked together to make voting rights real for black Americans, most of whom were Pentecostal, charismatic or conservative Evangelical Protestants. 

Let me conclude with a few thoughts about our current interreligious situation. In the Twentieth Century—the one that gave us Fascism, Nazism, Communism, the Shoah, weapons of mass destruction, and endless wars based upon religion, race, and ethnicity—we saw the political tyrants, Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung, corrupt and abuse religion in order to solidify their totalitarianism political power. Who among us can ever forget the photos of German Christian clergy in their ecclesiastical robes offering up the stiff-armed Nazi salute. Abuse of authentic religion was a means to consolidate secular dictatorial power. 

The reverse, it seems to me, is happening today. Religious tyrants corrupt and abuse the political order, especially through the use of lethal terrorism directed at democracies, in order to solidify their totalitarian religious power. Political terrorism and abuse of democracy are a means to consolidate religious power.  

This means that people of all religions and of no religion will need to hold hands in greater solidarity as we move forward in this new/yet old story of religious extremism run wild. This means that those of us who are committed to Nostra Aetate's charge to develop “mutual respect and knowledge” can take nothing for granted nor assume our work is finished. On the contrary, we will have to intensify the work of centers like those at Sacred Heart or St. Leo and elsewhere.  

But there can be no turning back to the bad old days before Nostra Aetate. Perhaps, just perhaps, God has chosen us, our generation, for the huge task that lies ahead....combating the destructive cancer of violent religious extremism. We, you and I, especially Catholics and Jews, have come too far together to weaken or turn back now.  

It is in that spirit that I accept this Nostra Aetate award, and as I do so, I repeat the words that are said in the synagogue when the Torah reading is completed. Hazak Hazak V'Nithazak: “Be strong, be very strong, and let us strengthen one another!” Thank you.  

Rabbi Marc A. Gellman and Reverend Monsignor Thomas J. Hartman 

Rabbi marc Gellman is the Senior Rabbi of Temple Beth Torah in Melville, New York, where he has served since 1981. He was the first Rabbi appointed to the distribution committee of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Federation, and he was chairman of the UJA rabbinical advisory committee, founding chairman of the Long Island Rabbinical Advisory Council, and the recipient of the Tzedaka Award from the UJA of Jewish Federations. Rabbi Gellman will be the next president of the New York Board of Rabbis. 

Rabbi Gellman has appeared regularly with Monsignor Thomas Hartman on ABC television's “Good Morning America,” and the “Imus in the Morning” radio program, and their own cable television program, the “God Squad.” He has written and published a collection of tales for children called, Does God Have A Big Toe? Stories About Stories in the Bible. This collection was selected by The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times and People Magazine as one of the best children's books of 1989. Rabbi Gellman's second volume of modern midrashim for children, God's Mailbox, was published in 1996. In 1997, he wrote Always Wear Clean Underwear and Other Ways Parents Say They Love You. 

“Father Tom” Hartman was ordained on May 29, 1971, and is the director of Radio and Television for the Diocese of Rockville Center. Father Hartman is known for his popular television show, “God Squad,” co-hosted by Rabbi Gellman, his frequent appearances on “Good Morning America,” the nationally syndicated “Imus in the Morning” radio show, and his own numerous productions for Long Island Cable including “Father Tom and Friends.” He also has a national radio talk show, “Journeys Through Rock,” which reaches hundreds of stations on the ABC Radio Network. 

As an author, Father Hartman has written Just A Moment—Life Matters with Father Tom, and The Matter of Life and Death, and co-authored two books with Rabbi Gellman for both children and adults titled, Where Does God Live? which won the 1991 Christopher Award, and How Do You Spell God? Answers to the Big Questions From Around the World, which was made into an HBO animated special. He also writes a regular monthly advice column on religion and modern life for Self Magazine with Rabbi Gellman. Monsignor Hartman has been recognized for his professional and pastoral work by winning three Emmy Awards, a Folio Award, numerous “Man of the Year” citations, and honorary doctorate degrees. 

The Most Reverend William E. Lori, D.D., S.T.D. 

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport offered a closing reflection and said that “purification of memory” should be an ongoing process for the two communities. He alluded to some severe critics of Pope Pius XII who had published books of “dubious merit” and in his opinion did not “serve well the cause of our friendship and the cause of truth.” He said, “You and I are in this for the long haul” and the two communities will make progress only by being honest, trustworthy and sensitive to each other's concerns.   

Named for the 1965 Vatican II document that opened the doors of dialogue and mutual respect between Christians and Jews, the Nostra Aetate Award is given to outstanding individuals who are known and respected for their commitment to interreligious dialogue, understanding, and reconciliation. Past recipients of the award have been Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Cardinal William H. Keeler, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, Cardinal John O'Connor, Rabbi Rene-Samuel Sirat, Bishop Krister Stendahl and Rabbi Mordecai Waxman. 

Previous Page    Back to 2001 Programs and Conferences    Next Page