Caspari Center Media Review – June 8, 2011
During the week covered by this review, we received 4 articles on the following subjects:
Christians in Israel
Christianity
Christian Art
Archaeology
This week’s review was a sparse miscellenea.
Christians in Israel
Haaretz, June 3, 2011
“David Maria Jaeger, a Catholic priest who converted from Judaism, will be installed this morning as a prelate auditor of the Roman Rota, a papal law court that serves as the chief appellate court of the Catholic Church … Jaeger’s appointment to the Holy See’s highest judicial body – comprising 20 auditors hand-picked by the pope and headed by Dean of the Rota Antoni Stankiewicz – is considered a personal sign of appreciation by the pope for Jaeger’s years as legal adviser to the delegation that negotiated the Vatican’s Fundamental Agreement with Israel. This pact, signed in 1993, enabled the establishment of diplomatic relations between the parties the following year … Jaeger has come a long way from his youth in downtown Tel Aviv. He attended Bilu Elementary School, at that time a school for Tel Aviv’s religious Zionist bourgeoisie, studied at the Zeitlin religious high school and from there, went all the way to the Holy See’s highest court. His sister Leah flew in from Israel yesterday morning for the event, bringing a special sculpture made especially for the new auditor by Menashe Kadishman. The artist hammered out the image of Jesus on the cross, with his head on the upper edge of the cross and his hands bound to its sides … Attorney Chaim Stanger, a close friend of Jaeger’s from their days together at Bilu … [said] ‘Jaeger disappeared for six years.’ When he returned, at 22, he met Stanger and told him, ‘You know, I’m now in the church.’ ‘I have a black hole regarding the period between the ages of 16 and 22,’ Stanger said. ‘He returned a doctor of theology and never spoke of the process he underwent. He told me, “Chaim, when the time comes, we’ll talk”‘ … Stanger noted that Jaeger’s father acted ‘as if he didn’t know his son had converted to Christianity, because as I understood it, this wasn’t something they spoke about. But he was loved by both his parents; his mother also gave him support and love’ … When Jaeger was asked yesterday whether he feels Israeli, he replied, ‘at least as much as you do,’ adding, ‘I’m just like any Israeli citizen who works for an international organization situated outside the country – just like there are Israelis at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, the UN in New York or UNESCO in Paris. I am in a supra-national international body, that’s the only the difference. I’m a loyal and patriotic son of our people and our country,’ he said. ‘After all, that was the whole point of the Jewish people’s emancipation in the 19th century, that we would become a nation, not a religious minority among gentiles. A person can live according to his conscience, he can not believe in any religious faith or believe in one rather than another, all according to his own intellectual conscience.’ Jaeger held two important positions en route to this appointment: legal adviser to the Holy See in the negotiations with Israel and, in the 1990s, head of the Diocesan court of Austin, Texas, which rules on issues of canon law such as marriage annulments.”
Christianity
Jerusalem Post, June 6, 2011
According to this brief report, “A billboard campaign in Australia launched by a Muslim group … called Mypeace … caused outrage among some of Sydney’s Christians, upset by advertisements reading ‘Jesus, a prophet of Islam’ … the group … claims that the campaign was made to encourage awareness about Islam, and correct some misconceptions the public may have regarding the religion … Some other slogans post include: ‘Holy Qur’an: The Final Testament’ … Julian Porteous, Auxiliary Bishop at the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, urged Mypeace to take down the advertisements, saying religions should not offend people of different faiths.”
Christian Art
Haaretz, June 3, 2011
This article examined the British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor’s work “Ascension” being exhibited as a collateral event of the 54th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, as part of a review of the Biennale as a whole.
Archaeology
HaModia, June 1, 2011
“As Jerusalem marks the forty-fourth anniversary of the city’s reunification, the Antiquities Authority chose to reveal today a series of findings discovered in recent years in various archaeological excavations conducted in the capital. The Authority says that today, after 150 years of archaeological research in the city, during which hundreds of excavations were undertaken, we now have a wide range of data which shed broad and deep light on the glorious past of the holy city. The early remains of Jerusalem, from the Canaanite period through to the Ottoman Empire, have been preserved above the ground and beneath it. The settlement of the city, which has existed continuously for over 4,000 years, has created rich and complex levels of archaeology over wide areas. The many findings discovered in the excavations enable a reconstruction of Jerusalem’s face throughout the city’s history.”