A Jewish blessing to the Catholic Church

By Rabbi Ben Kamin

Rabbi Ben Kamin
Rabbi Ben Kamin

ENCINITAS, California — This Sunday, as two Popes with sympathetic ties to the Jewish people were beatified, I sent the Hebrew blessing for hope to the Catholic house.  It’s been my experience, personal and through the lens of history, that Rome has made genuine efforts to confront its longstanding degradation of the Jewish people and its painful duplicity with the Nazis during the Second World War.

Historic Church of the healing and merciful Sisters, the brilliant and cognitive Jesuits, the simple and sweet priests with holes in their shoes and prayer-diamonds in their hearts–God’s international sanctuary from Valparaíso to Brooklyn to Florence to Yamoussoukro.  Your servants see saintly sparks in the loins of men and celestial dreams in the eyes of women.

I have stood under your Sistine ceiling and in your North African tents and have felt the hand of God.  I have descended from Mt. Sinai into Saint Catherine’s Monastery and there you gave me water to drink.   You have welcomed me when I visited in your tent and you have reaffirmed your scriptural lineage through timeless Judean sands and old Davidic scrolls.

Blessed be the Church as it places two more stars today in the firmament that tenderly chains heaven to earth.  And let one billion Catholics turn this world at last into an earthly Roma Eterna.

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Rabbi Ben Kamin is a freelance writer and author based in Encinitas, California.  He may be contacted via ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com San Diego Jewish World seeks sponsorships to be placed, as this notice is, just below articles that appear on our site.  To inquire, call editor Donald H. Harrison at (619) 265-0808 or contact him via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com