Should Edith Stein Be A Saint?

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
October 16, 1998

This week Pope John Paul II added another saint to the 1085 he has canonized or beatified in the Roman Catholic Church – Saint Theresia Benedicta. Her original name was Edith Stein, born on Yom Kippur, 1891, in then Breslau, Germany – a Jew. She was a brilliant philosophy student and deeply involved in the intellectual world outside of Jewish circles of the early twentieth century. In 1922 she converted to Roman Catholicism. She entered a Carmelite convent in 1933 because of the Nazi decrees banning Jews from teaching. After Kristallnact, November 1938, she and her sister eventually came to Echt, Netherlands. In 1942 the Nazis told the Dutch bishops that if they abandoned their intention to denounce the deportation of Jews, the Nazis would spare Jewish converts. When the bishops refused, the Jewish converts were deported. Edith Stein died in Auschwitz, August 9, 1942.

In researching for this sermon I went to the WEB and read articles from around the country and the world, even some of the dialogue in a chat room dedicated to this subject. Some place, I can't remember where, there was an invitation to cast a ballot for a survey:

The options were:

A]. As Edith Stein had converted, this wasn't our issue, and thus has nothing to say.

B]. The Nazis killed her because she was Jewish, and thus making her a saint, is, in a way, a slap at the Jewish people.

C]. This was an attempt by Pope John Paul II to continue creating a bridge between Christians and Jews.

If you were viewing this screen, how would you have voted?

Should the Jewish community be silent?

Should we protest?

Should we care about one more saint in the Catholic Church? In any other situation this is not relevant to us, just as in the thousands of Jewish sages, one Rabbi more or less is irrelevant to them.

I voted for B.

I would have liked to vote for C: a continuing act of reconciliation. When the record of his Papacy is written, Pope John Paul II will be noted as one of our best friends in church history, and at all. He is the linear descendant of Pope John 23 rd . Together they have revolutionized the Roman Catholic Church by his stance, teachings and preaching about Jews and Judaism. In innumerable ways this Pope has reached out to the Jewish community and even to the State of Israel. Yet, there have been divisive actions too. He has beatified into sainthood several accused of complicity with the Nazis. The Vatican records of the Holocaust remain closed. His next candidate for sainthood is Pius XIIth, the Pope in the time of the Holocaust – who was silent. I can't construe this as a bridge.

I would have like to vote for A: that it isn't our business. The church doesn't get involved in our denominational disputes or how I "posken halacha." So we need not inject ourselves into their process of canonization. But, this is different. It isn't because she converted out of Judaism. She wasn't the first and won't be the last, just as many Catholics, among those of other faiths, have devotedly embraced Judaism.

Why did Edith Stein die?

Not because she was a nun.

Not because she was a Roman Catholic.

Not because she was Polish/German/Dutch.

She died because she was born a Jew.

In a way, Pope John Paul II, by stressing her Jewish origin, calling her an eminent daughter of Israel, certainly furthest from his true intentions, ratified the Nazis' racist theory that said: "Once a Jew, always a Jew." If she is our daughter in death as she was in birth, then this situation concerns us too.

I voted for option B – that it was a slap in our face. I do not like the harshness of the rhetoric, but of the options available, this is the only one I can defend in my good conscience.

Firstly, minimally, this choice was insensitive. The linkage theologically of Jewish death in the Holocaust to the Church is a delicate and even dangerous subject, which potentially can unravel all the good which has been done in interfaith relations.

Secondly, Edith Stein died because she was born a Jew. Her death, like all those of the Holocaust, is evidence of the hatred of Jews and of Judaism, which has a two thousand-year history. That a Jew cannot escape death, even by converting, isn't new. In 1492, after the expulsion from Spain, Jews who had converted will still persecuted and murdered by the Church to who them had converted, through the instrument of the Inquisition. Her death cannot be construed as testimony for the Church because in the hour of humanity's greatest need, the single strongest force to counter fascism, the Church, did not proclaim from its very center, its cardinal teaching of brotherly love, that might have rallied Christian Europe against this evil.

Thirdly, she didn't die for the Church. She died because her parents were devout Jews and created a Jewish girl. While she certainly adopted and espoused Catholicism, she didn't die defending Church theology. She died because the Nazi racial laws labeled her a Jew forever. If the Nazis in 1942 wanted to punish the Dutch bishops, then they could have deported them. They sent Jewish converts to the gas chambers because they considered them still Jewish. An Edith with any other genealogy would never have died.

In truth, in discomfort, perhaps even in pain, I can deal with my first three objections. But there is a fourth, which I cannot. The Holocaust was not the first genocide in human history, and is still happening. But The Holocaust happened to one and only one people – the Jews, to our family, to our kin, and to no one else. That statement does not trivialize the destruction wrought upon Poland and Russia, both whose countries suffered terribly. But they were national entities. They had armies, navies, and air forces to fight with. The Nazis also didn't target the elimination of the Church, of any denomination. We were the quintessential defenseless "citizens of the world".

It wasn't because of our ideology.

It wasn't because of our nationality.

It wasn't because we were all millionaires.

It was because of our faith, our religion.

In the end, Edith Stein couldn't run away either.

Her canonization makes the Church into a Nazi victim, which it never was.

Christianity wasn't being persecuted nor its adherents being targeted for destruction.

It dilutes the brutal truth of the Holocaust, which must never be distorted.

The Holocaust was not a universal experience.

It was a Jewish Experience, in which others certainly did suffer.

This is why I voted for option B, not because I care about the internal workings of the Church, not because I feel that I'm in a theological contest, not because I am concerned about Edith Stein. I voted for B for our honor.

The honor of our dead must never be diminished. It must always be protected through truth. As such it is our sacred task to protest the revision of history, even when done by a best-intentioned friend, Pope John Paul II. Born as a Jew, died as a Jew, I pray that the neshama of Edith Stein rests in peace, with the all the martyrs of our people.

Amen.