Rabbi to Speak at Providence College as part of Catholic-Jewish Series
Providence, R.I. – Rabbi Jack Bemporad, Director of the Center for Interreligious Understanding in Teaneck, N.J., will deliver a presentation as part of the Providence College Lecture and Colloquium series, Theological Exchange Between Catholics and Jews on Monday, November 30, 2015. The event will be held at 5:00 p.m. in Aquinas Lounge, on campus. The lecture is entitled, “My Forty-Year Journey.” He will reflect on the impact of Vatican II and Jewish-Catholic Reconciliation.
Rabbi Bemporad is also the Director of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue and Professor of Interreligious Studies at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome. He also serves as Senior Rabbinic Scholar at the Chavurah Beth Shalom synagogue, Alpine, NJ.
Rabbi Bemporad is the author of numerous books and articles, including Our Age: The Historic New Era of Christian-Jewish Understanding, published by New City Press. He also edited The Inner Journey: Views from the Jewish Tradition by Morning Light Press, and contributed the chapter on “Norms of War in Judaism” for World Religions and Norms of War, published by the United Nations University Press. Most recently, he contributed a memoir of the philosopher Hans Jonas in Giacobbe E L’Angelo (Jacob and the Angel), published in Rome in 2012. In addition, he authored the articles on “Soul in Judaism” and “Suffering” in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for the Encyclopedia of Religion, published by Macmillan.
He has also served as Chairman of the Interreligious Affairs Committee of the Synagogue Council of America, where he represented Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbinical and lay bodies at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches, the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, and the national and international branches of the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Baptist churches.
Rabbi Bemporad received a B.A. Summa Cum Laude in philosophy from Tulane University, his M.A. in philosophy at Hebrew Union College, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Rome. Ordained as a Rabbi in 1959, he received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Hebrew Union College in 1984. Bemporad taught philosophy and religion at Southern Methodist University for 11 years, at the New School for Social Research, and the University of Pennsylvania, while continuing as a professor at the Vatican’s Angelicum University in Rome.
Established at the College in the 2009-10 academic year, the Theological Exchange serves as a forum for learning and dialogue between Catholics and Jews. The talks are sponsored by the Department of Theology, the Graduate Program in Theology, and the Center for Catholic and Dominican Studies.
This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact (401) 865-1351.
