Sister Rose — She’ll rest when her work is done

Harriet Sepinwall is a professor of education, history, and interdisciplinary studies at the College of Saint Elizabeth, Morristown, and codirector of the college’s Holocaust Education Resource Center.

Sister Rose Thering’s pioneering work in encouraging positive Catholic-Jewish relations began with her doctoral dissertation at Saint Louis University. Her research about Jews and Judaism in religion textbooks used in Catholic schools eventually was taken to the Vatican and influenced changes in Catholic teaching beginning with “Nostra Aetate.”

I first met Sister Rose in the 1970s, when she was an advocate on behalf of the Soviet refuseniks. She became a leader in the Christian community in advocating support for Israel, organizing and becoming president of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, and taking more than 50 groups to Israel. At Seton Hall University, she worked with Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher in building the special graduate program in Catholic-Jewish studies. It led the way for serious study of the links between these two communities. In going to Austria to protest Kurt Waldheim’s presidential election, she made headlines, but Sister Rose was only just beginning to do some of the most important work of her life.

I met her again in 1991 while I was in Jerusalem with Vladka Meed’s group of teachers studying the Holocaust and Jewish resistance. Sister Rose asked me what I planned to do with what I had learned. Knowing that I was a professor at a Catholic college, she urged me to do more than just teach about this to my own students.

“Why don’t you have a week of remembrance?” she suggested.

We began just such a week surrounding the College of Saint Elizabeth’s Kristallnacht commemoration. During our Week of Holocaust Remembrance, students may take numerous classes and opportunities to learn about the Shoa (including study in Poland on the March of Remembrance and Hope) and the importance of eradicating anti-Semitism and intolerance today.

Sister Rose was a member of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education and made important contributions in this work. Even as she initially hesitated in supporting the state mandate (because she feared that teachers without appropriate knowledge and training would be responsible for teaching the subject), she became one of the leading advocates for teacher education about the Holocaust. The Sister Rose Thering Endowment established fellowships for teachers for an important master’s program at Seton Hall in the Catholic-Jewish relations program. Sister Rose and I presented a Holocaust education workshop for teachers at the National Catholic Educational Association, and attended many programs together, including the international Association of Holocaust Organizations in Tampa, Fla.

She loved my chicken soup with lukshen, and attended Shabbat and High Holy Day services at my synagogue and others in the MetroWest area, as well as family seders with members of our Jewish community. I remember the Fridays when I did some shopping for her or took her to the hospital for treatments when she became ill. She loved hallah and other things I would bring, and after these were put away, she would tell me about the work that still needed to be done to eradicate anti-Semitism and to promote respect for Judaism and for Israel. She stressed that her love of Judaism, the Jewish people, and the State of Israel was linked to her understanding of Catholicism and Christianity. She was pained when others in her own community could not identify with the work she was doing.

I encourage all centers and schools that currently do not have a copy of Sister Rose’s Passion to add the documentary to their collections and to arrange to have screenings of it in their communities. The film, which was named best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival Award and received an Academy Award nomination, was made by extraordinary filmmakers who recognized that her story had to be more widely known.

She was a wonderful mentor — and I know how proud she was of Barbara Wind’s leadership of the Holocaust Council of MetroWest. Far from being satisfied with all that she had done in her life, Sister Rose was ever mindful that others were needed to carry out her goals. Those involved in Holocaust education made her happy because she could see that she was not alone.

A year ago, Sister Rose had to leave her home at the MetroWest Jewish community’s senior housing complex in Whippany to return to her Mother House in Wisconsin. Just two weeks ago, I attended a wonderful tribute to Sister Rose at the Holocaust Council of MetroWest, a special Yom Hashoa program that seems to have been timed just right.

While I want to say “Rest in peace, Sister Rose,” I somehow feel that she still will be doing her best to influence what takes place down here on Earth. She’ll be reminding us that there’s a lot of important work we still need to do for tikun olam (repairing the world). We can help her to “rest in peace” as we continue the work to which she dedicated her life.

Comment | Print | Subscribe