Maria Jacovy, Cyndi Croff, Don DeAngelo, and Sister Mary Daniel returned recently from an ADL Israel trip.

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Four San Diego County Catholic educators had expected to learn more about both the Holocaust and the life of Jesus on a recent Anti-Defamation League-sponsored trip to Israel.  They hadn't  expected  to gain profound insight into what it is like to live in a country at war nor to be disillusioned by the way the news media reports that war.

Sister Mary Daniel, Don DeAngelo, Maria Jacovy and Cyndi Croff were among a group of 30 Roman Catholic educators from across the United States who participated last month in the "Bearing Witness: trip led by Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, ADL director of interfaith affairs.  They recounted some of their experiences Wednesday, Aug. 2, at the regional ADL offices in San Diego.

Sister Mary Daniel, who taught at Saint Rose of Lima School in Chula Vista, said she would never forget the "experience of going on the Golan Heights and looking over there and seeing those lights and rockets going off, and hearing them all the time, and yet feeling very peaceful."  She said she also was quite impacted by the experience of going from Jerusalem for a tour of Masada and learning upon her return that police had arrested a would-be suicide bomber only one block from their hotel.

"There was a definite eye-opening to the realities over there," said DeAngelo, who teaches government at Cathedral Catholic High School in Carmel Valley.  "You know we basically toured the whole country in six days and you begin to understand how close everything is, and how incredibly intense the situation is, and it makes you a lot more empathetic to what is going on there. 

"One thing I've noticed coming back is how badly portrayed a lot of the things are in the American media.  Just from my own personal experience, my mother could not sleep because of what she she saw on television. It made it look like Hezbollah had the entire country under siege... I tried to explain to people that I never felt threatened or unsafe any place I was, and I could hear the bombs.  From our kibbutz at Ein Gev we could look across the Sea of Galilee and see Tiberias with smoke coming out of it."

Croff, a sixth-grade teacher at Saint Sophia Academy in Spring Valley, said it was a surrealistic scene, smoke curling from Tiberias and on the Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret) "there were people water skiing."  She added that "along with feeling blessed that we were there, you realized the fragility of the State of Israel and everything that is going on there...."

Jacovy, outgoing principal of St. Therese Academy, said that while she was in Israel she became addicted to turning on the news every morning, to see what had happened the night before—and she retains the habit.  She said at one dinner she sat across from a young Israeli and "her view of the war was that she wasn't panicky, you get used to it, you just go on with life, and that was what we were doing. We were watching the people there, looking at fires caused by bombs, hearing the bombs, seeing the smoke, yet going on with whatever we were doing."

And what they were doing was learning about first-century Judaism which provided the milieu for the life of Jesus. The educators, through discussions and a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum, also deepened their knowledge about the Holocaust which all of them have been involved in teaching about to Catholic students.

DeAngelo and Croff recalled a story in the King James version of Christian Scriptures about a girl who was cured by touching the "hem" of Jesus' garment (Matthew 9:20-21).  "It was not his hem, it was his tzitzit," said Croff. "Hem" was a mistranslation and, "it changes the picture of how you view what was going on at the time."

Sister Mary Daniel said she was impressed with the explanation that when, in Matthew 3:4, it is said that John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey, that instead of the insects one automatically thinks of, the "locusts" may have been the fruit of a locust tree, similar to a fig tree, and the honey may have been juice from a date. 

She said one of the high points was attending a dialogue between Rabbi Bretton-Granatoor and Fr. Dennis McManus on the Jesus' Jewish background.  "That, to me, is what is needed, the understanding of Jesus as a rabbi, one of six or seven rabbis teaching at the time.  We can understand the Scriptures so much better."

The nun long has had a special interest in the Holocaust, having spent a considerable amount of time researching the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who directed the Nazis' effort to murder all the Jews.  During that research project, she became friendly with Gideon Hausner, who prosecuted Eichmann. On this trip, she was saddened to learn that Hausner's widow also had died.

During her time teaching at Saint Rose of Lima, she had her students research the various concentration camps and death camps established by the Nazis, and would round out their studies with a visit to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.  She said now that her formal teaching career is completed, she hopes to find other, innovative ways to help students understand the Holocaust.

Jacovy said that before she became a principal she taught junior high school students about the Holocaust, incorporating visits to museums to provide more perspective.  "When I went into administration, I facilitated my teachers to do the same."  Having visited Yad Vashem, she said, she comes away even more convinced of how important it is to "fund children's activities, fund field trips—this is very important."

She said one important Holocaust lesson is that more people should have spoken out against prejudice and discrimination.  In that spirit, she said, she recently wrote a letter to the Tenement Museum in New York City, protesting its sale of a book called Haikus for Jews  which, in her opinion, contains poems that perpetuate anti-Semitic stereotypes.  She wrote "are you aware what is on your table?" and added, "for me, bearing witness is not just in the classrooms, impacting students, but on a daily basis."

Tina Malka, associate director of the regional ADL, said "you can turn on any TV and you see man's inhumanity against each other all the time.  When you have a program like 'Bearing Witness,' you are trying to build those bridges.... Instead of saying 'we're different, we're different, it is important to see what is the same, and that we can build upon those commonalities."