PhotoCardinal O'Connor's Viewpoint




A Jewish-Catholic 'Happening'

It's a Catholic school in Macedonia, at this time of horror an academic oasis for refugee children from Kosovo. To the degree that any one facet of life can provide relative normalcy to children driven from their homes by barbarity, this little school is trying desperately to do precisely that. The American Jewish Committee understands this.

On the sweltering Monday morning of the 7th of June, Rabbi James Rudin and a number of AJC board members came to my residence bearing a check for $100,000 for use in the Catholic school of Macedonia. I was the middleman. With me was Ms. Louise Wilmot, Catholic Relief Services deputy executive director for domestic outreach, up from Baltimore and the CRS headquarters. The check was actually for CRS, internationally famed for its work among refugees of every race, color and creed, everywhere and for instant relief in every kind of disaster.

The executive director of AJC, Mr. David A. Harris, spoke warmly of the CRS efforts he had personally seen in Ethiopia, during the worst of the famine in 1984. I could verify what he had seen, having myself roamed those scorched plains at a later date, witnessing unimaginable starvation.

This was far from my first encounter with the charitable outreach of the American Jewish Committee. They were among my very earliest visitors upon my arrival in New York as Roman Catholic Archbishop. Rabbi Rudin and his associates made clear in those very early days their desire and commitment to work hand in hand on matters of moment to humanity. More than once the AJC has publicly supported actions and utterances of Pope John Paul II when some scored and scorned him.

The AJC visit on June 7, however, with the transmittal into Catholic hands of funds it had raised as a Jewish agency, was for me a new high in interfaith relations. Few gestures could bespeak more profound trust. I told them I would write about it as one of my truly thrilling experiences in interfaith relations. They hadn't asked me to, nor do I write out of a sense of indebtedness. I write to record a "happening" of singular importance.

It was a day for "happenings." As I told the AJC members I would be doing, I left them to go on board the USS Intrepid for the funeral of Mr. Zachary Fisher, a Jew whose charities knew no strictures. The Intrepid, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, was brought to New York by Mr. Fisher, as a tremendous gesture of love for the United States. It's a fraction of a fraction of his charities, this man who worked hard all his life, made a lot of money the hard way, and spent these past 20 years giving it away, again without regard to race, creed or color.

I was humbled to be invited to speak for a few minutes at Mr. Fisher's funeral, and I began by telling of the visit of the American Jewish Committee an hour before. I told the story because it typified everything Zach Fisher represented.

Such profoundly meaningful actions as those of the AJC's and the Zach Fishers of the world are very much part of the real answer to the tragedies of the world's Kosovos and the savagery of "ethnic cleansing."

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