Jerusalem’s Hebrew-Speaking Catholic Community: Feat. Dr. Rivka Karplus

In this episode of Jerusalem Talks, Avraham (Avrum) Burg speaks with Dr. Rivka Karplus, a family physician and an internal medicine and infections specialist. They talk about Dr. Karplus’ unique upbringing and her journey from a Jewish background to her embrace of Catholic tradition and membership in Jerusalem’s Hebrew-speaking Catholic community. Dr. Karplus describes the fabric of this minority community and how it functions within a majority Jewish culture. They talk about Jewish-Christian dialogue, and the misunderstandings that many Jews and Israelis have about Christian faith. Finally, they address the intersection of Dr. Karplus’ faith and professional work.

With gratitude to the production team - Daniel Schwake, Gabriel Mitchell, and Avrum Burg - as well as Eli Krogmann and David Turjman for making this season of Jerusalem Talks possible.

Transcript

Jerusalem Talks ND

Season 2 Episode 6

Host: Avraham Burg
Featured Guest: Dr. Rivka Karplus

Avraham Burg: Peace on you Rivka. Peace on you Dr. Karplus. Who are you?

Dr. Karplus: I'm a human being. I'm Jewish, Christian. Work here as a doctor in Israel. I'm Israeli. I'm a consecrated lay woman in the Catholic Church. What else?

Avraham Burg: The accent is not very Israeli. Unlike my Arnold Schwarzenegger accent, yours is not very Israeli.

Dr. Karplus: I grew up mainly in the US with some time in Europe and with a European family.

Avraham Burg: European family over there in the States.

Dr. Karplus: My father was born in Austria and came to the States when he was 8 in 1938.

Avraham Burg: And mom

Dr. Karplus:  And mom was from the US with a family with further back european ancestry .. than

Avraham Burg: So if I mean we are what we are less than a minute into the conversation and I already have four ideas. Israeli, American, European, American again, Christian, Jewish, Hebrew speaking, English speaking, French speaking, 

Dr. Karplus: Some German, some Arabic learning Arabic

Avraham Burg:  I see and you're here in your community in Jerusalem or in Jerusalem, you're a physician, right? 

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, an infectious disease physician.

Avraham Burg:  In the public health care system, right?

Dr. Karplus: Right

Avraham Burg: You're coming from a family that a lot of it all over is very scientific. Everybody, if he's not a doctor, so she's a professor. If she's not a professor, he's a scientist. So, how from a family and you also, I mean graduated in a very exact science, medicine. How comes that from a place like this you adopted such an augmented identity which is much more to the spiritual side rather than to the scientific one?

Dr. Karplus: OK, first of all, what I should say is that both my parents are scientists, but that my mother was also very interested in the liberal arts. So certainly an opening to that, to poetry and so on comes from her side. I think that I was brought up to believe that truth exists and that it's something you try to find. For my parents, it was scientific truth that they tried to find by experimentation or theory, theoretical science, but it was also that. In your life, you have to figure out what the truth is. You have to keep an independent outlook, and once you find it, you go with it. So for me, with some by a rather unexpected path, it ended up including also religious truth.

Avraham Burg:  What is this unexpected …sounds to me more fascinated than the expected.

Dr. Karplus: It means meeting people in school. It means asking questions. It means a lot of reading. In literature, moving to theology and trying to figure out what I believe. And at some point there's only so much you can do by thought. And faith, at least to me, is something that sprouts inside. And someday you look and say, hey, this grew. I didn't expect it to, but it's there. And then either you accept it or you don't.

Avraham Burg:  Religion was a player at home.

Dr. Karplus: No, 

Avraham Burg:  Was it a topic was...

Dr. Karplus: Not really. We had, I would say, exposure to religious culture. We had all sorts of books of biblical tales, ancient Egyptian tales, sort of so that we would know that element of world culture. And we certainly had an exposure to tradition and identity, specifically Jewish identity. But none of it really was pro-religious. We were allowed to explore if we had friends who were religious. I went to church once with a classmate. And we certainly, because I grew up partially in Europe, were exposed to Christian, mainly Catholic culture via music.

Avraham Burg:  Where in Europe?

Dr. Karplus: Mainly France.  Austria was already when I was 16.

Avraham Burg:  But but hang on, hang on.  We're still home.

Dr. Karplus: OK, 

Avraham Burg: Ok we didn't yet leave home as part of teenage or teenage.

Dr. Karplus: OK, but yeah, I don't want to go through my whole life.

Avraham Burg:  Oh, no, no, don't worry. Don't worry. As much as I love gossip, it's not about this. I want to understand something. Scientific search for truth is about doubting everything. Maybe it is not right. Maybe this axiom can be replaced with another assumption. The search for truth in religion in theology is about certainties.

Dr. Karplus: No.

Avraham Burg: no? 

Dr. Karplus: No What I would say first of all, that scientific research is about questioning everything. You don't. You know, if you're looking at the theory of gravity, you don't start by assuming that there is no gravity. But you question how do I know this is true? Why? 

Avraham Burg:  Sure.

Dr. Karplus: So I would say that with faith, both a path of questioning can lead to faith. If you're trying to figure out not necessarily who created all this, but I would say where the sort of higher human aspirations come from, why I grew up with a very humanistic outlook, where does that come from? Why is it important To care about human beings anywhere on this planet? Why does beauty matter? You can take that to a place of poetry. It can lead to faith. It doesn't necessarily mean that the fact that there is beauty proves that God exists, but it raises the question of did somebody create all of this?   But I think also within faith there are people who look for certainty and try to find a closed or very defined version of faith that says this is what you should do at each point of the day, and this is what you should believe. There is also a path within faith that says that God is big enough to take our questions and we never fully understand. So the way we should believe is by constantly asking why? what? Where does this go? What does this mean? It doesn't mean necessarily that I don't accept answers. Sometimes the answers are what you call a leap of faith. I say there is a method to the madness. You know, there is suffering and 

Avraham Burg:  Why bad things happen to good people.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, yeah. And that there's some answer to it, which I can. Probably explained theoretically, but I don't fully understand. Certainly not when the bad things are happening, but I'm willing to trust. I would say it's about a combination of trust in someone and questioning about my own belief and my own understanding.

Avraham Burg:  It's interesting because the question I asked you came from my own what you used to call in Vienna Kinderstube, my early version of education and this is. My father was ordained, who was a historian and philosopher at the Berlin Leipzig and Berlin University universities. He was ordained as a Orthodox rabbi in Berlin. So for him a rabbina, I mean being a Rav doctor, a doctor, rabbi, rabbi, doctor was the doctor was about the doubts, about the culture of questions, and the rabbi was about the culture of answers and certainties. So at least at our home, there was a tension between the two.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, I think the tension is between two different worlds. You know, in science you can prove things and sometimes you prove them. And then a generation later…

Avraham Burg:  you then you are wrong

Dr. Karplus: ...you discover that your proof was based on assumptions that you didn't know how to question yet. You know, sort of Plato's cave where you never know What Which of your assumptions are assumptions while you're in the middle of them? But and faith, I don't think it can be proven. I think you can produce arguments in support of it. You can have faith that is more or less rational. You know, I don't think faith should be should internally contradict itself. It can have paradox. But that's something else.

Avraham Burg:  Actually, what do you say? And this is not for this conversation with your approach to what is faith and therefore the religion and therefore the catechism, that catechismus that comes out of it, etcetera. It's much softer than either my faith or no faith. I mean, you say, yeah, there is a room for a lot, not necessarily, my way only,

Dr. Karplus:  yeah.

Avraham Burg:   it's a softer one than the  manifestations of it in our region.

Dr. Karplus: I would say open…True. 

Dr. Karplus: true.Yeah. Now, I once heard a conference of Cardinal Schoenborn about the writing of the catechism of the Catholic Church. You know, you want a faith document that's a brick with it's over 1000 pages, I think. I don't remember how many. But at the same time, when he spoke about it, you could feel that this was coming from a place of God and our faith are big enough to handle questions. So we wanted to write something.

Avraham Burg:  handle or contain. Handle is like looking for an answer. Contain is within me and let's move on.

Dr. Karplus: It's to make space for questions.

Avraham Burg:  make space OK, good.

Dr. Karplus: You know, not contain because containing is you limit and you don't let anything escape. There are limits place. This is the faith. This is not the faith.

Avraham Burg:  That's beautiful, to have space for it  ok . 

Dr. Karplus: But there's room.

Avraham Burg:  The way you described the not the library at home, but the liberal arts atmosphere at home was Jewish and some other mythologies. But I heard the Jewish part of it. OK, and now you're part of a different community here in in Jerusalem, which is not easy by itself, but we'll get to that in a second. How the transformation or how to the refocus, the reemphasis, reemphasize happens?

Dr. Karplus:  I think like most by trial and error, by first coming into a community, trying to learn a lot of the texts, the world approach.

Avraham Burg:  We are still in the States, right?

Dr. Karplus:  Partially in the States and then when I came to Israel, but it was sort of continuous. Trying to learn, you know, the rules, the knowledge and to fit in. And then at some point realizing that fitting in didn't mean that I necessarily needed to adopt the world views or the political views of everybody in a very specific community in Israel or certain very specific communities. You know, it takes a while before you understand. Just how many views there are under the umbrella of Judaism or even Orthodox Judaism. So it took a while to find where I fit in there.

Avraham Burg:  Are there more? Sorry for the interruption. Are there more faces of in Judaism than you find in Christianity? When you say I saw all of these faces of Judaism. Are we more?

Dr. Karplus: Not if you include all of Christianity, but I think one of the specificities of Judaism is that there is a definition of Judaism as a people. And within that people there are a great variety of religious expressions that call themselves Judaism.

Avraham Burg:  70 different faces, shiv’im panim.

Dr. Karplus:Yes, quite possibly even more, whereas within Christianity. The mechanism was one of separation and redefining against the origin. So you have a great many churches where theologically there is a view that, you know, it is considered that all of this together is a Christian people, at least from the Catholic point of view. But most of these churches and sub churches view themselves as separate entities.

Avraham Burg:  So let's stay there. Not one day, but finally you find within yourself the faith, the deeper, the transcendental depth. OK? And then you have a menu, as you say, so many churches and so many Catholic or Protestant within Catholic, this, this and this, within Protestant, this, this and that. How you ended up in the Catholic Rd. rather than in a different Ave.

Dr. Karplus: I think partially because my Jewish framework was that of Orthodox Judaism, an open area within Orthodox Judaism. So it may be that once you have the idea of tradition, of faith evolving, of both solid texts and the need for living interpretation throughout history and now, a parallel is Probably easier to find in Catholicism.

Avraham Burg:  So there is a kind of in conjunction between the gestalt of the framework of Catholic Catholicism and Judaism?

Dr. Karplus: I think in the sense of having both the idea of a people, a structural framework, you know, the Jewish idea of hierarchy and the Catholic idea of hierarchy are very different, but at the same time. 

Avraham Burg:  Our hierarchy is a bit more chaotic.

Dr. Karplus: Well, the Catholic can be chaotic, but you can diagram it better, I would say.

Avraham Burg:  I would say we are the world champions in chaos, but leave it aside for a second ok ?

Dr. Karplus: But you have very similar concepts, you know, if you take a Catholic document on. The Word of God, Dave Elbom. It could very easily, if you take out the Christian references, be applied to a Jewish approach to text, written tradition, evolving tradition and God's spirit.

Avraham Burg:   But Rivka, this is easier, the sense that at least in the Western world, forget about the Eastern churches, OK, up until the 15th century, the 15th, 16th century that was. Not just the main, the Main Street. It was the only St. and the relationship, the conversation, the dialogue, positive or negative, between mainstream Judaism and mainstream Christianity was this one. So therefore there are so many influences between the two civilizations.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, I think I was also lucky that when I started exploring, the people I met were people who were open  Within the Catholic world who are open both in their general worldview and could handle my large number of questions and were also open and respectful towards Judaism. If I'd landed in a church that was anti Jewish, anti Semitic or just closed, 

Avraham Burg:  closed minded.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah yeah , you know, I did meet some people like that. Most of it was from ignorance saying, you know, Judaism doesn't have any answers To questions of, you know, forgiveness of sins or something, you know, which is nonsense. But that was somebody who was, you know, in Austria and had not yet been exposed to all the developments after Vatican 2. So I did meet some people like that, but most of whom I met were open and. You know, nobody or very few people said you have to choose. You know, Judaism is the past, Christianity is the future.

Avraham Burg:  So we grow up. We grew up in a Jewish at large culture, discovered faith within us, find something which is next door to the hierarchy, structure, etc, and re-emphasis the spiritual identity on the Catholic dogma or the Catholic belonging. But why not doing it in Europe that the majority are Europe or the states the majority? You can find a community that your are a  majority coming here to Jerusalem at that time. What is this quantum leap?

Dr. Karplus: OK, first of all, at the point where I made Aliyah when I moved to Israel, I was.

Avraham Burg:   made Aliyah is…

Dr. Karplus:  going up to..

Avraham Burg:   No, no, no Elevating. OK? Ascending.

Dr. Karplus: Yes.

Avraham Burg:  OK, Ascending to the Holy Land. This is where it's coming from. It's a very loaded term, 

Dr. Karplus: Right. So at the point where I did that, I was just Jewish and observant and didn't define myself as Christian. I already had a good background in Christianity, also partially because I studied medieval history in my first degree at college. So I came here to figure out what Israel is about if I'm Jewish.

Avraham Burg:  Did you?

Dr. Karplus: No, But I fell in love with the place despite A somewhat complicated time in history. It's home. And once I started being, I don't know if interested in Christianity is the word. Once I started finding that the same whatever it is in me that said I believed. In the Torah being given on Mount Sinai, whatever, however you take that and in Judaism or in the God of Judaism also made me believe in Christianity, in the Christian story.

Avraham Burg:  Explain this. I mean touching the real life of the covenant Judaism or Judaism of Revelation, because it's here. Brought you closer to the same sentiment with Christianity?

Dr. Karplus: No, I think it was. First of all, I'll go back and answer something that you asked before. Why here? Because what I realized is that if I'm Jewish, you know, and I remain Jewish and I'm Christian, there is no way to be faithful in Christianity without being faithful also to my Jewish identity. And the most logical place on earth to do that is here. You know, it may be complicated in Israeli society, but at least, you know, the references exist outside of Israel. It would be much more complicated. But I think being here, being in a Jewish society, it made me realize that I had to understand. How I related to everything I had read and learned when I was studying and reading about Christianity and met it when I was in Europe. You know, can I just say this is idol worship and it's wrong? Or what do I do with the good and valid things that I found in Christianity? How do I reconcile them if I'm Jewish and observant? And the other was Already working in medicine as a student, is becoming a doctor and dealing with the question of suffering, part of it with patients who are not Jewish, and realizing that the Christian story is a very, very good way to explain God being with people who are suffering. You know, it's a concept that exists in Judaism too. But it's much more emphasized in the Christian story.

Avraham Burg:  Hang on, hang on. I want to talk about medicine and medicine and faith a bit later.

Dr. Karplus: OK.

Avraham Burg:  So you are in Jerusalem, you are in Israel, you are in Jerusalem, you feel closer to the original experience and you combine or you compile or you fuse together?

Both approaches to God.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah. I mean, it sounds that way It sounds as if I'm in charge of things much more than I think I was 

Avraham Burg:  fused into you.

Dr. Karplus: …But you know, I accept the fact that I am both and try to figure out how to live it.

Avraham Burg:  Fine. Fine.  I don't argue. Maybe one more friend… Only one more friend of mine has the same Two-sided ID card, which is Father David Neuhaus, who was born Jewish and converted, really really converted from one religion to another and actually holds both identities as a very proud Judeo-christian. But you live in a community that's now in Jerusalem, which is very binaric either or,...

Dr. Karplus: you know, I think from the outside.It looks binary.  When you live here, you realize that there are a great many shades to existence here. When you look at the different religious communities, even within Judaism, there's a whole spectrum, even within the Orthodox world, and so living here. It didn't have to be either or.You know, I'm different. My close friends are Orthodox Jews, many of them. I'm definitely. I present quite a few questions for them as to how I can be part of their world and at the same time believe in Christ You know, without …

Avraham Burg:  any one of your patients ever, ever told you, hey. I don't want you to deal with me because you're a Goy, you're a Gentile, you're a non Jew?

Dr. Karplus: No, but patients don't really know what I believe anyways. You know, within social circumstances, it's very simple. My apartment is kosher. That means any of my friends can eat here and they trust me enough to know that when I say it's kosher, that I know the rules of the game. as well as that I'm not cheating, but that I have enough knowledge to do it. And I'm responsible for making sure that I keep that knowledge and check or learn things that I need to. I think also within the medical world, generally the assumption is that people come from very different backgrounds There's Jews and Arabs. 

Avraham Burg:  just be a good doctor.

Dr. Karplus: And there's, you know, people who are on the left and the right of the political spectrum. Basically you are judged by how you treat patients and how you treat colleagues and nobody really, you know, they may have an opinion about your background, but it doesn't really play a role into day-to-day medicine.

Avraham Burg:  And you belong in Jerusalem to a community which by itself is, I would say, quite stand alone in the whole landscape of Christianity and Judaism, this Hebrew speaking Hebrew speaking church.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, Hebrew speaking Catholic community.

Avraham Burg:  OK, what is it? What are the members? Who are you people?

Dr. Karplus: First of all, what I will say is that it's a community which belongs to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which is also a somewhat complicated name, but it's because Jerusalem has many churches. So Latin means Roman Catholic Church as versus Greek Catholic Church or Maronites within the Catholic Church and so on.There are great many Catholics here, and there are also Orthodox churches and others.So we're part of this umbrella, which is the Latin Catholic Church and under the patriarch,

Avraham Burg: so much so that one of the previous shepherds of the Hebrew speaking community is now the first in modern time Cardinal of Jerusalem. That's wow.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah.

Avraham Burg:  So it's a launching pad.

Dr. Karplus: Yes.

Avraham Burg:  Cardinal Pizzabella. 

Dr. Karplus: So yes, he started out with, he started out as a Franciscan doctoral student here, became our priest, became our vicar, and then went on to be custos and then patriarch. So, but we have a certain amount of independence or independent existence within the patriarchate because we are different. You know, we speak Hebrew, 

Avraham Burg:  Why is it because you pray in Hebrew.

Dr. Karplus: We pray in Hebrew And because most of our members are within Hebrew speaking Israeli society, there is another group which sort of overlaps with us sometimes, which is that of the migrants. Where they also have their separate what's called a vicariate, their own structural identity. But their children who go to Israeli schools are within the Hebrew speaking community.

Avraham Burg:  So if a Sri Lankan or Indian or Filipino who came here to be part of our welfare system and the kids were born here and they go to Hebrew school, it will be much more natural for the kids to read the gospel in Hebrew rather than in A language which is not the first language.

Dr. Karplus: right So they may go with their parents to the Filipino church or the Eritrean church, whatever.  But when they come to catechism and to youth groups, then they come to the Hebrew speaking church because they study in Hebrew.

Avraham Burg:  How many are you in the country?

Dr. Karplus: Several 100. 

Avraham Burg:  Really? 

Dr. Karplus: It's yeah, it's hard to define also because people can move in or out or show up or not show up. But certainly several hundred with families, probably more if you count all of the kids who were born to migrants or asylum seekers who come to us for activities. There are communities in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, in Beersheba, in Haifa and in Tiberias.

Avraham Burg:  Thats huge

Dr. Karplus: Small communities and with very diverse backgrounds. It's a community that started after World War 2 when there were Jews who came here after the Shoah where sometimes they were mixed Jewish and Christian couples and so the Catholic member of the family wanted to keep their faith. There were non Jews who came here because They were religiously Catholic and wanted to understand who the Jewish people were, or who had questions to themselves about the Shoah, but about the Jewish people in the new State of Israel. So all of this mixture came here and needed a community And they didn't speak Arabic, which is the language of most of the Latin Patriarchate

Avraham Burg:  …in the Middle East.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, so a community was created for them So that the pastoral care could be in Hebrew. At that point, the liturgy was still in Latin, so everybody prayed in Latin. But we started praying in Hebrew even before Vatican 2. A special permission was given because Hebrew is a holy language.

Avraham Burg:  We'll come to that.

Dr. Karplus: OK

Avraham Burg:  just one last question about this special community. It is very special. It is very unique, but not. The community I'm fascinated by because in the entire spiritual landscape of the country, it's an interesting mixture, very  interesting lingual, cultural, conceptual. But people like you who are both Jewish, Christian, Christian, Jewish, I mean, and you do not give up any identity, you simply double. Double your being. you're 200% of of ID. Who understands you more or who understands you less, the Jews or the Christians?  Or whom do you challenge more?

Dr. Karplus:  I think I challenge both. You know, much of Jewish Christian relations is based on either finding a common ground. That is non-confrontational, you know, doing good things in the world, being witnesses to faith in a world of materialism and atheism, working for peace. There's a lot of common ground or dialogue that touches on some of the difficult questions, but on the assumption that these are two different faiths who need to learn about each other when you have somebody who's both Jewish and Christian. It inevitably raises the basic question of is this person called Jesus the Messiah that for whom the Jewish people is waiting? And does one being true mean that the other is false, or is there some way To say that both are true, but.

Avraham Burg:  Or do I believe you?

Dr. Karplus:  Well,

Avraham Burg:   I mean, the average Israeli Jewish will say I don't really believe.  Something is tricky there.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah.

Dr. Karplus: You know, I would say from a Jewish point of view, first of all, the weight of history is much more difficult because the church also played a very painful role in persecution of Jews and anti-Semitism. So that's always there. And also the Jewish approach is that Christianity cannot be true, because this whole business of Trinity doesn't make sense according to Judaism. And this whole business of what sounds suspiciously like a new revelation, which is not contained within Judaism, doesn't make sense. So according to Judaism's definition, Christianity is outside the legitimate faith for a Jew. It may be something that is good for non-jews as a… if Jews have to admit it, probably a monotheistic religion and the closest thing to Judaism that isn't Judaism. But for a Jew it's considered as either betrayal or falling into something which is, you know, idol worship, I say is a very strong term, but at least deviating from the worship of God. From a Christian point of view, the question of whether a Jew can be a Christian, the church has been Jewish from its origins, who has had a Jewish element. You know, unless you're very strongly anti-jewish, you wouldn't. A Christian would admit that Jesus is Jewish, the apostles are Jewish, and the foundations and origins of the church are Jewish. And also Christianity accepts the Jewish Bible. But the question from a Christian point of view is why on earth do you continue observing things like the Jewish Sabbath, the Jewish holidays and identifying as a Jew? Why does that have meaning to you anymore? Why don't you just say I have converted in the sense of moving from one religion to another?

Avraham Burg:   and your answer? 

Dr. Karplus: My answer is that conversion is something that both in Judaism, Christianity, all of us are called to do as an ongoing process. It's called tshuva in Judaism. It means coming back from sin, from mistakes.

Avraham Burg:  Isn't tshuva a bit more repentance rather than conversion?

Dr. Karplus: It's both. There's an ongoing process of conversion. Conversion in the sense of switching from one religion to another. Doesn't really apply to a Jew who's becoming Christian, because it's not saying that Judaism is false and that Christianity is true. It's saying that Judaism is true, but that I have been given the grace to know something additional, which is the identity of the Messiah that for whom Israel is waiting.

Avraham Burg:  You do something which is very logical, very easy, and very. Maybe almost dangerous. I'll tell you in what sense if we travel in time to the 1st century to the times of Jesus Christ. OK, still alive generation after. There were mixed families because they were not Christian, they were the new Jews.So like today you have a family with Orthodox and secular and reform and within the Jewish people, you have various denominations or political orientations. So you had even in faith at the time, this kind of Jewish performance, this kind of Jewish behavior, this kind of whatever, it was easy. Families were mixed. So you Rivka say, I go back to there.

Dr. Karplus: No, 

Avraham Burg:  wait, wait a second. Wait a second with me to the original place in which Judaism and Christianity could live together. And in a way, Jesus' teaching was interpretation of the meaning of the Old Testament. But isn't it a bit too fundamentalist going back to foundations that gives cautious certificate to other Fundamentalism.

Dr. Karplus:  I don't go back in time because Judaism now and Christianity now are not what they were in the 1st century. There is also a weight of history that the church needs to acknowledge as far as what she did or what people did in the name of the church towards the Jewish people.But it's saying that where I'm living now, if I'm part of the church, I'm part of the church. As a Jew, I can't be anything else. And if you look at now, this is speaking from Catholic theology. The Church is Catholic, including everything, because she includes both Jews and Gentiles. That's a theological definition of the Church. It's not a first century only historical definition, because there will always be Jewish Jews in the Church, at least because. Jesus and the apostles are Jewish, so there's a Jewish element, you know, timeless element.

Avraham Burg:  Jesus said i didnt come to renew everything. 

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, but at the same time the church has opened to include non Jews, Gentiles, all the peoples of the earth, however you want to call it, and is not an exclusively Jewish church.  So it's something very different from the original and so being part of this church.  I'm Jewish because I'm Jewish.  I'm not more Christian than somebody else because I'm Jewish. 

I'm not better than somebody else or worse than somebody else because I'm Jewish. but I have to be myself, which is my identity. 

Avraham Burg:  But because of this closing to myself and therefore maybe closing to Jesus, who was like me at his time with all the time gaps, OK? Maybe this is the reason why you like so much the teaching of Cardinal Lustiger.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, 

Avraham Burg:  talk to us about him.

Dr. Karplus: OK,  first of all

Avraham Burg: you translated his book from Fren …second translation in a way. OK of Cardinal Lustiger from French to Hebrew. The name is the Promise. And this is actually very interesting interpretation of Cardinal Lustiger in an inner dialogue to How the words of Jesus are interpretation of the Torah.

Dr. Karplus:Yeah, basically it's saying it's a book that was came into being as a retreat. It's not a book that was written as a book to a group of nuns who wanted to have a retreat on the mystery of Israel, the Jewish element within the Church as Judaism as the Jewish identity of Jesus, as the Jewish theological element. And basically it was a meditation given to them. It's a very dense book. It's not something you sit down and read and say I have a day to read and I'm finished.

Avraham Burg:  And it's very associative, I mean a thought, and then he jumps to another one then he comes back 

Dr. Karplus: And he repeats himself and what he says is that it's..

Avraham Burg: no, he repeats and says, I'm sorry, I repeat.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, but he says he's repeating because he's looking for the words, because he's never done it before. but it's a meditation partially on what it means to be Jewish within the church.

Avraham Burg:  And he knew because…

Dr. Karplus: because he's Jewish.

Avraham Burg:  Talk to us. Tell the story, please.

Dr. Karplus: Aaron Jean Marie Lustigerl. So he was born

Avraham Burg:  Cardinal Lustiger.

Dr. Karplus: Lustiger. Yeah. In Hebrew it's Lustigerl because that's the original pronunciation of the family name. It became Lustiger when they moved to France. So in the Hebrew we decided to write it the way the rest of the family who's not in France writes it. But he was born to a Jewish non observant family in France, Who had come from Poland and he grew up in a secular environment, open but with a strong sense of Jewish identity. His mother was killed in Auschwitz. He, his father and his sister survived the war and when he was 14, he asked. I would say asked questions and ended up asking to be baptized as a Christian. From then he became a priest, became a Bishop, became a Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris and 

Avraham Burg:  and gave this retreat with the nuns. That was first it was a conversation recorded and then it was written as a kind of a booklet like translated from the oral language to the written one. And you came and translated it from the French written one to the Hebrew one with a lot of a lot of updating because the terminology and that we don't have in Hebrew the words and the terms for some of his intellectual structures,

Dr. Karplus:  right. I will say that I had a very good literary editor who helped me wrestle with it. And also that at least for the first part of the translation, when I had questions of how does one phrase something in Hebrew, I asked Cardinal Lustiger did the first part with being able to ask him, you know, there are two options in Hebrew. Which do you want? Or this sounds OK in French, but it might lead to the wrong impression in Hebrew. Which do you want? He didn't speak Hebrew fluently, but his knowledge and sense of Hebrew was good enough to make decisions. You know, then I had to continue it after his death. So that …

Avraham Burg:  I read the book. Interesting, interesting. Many of the thoughts I knew because they're coming from the very specific Jewish line of thinking. The man touched. I met him once in my life, maybe twice, and he touched my heart. He came to visit me. I was the speaker of the House of the Parliament. He came to visit me on an official visit. OK, we chat. And then I said, Cardinal, I'm sorry, but I have to go There is now a memorial the whole for the parish community in Poland. He said, which community. I said of the of the sacred community of Zagłębie, that's a region in Poland He said, but I'm from Zagłębie. So I said come with me, let's go It was around the Holocaust day or I don't remember exactly what was the day, he said. No, but they will be upset. I'm with the official dress of a Catholic Cardinal. I said, Cardinal, what's the problem? Come with me. If they will harass me, harass you, we should run away together. We should escape together. And if they will accept you, so much the better. He said, yalla , I'll come with you. So we went to the place. There were hundreds, if not thousands of people who knew who he was. And by the end of the sermon, they said the Jewish traditional Kaddish. Kaddish is sanctification.

Dr. Karplus: It's the sanctification of God's name that you say as a mourner, 

Avraham Burg:  as a mourner. And he said the Kaddish in Hebrew. So you see all of these rabbis and survivors and all the Jews in the middle of Israel, all Hebrew speaking, and him with the Kassock and and all.And says Kaddish. And they all answered Amen for his Kaddish. It was so powerful, so compelling.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah.

Avraham Burg:  And I hear this very much Jew into his cardinal teaching.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah. And after he died, he left a request to have a plaque put up in Notre Dame that said

Avraham Burg:   Notre Dame in Paris.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah. In Paris, in his cathedral where he's buried at the basement, the crypt down below, which gave his name as Aaron Jean Marie.

Avraham Burg:  Original Jewish.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, and he was baptized as Aaron Jean Marie, but emphasized that that was the name and said I'm Jewish and I remain Jewish as the apostles remained jewish 

Avraham Burg:  And Aaron was very important for him because Aaron was the first high priest. So the priesthood is not something that was hidden from Cardinal Lustiger.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah. And also, I think, you know, as Archbishop of Paris, he couldn't. He always mentioned his Jewish identity and insisted that that was part of him. But there was a limit to how far he could go, both because he was the Archbishop of a church that's in a majority non Jewish and also not to overly upset the French Jewish community by seeming to claim too much that were theirs. So there were certain things which he could say when he was alive, but the fact of putting the plaque. In Notre Dame, you know, now he's in a place where nobody can come and argue.

Avraham Burg:  But assuming he would have lived till 120 years,as we wish people in Judaism, could somebody like Cardinal Lustiger become the Pope? I mean, potentially speaking, 

Dr. Karplus: you know, there's no rule against a Jewish Pope. Saint Peter was the first Pope and he was Jewish so...

Avraham Burg: in Judaism there is a couple of legends or mythological stories about it, but.

Dr. Karplus: So it wouldn't have excluded him from being Pope. Whether he was likely to be Pope, I haven't the foggiest idea, you know, but there's no rule against, you know, if a Jewish can become a Jewish person can become Archbishop and Cardinal, he can become Pope. There's no rule against it. The rest is, you know, whatever the myriad factors are that go into deciding. Who will be the Pope at a particular time in history?

Avraham Burg:  So we spoke, speak about people like you and Cardinal Lustiger and the hundreds of members of the community who are in a way positively hybrid people in both the Catholic syntax and the Hebrew language Can I.., still a general question? Do we Jewish Israelis really know Christianity?

Dr. Karplus:  No.

Avraham Burg:  What do we miss? What's wrong with us?

Dr. Karplus:  I think, and this is part of the reason why I translated the book, most Israelis have exposure to, I would say, 3 versions of Christianity. One is the historical history of the persecutions, which may also be reflected in the way Jewish Israelis perceive the Church and its reactions. You know, now. much of it is interpreted through the lens of how did the church react over history and how does it react now, sort of the official church and the persecutions and pogroms in the past. The 2nd is a very cultural Christianity, you know, churches, Christmas markets, music, sort of the outside decorations which. Many secular Israelis will be very attracted to because of the aesthetics and you know…that it's exotic

Avraham Burg:  and music included..

Dr. Karplus: right. And many, you know, very religious Orthodox Jews may be repelled by certain elements like statues and so on. And whether they can go into churches, 

Avraham Burg:  even spitting, crossing clergymen in the streets of Jerusalem,

Dr. Karplus:  that's some of the more extreme. And I would say the third is what I would call Christianity for export in Jewish-christian dialogue. You know what is written? There are texts in dialogue, there are gestures. There are popes who come and go to the Holocaust Memorial to Yad Vashem or who go to Auschwitz, where they see what is in a framework of dialogue. I think most have very little idea. of what the prayer life of a Christian is, what the internal part of the belief is, what the relationship to the Bible is, what does it mean to to study?

Avraham Burg:  So wear it in your hands And you are the Minister of Education of the State of Israel. Will you introduce teaching the other religion or religions to every pupil student in? 

Dr. Karplus:  I mean, I think every student in Israel or everyone who grows up in Israel should know Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the extent of understanding how somebody who believes in that faith perceives it, what role it plays in their life, and also to see. The values, the beauty and perhaps also the common elements.

Avraham Burg:  Some of my grandchildren are going to bilingual schools in Jaffa. They don't know much about any of the religions, but they celebrate all the holidays and all the vacations. They're very happy with the triple, triple amount of holidays.

Dr. Karplus: Yeah, I would say, you know, but that's a start in positivity at least, but one of the. More, I don't know, more meaningful experiences that I've had in this context. It's actually something I inherited from Father David Neuhaus was that in Israel there are non-denominational hospital chaplains who don't represent any religion. Most of them are Jewish, but who go just to be with people using spiritual Tools. And they asked me, and also someone who's Muslim, to come explain Christianity to them. And it's one of the best opportunities I've had because they're not asking me to explain Christianity so that they can write a thesis on it. And they're not asking because they wonder if they believe in it. They want to know what it can give them as tools to sit beside somebody who's Christian who just.  Discovered that they have cancer or whose child was just killed and to find resources in their own faith. So it's seeing the beauty and strength of a faith not for them, but in somebody else's life. And to me, that's the goal of teaching. You know, again, the medical world is sort of a privileged zone where you try and see what. Somebody else's framework is because they need to find the elements to deal with whatever is happening to them. But for me, that is the goal of religious teaching, to know that there are other people and that this is what helps them to live, to make decisions, to celebrate, to mourn. And I want to know enough that I can meet them and understand where they are.

Avraham Burg:  It's it's interesting you you took it there because I wanted to come back to end up our conversation to come back to your to to your profession and and and explore a little bit the place of faith in medicine. Now I see here 3 dimensions to the face, the face of the patients, the face of the. Of the doc of the physician and the face of the interaction in the interaction between them.

How does it work? You come to a room, you see a malignant something, you see a sickness. You come as a clean tech, not technical, God forbid, scientific, German origin accurate doctor. Or you say, let me look at something bigger. OK, 

Dr. Karplus:  OK, first of all. Austrian, not German. There's a difference.Austrian is more flexible.

Avraham Burg:  A little bit, yeah.

Dr. Karplus: Before that, because that's something that I've also done in the past, I'll give you an example from something I do now. I'm in infectious disease. One of the things I do is counseling women who are pregnant and have been diagnosed with an infection which might cause problems…

Avraham Burg:  In the pregnancy …

Dr. Karplus: to the child. to the fetus. To the child might cause neonatal defects, problems, whatever you want to call it. So there most of the women that I meet are going to be either Jewish, particularly very Orthodox Jewish or Muslim, particularly very religious cause they're the ones who have the most children in this country. I'm also Catholic. Catholic means that in any case I can't recommend abortion, but I'm not the one making the decisions. So from the point of view of my own faith, first of all, I made a deal with the clinic. I don't think I even mentioned why and said it's very simple. These are the child's parents. I will give them the information. The decision is theirs. I'm not going to recommend what they should do. I will respect that they have the freedom to make choices about their child But I'm coming from a neutral position as far as not recommending anything. You know, I'm obviously pro-child, and I will tend to use a language which doesn't say this is a minor technicality, but this is, you know, a living reality. But what I find is that I don't need to state my faith. I listen to theirs. I try to understand where they are. You know, both of them may be. In a very sort of classic traditional of I listen to my rabbi, I listen to, you know, Islam says, you know, you accept. Or they may be in a more, I would say, individualistic perspective where the rules say this, but I want to make my own decisions, so please give me the information. So the first thing I would say religiously is to respect. That it's not black and white, that I can't make assumptions. Give them the information, but also ask the questions in a way that is respectful. You know, is abortion something that is in your lexicon or not? Because if they say no, I say OK..

Avraham Burg:   let's stop it here. Go this way.

Dr. Karplus: OK then. Please trust me that any tests I recommend you to do are not because you might choose an abortion. They are for the child's well-being. So let's, you know, we've taken that off the table. You don't need to suspect me of giving tests because I'm coming from that perspective. I'm working with your perspective. You know, if you say that You want to know because you might make a decision, I will try to give you the information, but also tell you when the information is not 100%.

Avraham Burg:  Sure.

Dr. Karplus:: And very, very often it ends up with at least implying I will pray for you and your baby. You know

Avraham Burg:  you say it? 

Dr. Karplus: yeah, something I, you know, I imply, but they certainly say, you know, it's in God's hands.

Avraham Burg:   sure

Dr. Karplus: You know, and then I will say, look, medications, they all have side effects, you know, tests, some do, some don't. Prayer doesn't have any side effects, It can only do good.

Avraham Burg:  But maybe the benefit is a little bit untested, 

Dr. Karplus:  you know, and in both cultures there are things you say which are basically both commonly accepted goodwill blessings, but also imply prayer. So that is where, you know, they understand. I don't define myself religiously because I'm wearing the symbolic cloak of Kupat Holim, of the medical system, But I at least imply that I understand their approach and that, you know, medicine can only do so much and it's in somebody else's hands, you know? And if sometimes they'll ask me, for example, what would you do if it's your child? And my answer is always, I worked in special education. I believe that any child can be welcomed and loved, but that I will not raise the child. You will raise the child. So you have to decide if you have, you know, what you would need to deal with this particular situation.

Avraham Burg:  Last but not least, a small elephant in the room. OK? 

Dr. Karplus:  OK 

Avraham Burg:   In the region, the region is massively Muslim. There is a tiny minority of Jews. Within the tiny minority of Jews, there is the tiniest minority of Christians. Within the tiniest minority of Christians, there is a small minority of Catholics who speak Hebrew. I mean, you're not the majority. You are not even the dominant element in this reality, but Part of your belonging defined by the lingual belonging Hebrew. You speak Hebrew like me, like my kids, like any others. But on the other hand, Christianity is a common denominator with people who speak Arabic. So between the two lingual definers, the Arabic and Hebrew, how the conflict which tears the region apart is manifested?

Dr. Karplus: OK, I would say first of all, That because we are such a little very specific community, from the beginning our vocation has also been to be a bridge, to know that we're between worlds, between the Arab speaking world and the Hebrew speaking world, between Israeli society with Israeli citizenship and the migrant world, between the Christian world outside and that in Israel. We have a vocation because we're somewhere in the middle of all of this to try to build bridges. I will remind you that with Cardinal Lustiger, when they had to name something after him in Paris, what they did was they picked a bridge. It's the little bridge next to Notre Dame Cathedral. They called it…It was called the little bridge. It's now the Cardinal Lustiger Bridge.

Avraham Burg:  as they say in france se formidable  fantastic. It's formidable.

Dr. Karplus: So we kind as a community from the very the beginning, we grew up with this vocation and we know it's not easy. It's never been easy to be part of a church where many of it has a strong Palestinian identity and to be Israeli. We have young people who go to the army.  Many of them are also migrants who were born here where if they don't go to the army, they're expelled. That is the requirement for citizenship. So we are. In unity and pray together with a Palestinian church which has members in Gaza and we have young people in the army. I think we deal with it the only way you can and be Christian, which is first of all, we all pray for peace. We when we pray for peace, we remember the fact that there is a small Holy Family parish in Gaza. Which is suffering that we know Franciscans who have friends in the communities in Lebanon. So we're aware perhaps more than others of the suffering on the other side because we hear about it from direct sources. But at the same time, our young people, because they're part of this society, who are called up like everyone else to go defend their country.We support them. We pray for them the way we always pray for young people who go to the army, which is that they be faithful, that they be protected, and that they do what they have to do without hatred in their hearts.

Avraham Burg:  Which means that unlike so many other religious communities in the region, Jewish communities and Muslim communities, you have a religious community of peace. It's a beautiful alternative 

Dr. Karplus:  that seeks peace. You know, people, it's a conflict situation.  We have people who have different political views and sometimes there may be tension, but the community as a whole, the prayers are for Israel because it's our country, for our neighbors, because they're our neighbors and they will remain our neighbors. And for peace, and for a situation where we will all be able to pray together and to celebrate together.

Avraham Burg:  I understand now why you're a doctor. because you're really a healer.

Dr. Karplus: And because possibly it's one of the few places where I can be myself and meet people in a circumstance where you look for the common ground and also be in a crazy and painful situation like the current one and feel that, you know, I'm not on this side or that side. I'm Israeli. I'm on the side of life. 

Avraham Burg:  That's a beautiful, beautiful summation of what you presented here to us in this conversation. You're to the side of life. It's beautiful. So as we say in Hebrew, ma’achel lach hayim aruchim - I wish you long life because we need so many more people like you. Thank you very much, Rivka.