Jerusalem’s Humanity and Divinity: Feat. Fr. Anthony Giambrone

In this episode of Jerusalem Talks, Avraham (Avrum) Burg joins Fr. Anthony Giambrone, who serves as Vice Director of the École Biblique, a research institute for biblical and archeological studies in Jerusalem. They explore the spiritual and historical significance of Jerusalem, contrasting it with Rome and Fr. Giambrone’s American upbringing. Fr. Giambrone reflects on Jerusalem’s duality (its humanity and divinity) and the relationship between Jerusalem's raw reality and spiritual depth. The conversation covers topics such as the universal aspects of Christianity, the humanity of Jesus, and the experience of being a Christian transplant in the Holy Land. Finally, they discuss Fr. Giambrone’s personal spirituality and the importance of interfaith dialogue.

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 8

Host: Avraham Burg

Featured Guest: Fr. Anthony Giambrone

Avraham Burg: Peace on you all. Welcome back to Jerusalem Talks, I’m Avraham Avrum  and this is the podcast about the holy, and not-so-holy, Jerusalem from Jerusalem by Jerusalemites and many others. This time from Jerusalem means from Rome. Peace on you Fr. Anthony

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Thank you glad to be here. 

Avraham Burg: Fr. Anthony Giambrone? How do you pronounce it? It’s Italian?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: It is, Sicilian. 

Avraham Burg: So American, how do you say it again?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Gimabrone.

Avraham Burg: There is a meaning to the word?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: That’s disputed. Somewhere between Big John and Giant Shrimp.

Avraham Burg: And you are Big John.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: I think so.

Avraham Burg: I’ll take it ok. You are the Vice Director of the French School of the Biblical Archaeological School in Jerusalem.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: That’s right. 

Avraham Burg: We are both professors at the Notre Dame in Tantur in Jerusalem. And you are actually part of the city of Jerusalem landscape, right?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: That’s right.

Avraham Burg: You walk the city, you visited, you frequented, and now we are in Rome.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yep.

Avraham Burg: Is Rome part of Jerusalem? Is Rome Jerusalem abroad?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: There is a mystical link between the two that goes way back.

Avraham Burg: So let’s explore it a little bit later, but tell me, us, a little bit about you. As we said you’re American, who is a Jerusalemite. How do you move from place to place? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: It’s a surprise. So I’m a Dominican Priest, I belong to the Order of Preachers which is similar to the Franciscans who are better known in Jerusalem but the Dominicans are kind of the ugly stepchild of the family. And we actually arrived, the Dominicans, were there in the 13th century disappeared with the Crusader states and came back on the last wave of French Colonialism. So I live in a priory that was founded at the end of the 19th century, at the site of the Byzantine Basilica of Saint. Stephen, right outside the old city. So that's where I live, and that's where the Ecole Publique, our research institute, is located. 

Avraham Burg: And when you are with yourself, you are: Jerusalemite? American? you are a third dimension, 3D, I .E. Christian? What are you? Jerusalem has a way to make easy questions like your identity complicated. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: So, I mean, I'm kind of a double expat because I'm an American living with Frenchmen living abroad. So, I'm in a strange little really very international island, but they're close to the old city. When Americans visit, I'm a resident of Jerusalem. When Americans visit, I'm a resident of Jerusalem. That's a kind of interesting aspect, obviously. And I end up like a lot of people serving as a native guide when people come through, so to that extent, but in other company, I'm an American. Certainly for the French, I'm an American.

Avraham Burg: That’s for sure. I mean, they exclude everybody who is not them. Right? Jerusalem from afar. When you were a child, when you went to church at home, when you studied, you were not there. So that was one Jerusalem. And now you are within the the digestion system of Jerusalem. What are the 2 Jerusalem? Jerusalem from afar and Jerusalem which is close-up?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Well, that's a good question. I mean, for me, it was so far it was beyond the horizon, I'd say. I mean, it wasn't something highly present to me. It’s in the stories, you know, you read the Christmas stories and these sorts of things. I suppose the first thing that, I think it impacts a lot of people when they when they come, certainly Christian pilgrims is the scale. One one imagines something enormous. Certainly, Americans have notions of these kind of endless planes, and, you come and it's a very small country, and it takes time. I mean, it takes a lifetime to acclimate to that, but ultimately, I experience it as something on a very human scale. I mean, this is already getting into the kind of spirituality of it, but when I lead visitors around or pilgrims around, I tell them, you come to Jerusalem to experience the humanity of Jesus, not his divinity.

Avraham Burg:  Explain to me the difference.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: I think people come to Jerusalem expecting, rapturous experiences of prayer, and kind of immediate contact with the divine.

Avraham Burg: Elevated by themselves..

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: They're gonna float away. And, I mean, this is this is part of the mystery of the Christian faith is, I mean this imminence of the divine in in the human, in the incarnation, but what we experience is Jesus' humanity, and we experience our humanity in that.

Avraham Burg: Humanity in the sense, here Jesus walked. Here Jesus He climbed the mountain, descended the Mount of Olives, crucified, ate the Last Supper.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah, certainly, certainly all of that. I mean, it's the theater of his life, and you know these things from afar. But as I say, it confronts you with raw humanity in a different way too. I mean, in good ways and in bad ways

Avraham Burg: Is there a level of disappointment when you come from the city of dream-like Jerusalem, the la la land Jerusalem, or to the small places you described? And between us, it's not even a small neighborhood. Wherever it is, because any other metropolitan. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah.

Avraham Burg: And isn't it disappointing? I mean, big dreams, small reality. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone:  It it can be. I mean, it it it depends what one comes to the to the place looking for. That's, I think, why it's it's kind of important to to calibrate our our idolizations about it. I mean, there's an important way in which, the ideal of Jerusalem is is also important for humanity, I think, and that that plays a role. 

Avraham Burg: Explain. You say something which is clear to you, and I'm not at all sure it's clear to me at least.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Right. Well, if I keep it mystifying, it sounds better. No, I mean, I think I think, that that tension between, the ideal city, the heavenly Jerusalem, the Jerusalem above, I mean, in the New Testament, I mean, this this is already very developed. I mean, it's in the prophets too. There's a kind of idolization  of the rebuilt Jerusalem. And I I think that belongs to, I mean, a need of our humanity to live in this eschatological hope, really.

Avraham Burg: And to have something transcendental which is beyond us. It's not physical.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone:  Exactly. Yeah. I mean, thank goodness the the earthly Jerusalem isn't the heavenly Jerusalem. I mean, if it was just this encounter with our raw humanity, with all its foibles, all its dysfunction, it would be crushing. So to live that tension, in a very acute way, in that particular place is one of the things that makes it such a spiritually invigorating site.

Avraham Burg: So tell me about your calibration. I use your term. Where are you from in the States?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: I'm from the Midwest. So from the Midwest to the Mideast, it's a bit of a change.

Avraham Burg: From a vast vast land to a very narrow bottleneck. But you come and you see this city. Here Jesus walked. Here, he prayed. He returned over the table, here he was crucified, here he and it's all what 5 meters away from each other, the holy basin or what? What happens to the individual then Anthony, not yet father Anthony, right? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Right

Avraham Burg: Who comes in, and what calibrates you? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah.

Avraham Burg: Well, Human experience there

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. Well, I mean, I I I think you, hinted already this, need for transcendence. I mean, do I find 

my transcendence in, you know, a vast Midwestern prairie? I mean, you can experience God in this way through nature. I mean, the majesty of the mountains, it's beautiful. This is actually another thing that surprises me a lot. I think Americans have a very easy natural connection with nature, and there's a curious inability for me to connect with nature in Israel. There are places where it's beautiful, but I can never get out of the hearing of, you know, off a highway. I can only if I look in this little corner can I avoid looking at the power lines? I'm never just lost, like, bathed in nature. It's too small, and everything has been built up, and, you know, you'd even wonder, like, the the ecological movement or something would would be more pronounced in a place with the spirituality about the land, but that way of access isn't there, and so to find, you know, a channel to the to the transcendent has to go by another route. 

Avraham Burg: So the space goes inward. Instead of outward, outbound, out space out, you look inside.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: In some ways, though, I mean, you can't escape these inputs from the outside too. That's part of what's, I mean, grading and and stimulating about the place is it's so there's so many sense impressions, I mean, from people, but from the history itself. I mean, the stones cry out. Right? There's there's there's a way in which, everything that I'd rather not see is also saying something. And so I think that's just It's kind of, you know, changing the channel. You attune yourself to a different voice, you know, a different way in which the divine speaks to humanity.

Avraham Burg: And, and here now you are in Rome. Yeah. I take it exploring your field of expertise, which is the teaching exploring the new testament. Right. There is a competition between these 2 holy cities. There is a completion and a competition.  Can you make a table for me? One versus the other?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah.I mean, it's there's something very archetypal about the two places, and the fusion of the two is one of these creative tensions that's, I think, very much at work in the Christian experience. I mean, one of the texts I work with a lot is the Acts of the Apostles, which is built between these two poles, between, this movement between Jerusalem, and Rome. I mean, one of the things that, archetypes get you into stereotypes very quickly, but, I mean, to be pedagogical or catechetical about it, I mean, an essential element that Rome brings in is the universal, is the imperial, is the endless. I mean, this we have at the beginning of the Aeneid, “I shall give you rule without end.” The notion of bringing all of humanity, together, in this case,in a kind of, policy, a political family under the, patre patre, Augustus, or whoever it is. I mean, that aspiration also belongs to humanity. There's this entire Greco-Roman heritage, that infusion with the Biblical tradition and contact with the Biblical tradition, and the, let's say, the smallness, the particularity, the circumscribed character of Israel, and that particular channel of access to God. It's in that contact, the catalyst that comes between, you know, the confrontation of those 2 that somehow gives you the alchemy of Christianity.

Avraham Burg: So we have vast Midwest, not very inspirational, beautiful, handsome, generous, very natural. It's the creation at its best. But not really inspirational. Then we have Rome, which is a former empire by itself, and the grandeur of the empire is around every corner, and you say, wow, this is it. This encompasses both the plurality of the ancient times and the actuality of today. And then you have Jerusalem, which is small and tiny and nucleus, and it’s a hard place. Yeah. I mean, it's not for everybody. Rome, everybody can find a place in Rome. Not sure everybody can find a place in Jerusalem. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: But everyone should. I mean, that's a beautiful thing in the Psalms. The sense that it's the mother city of all, and, I mean, the particularity that I mean, this human scale of it is an immense part of its attraction. I mean, that Jerusalem. I mean, Rome is too easy. The glory of it all, for a Catholic, for a Christian too, it's too glorious. I mean, it's it's, it would go way out of whack if this is all that we saw. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's a triumph and a grandeur that's that's that's a dream if it's not held in check. And so, I mean, there's this balance, like I say, this, this this kind of concept.

Avraham Burg: So a good believer should have yin and yang, Jerusalem, Rome, in order to balance in between? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Something like that. I mean, we're we're we're drawing in in large strokes here, but, yeah, I mean, there's something like that. I mean, you can flip this too. There's, there's ways in which the humanity is exposed. I mean, the, what to say, I mean, the worst of humanity is also on display in the history of Rome. That's a horrible thing. There's ways in which, I mean, the tyranny of empire is all exposed, but that's where the dignity of the individual, the particular, I mean, if you wanna take it in the direction of human dignity, I mean, that's a major major ethical, corollary of the incarnation, but that's this essential element. You can't have it, it's Dostoevsky who loves humanity but not humans. So you can't do one without the other.

Avraham Burg: Okay. Let's travel a little bit between A Story of A Tale of Two Cities. Okay? Let's travel between the two. You come from a place in which the majority of people are Christians. This kind of Christian, the other kind of Christian, but Christianity is saturated into everything. Sunday is a day off. Bells are ringing, crosses on the national flags, and God Bless America is a certain god rather than a different alternative of gods. You live in a majority, and all of a sudden you come to small Jerusalem and you are a tiny minority. What happens in this transformation from the land of majority, the lands of majority, to the place of a minority.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: It's a wonderful experience, I have to say. There's a diachronic depth dimension that opens up in places like Rome and Jerusalem too, but you experience the present, through a filter of history. And, I mean, one of the things that you experience as the present, in Jerusalem is the fact that the church isn't always this triumphant church of Saint Peter's, in the Vatican. In fact, it's critical, it's essential, that in its seminal moment, it's not born in that state, and so I think this is what I like a lot. I mean, just if you would contrast the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, and Saint Peter's. Saint Peter's is just too good to be true, and the holy Sepulcher is battle scarred…

Avraham Burg:  Let's explain. You walked on Saint Peter, the harmony, the basilica, the art, the excitement, the silence, the respect of everybody, including the gendarmerie, who are part of the system. It's beautiful. You go to the Holy Sepulcher, everybody fighting everybody else. It's your options of fighting the Franciscans or fighting this, all.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Exactly. I mean, the first time I went there, this is back to… 

Avraham Burg: This is what you meant. Right? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: This is exactly what I mean. The first time I went there before, again, before I'm I'm father Anthony, I went in and was on the verge of a pious thought, you know, almost formulating a prayer, and a Syrian deacon elbowed me in the head, intentionally. I mean, it's just…

Avraham Burg: Because? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Well, because I was in his way. I don't know. It's just what's going to happen there. But, I mean, the church itself is mangled. It bears the scars of the entire history of Christianity, which is not always a Christianity that is, you know, a dominant culture. And so that relativizes the experience where you can very, very easily mistake Christianity for a state, or a political system, or or even a particular culture. And so it pulls you out of that and puts back in perspective something about the essence of what your faith actually is. So it's a very, very important experience to have.

Avraham Burg: My feeling is when I take your illustration of the holy sepulcher as the battlefield of everybody and everybody, Since the place is so small, there is no room for everybody. So everybody fights for the little square meter, square centimeter, and the best illustration is the ladder at the second floor of theHoly Sepulcher. What is it?  The status quo?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's the status quo of absurdity in a way. I mean, it's just it's this kind of, limit case of dysfunction, that, you know, you can't touch or move this thing. Who knows why?

Avraham Burg: There is a ladder left there at the time in which they had to give food to the people confined at the 

2nd floor. Now you cannot touch it because the ladder became holy. So it's sanctification of the status quo 

rather than of the dialogue to resolve it.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. That's right. That's right. 

Avraham Burg: I want to push a little bit more the envelope of the Jerusalemite dimension. He told me Elias Houri, the famous Lebanese author And I hope they will come, and another Arab writer in Arabic will have the Nobel Prize for literature and will be Elias, who is a fantastic writer. And he told me, “Avrum, you know, the tragedy of the Middle East is that in ‘48 the Arab society got emptied of its other the Jewish as the other. And now in the last decade and a half, ISIS and on, it gets empty of its Christian other.” And the middle east is not the same middle east since the crusades and the kingdom of Jerusalem you described earlier, etc. Christianity is shrinking in the region. Looks like in Jerusalem and in Israel, which is the state of the Jews, Christianity holds. Isn't it kind of an historic absurd? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Well, I don't know. I mean, there's a tenacity there, that's unique. Obviously, I mean, the Middle East is a big region, but the roots hold because they go deep. I mean, the presence in the Christian presence, let's say the native Christian presence, in Israel is obviously imperiled, let's say. I mean, it's not in a state of, what to say, kind of, robust confidence. There's threats from a lot of different directions. I mean, it's a funny church in a lot of ways because it's also a very international church. So I mean, I'm not a native there, but I belong to the local church, and, I mean, the foreigners have an important role bringing a kind of infrastructure, stability, to a church that's, such a minority, and in such a perilous state that it has to rely on this this kind of universal communion to survive. But the commitment is very, very real, both for those who stay and those from the outside who (come and stay)

Avraham Burg: who commutes.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Or who come and stay. But, in any case, I mean, yeah, the importance, I think, obviously, of the Christians for the non Christians is very important, because it also says something about the real identity of the place. I mean, we're not newcomers there, and we can't pretend that it's kind of an accident that there are Christians there. 

Avraham Burg: Yet, yet, you are a father. When you think about many of the Mediterranean societies in the Middle East, a father is part of a patriarchal structured family. And in many cases, because of the numbers, because of the political environment, because of persecution, you're in a way a very weak father. I mean, your family, the community is a weak community who needs a stronger father to stand for it, and we in the region expect the father to be the figure fighter of the family. So how do you now calibrate the very, very heavy responsibility coming with the title father and your sometimes inability to to face the establishment, the political system, the threats? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. It's a good question. I mean, you make a good point. I mean, there's a resonance of that language in the region that is stronger, I think, than in the West. I mean, all of my Arab friends call me Abuna. I mean, there's something very native. So a good example maybe of this is, I mean, so the father of the Latin Christians is the cardinal now. And this act of the Holy Father, here in Rome, to name the Bishop of Jerusalem cardinal, is a new thing.

Avraham Burg: I mean, we mean, cardinal Jean Baptiste Pizabella, the first ever maybe? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. Exactly. 

Avraham Burg: The first recently. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah.I mean, historically, going way back, actually, Caesarea was the more important church than Jerusalem, so it's it's it's a big sign of a support, like I say, of the Holy Father. This is, you know, a big part of Catholic ecclesiology. 

Avraham Burg: As a Jew, I was so excited. I felt, wow, somebody pays attention to the importance of the Christian input into our mosaic.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. Precisely. So I think that's a good example of how the church from the outside, quote unquote, can somehow bring something, offer something to the church, and there, I mean, cardinal Pizzabala, he's an Italian. He's also not native, but he's but he's become native.I mean, that's that's this dimension of the church there, and the symbiosis of the universal church and the particular church is very important, very characteristic, and unique in the church in Jerusalem. 

Avraham Burg: About the frustration of being a father that his fatherhood. Is not as needed by the family, by the community. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Well, I mean, by society in a way. I mean, there's a way in which, okay, I mean there are some signs of respect, there's a lot of signs of disrespect too, you know, more broadly speaking. But I think the Christians understand the need. There's a struggle to provide what the church needs, the Christians need. That's obviously a pain. That's a wound that the church and all of us there have to bear. 

Avraham Burg: I'll leave it as is because I feel that personally I feel the frustration. And I'll leave it there. With a lot of sympathy and empathy. I want to go a little bit to the more conceptual level. We spoke about practical Jerusalem, streets, corners, sizes. In many cases, the destruction of the second Jewish temple was a kind of a victory to the Christian ideas because Jesus Christ criticized the corruption of the place. I mean he had some of the best encounters against the then Jewish establishment over there at the mount. Are the dreams of so many Jews today to rebuild the temple is the new Christian nightmare? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: I mean, it depends which Christians you're talking about, and that's part of the problem first. 

Avraham Burg: I'm gonna ask you differently. You, father Anthony, maybe not in that some American evangelical interpretation which loves the idea. You are with your faith. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah, I think that the Catholic view on this is, not just me personally, but the Catholic view on this is different than, I mean, what we would see as a millennialist, kind of error. It's certainly I mean, even apart from the theological evaluation, I mean, just in terms of political prudence, in terms of, kind of stoking or poking a hornet's nest, it's, yeah, it's a nightmare.

Avraham Burg: The politics, it's a nightmare for me. As a voting Israeli as well, and as an engaged Jew as well. But I ask now about something which is maybe beyond politics. Okay, for many years Christianity said, and there are so many theological arguments about it, We are we have the new blessing. The blessing was taken from the old church, the Jewish one, into the new church, right? And the fact that your temple is destroyed, and you are so humble and meek, and you are a testimony for the victory of the new thing. Now all of the sudden, is it possible that we, the Jews, are re blessed? Do we have to share the blessing? What's going on there? Because Israel is a successful story from the point of view of Jewish history.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: It’s a remarkable story. Yeah, you know, it's this moment of the destruction of the Temple is, is so drenched in meaning, in symbolism, and exaggerations. You know, that's really my period, and that's Roman Jerusalem again. I've worked on this a lot. And one of the things I think is important actually, there's a certain kind of demythologization, of that moment that's, just, important to undertake. So to a certain extent, I think a lot of things that were actually Roman political policy have been re-interpreted as Christian theology.

Avraham Burg: Give me a good example. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Like like the decision to destroy and keep the Temple destroyed, there's a way in which, I mean, the initial Christian response to that is different than we'll get a couple centuries later when it does start to become this kind of proof, you know, in, archaeological proof of the of the invalidity of Judaism or something. That's not the primitive Christian response, actually. It's not necessary to dwell on that, but here, I think I would be, you know, in accord with with most historians that, there's a crisis that the Judaism of the 1st century, 1st and second century passes through, and the end of, let's call it Biblical Israel, the end of this temple system, gives birth to a new idea of religion. And that's a new idea of religion that forks, into the Christian experience and, I mean, formative Judaism, and the rabbinical experience, as a kind of normative Go ahead.

Avraham Burg: Sorry, I was too Israeli. I had something to your words, finish the thought.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: I mean, the point the point is simply that there's an end for everyone that comes with the destruction of the Temple. This ancient world didn't understand how to come into contact with God without slaughtering animals. I mean, there's a major major watershed here, between that and the experience of religion that both Christians and Jews have today.

Avraham Burg: I will go with you. I will say that up until the destruction of the second temple, it was the long tail of the Biblical era. And then two new religions were born out of this era of crisis and the international cosmopolitan confusion or perplexion. And this is actually Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity of early stages that were actually twin sisters rather than mother and daughter. We Jews, we love to say we are the mothers of this. No, no, no. This neo Judaism and Christianity are twin sisters that started post Temple rituals.. A lot of conscience rather than the “Avodah Sh’Belev”, the labor of the heart. Okay? Or the worshiping of the heart. Prayers, carrying solidarity. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Gemilut Hasidim. 

Avraham Burg: Gemilut Hasidim, charity and compassion, etc. And therefore the proximity and the closeness of our two religions is much closer then perceived by the political advertisement of the time. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. And to that extent, I mean, the destruction of the temple isn't this we're right, you're wrong moment, so much as it's the necessary precondition for both. And that's not to say that there's not, I mean, a radical difference in the way that those two sister religions are born from that experience. But, I mean, that's more how I'd see, you know, the significance of the destruction of this form. I mean, we obviously, there's there's a there's a particular Christian understanding of this, and, again, I mean, painting with with broad brushstrokes, but, there's a way in which there's a universalizing tendency that's the Christian form of religion that's born out of that. And, I mean, embedded in the rabbinic experiences is a strong instinct of conservation. So while the temple isn't there, I mean, what do you do on Yom Kippur? I mean, you read and study the ritual. You relive it. And so to dwell in that place in a spiritual way, but in a different way is a different instinct. 

Avraham Burg: So it's the completion of the complementary, particular, and universal that live together and created maybe a lot of the or set a lot of the foundation of the western civilization the way we know it. Now that we passed the last 2024 last years, okay, we know that there were partition lines, be it the Paulinian theology, be it Augustinus one, be it later on. If today you, Father Anthony, have to draw the lines between Judaism and Christianity. Assuming, will that be the same municipal lines as 2000 years ago? Or do we have many things which are similar and some others which are completely differently different? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. I think boundaries are always moving. I mean, that's what makes these negotiations so, so thorny all the time. I mean, at its essence, I mean, without being a determinist about it, I mean, there's something definitive that happens in the moment of birth. I mean, when these religions are being born, there's something formative, and just I mean, so without talking about the essence of Judaism or the essence of Christianity, I mean, I do think we can, we can identify a kind of classical physiognomy. That said, I mean, it would be silly to ignore things like Nostra Aetate and these other very definitive readjustments in in the relationship, so if that's a municipal boundary or whatever that is, I mean

Avraham Burg: You know why I love Nostra Aetate. Every 100 years the church sits in order to update its policy. Right? I mean, this North Rheite of the ‘60, ‘64 was the second of the second council. Okay. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: The church thinks in centuries, we say. And, I mean, the creation of the state of Israel, this extraordinary story that you mentioned, I mean, it changes dynamics in a very real way. It's not until 1993 that you have, you know, a formal accord between, the Catholic church and the state of Israel. So, I mean, there's circumstances that have certainly changed, and that changes the relations. 

Avraham Burg: You mentioned the Nostra Aetate, which I wanted to get to a bit later, so let's visit it now. The Nostra Aetate is very very interesting. It's really after a very dramatic century, two world wars and everybody was sitting there, saw the atrocities of both worlds. It's a couple of years after the invention of the pill, the birth of the state of Israel. So many things change in the classic traditional environment. And therefore, the church came especially with the paragraph clause four. What is it? The relationship with the Jews, etcetera, 

was very, very interesting. Now you live in Jerusalem for how many years? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: 8 years. 

Avraham Burg: You know us as well as we do, know ourselves. Do you think it's possible that one day there will be a Jewish Nostraite Date towards the Christianity?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Well, I mean, this goes back to the father of the family. I mean, who's the father of the Jewish family?

Avraham Burg: You don't want a political answer, right? 

Giambrone:I don't want an answer at all. I don't think there is an answer. That's that's the point. I mean, there's this is something the church the Catholic church constantly faces is who's our interlocutor? I mean, for instance, what Jews are we speaking to, when we want to talk about the state of Israel or something like that? Because there's a huge spectrum of opinions. Who speaks for the Jews, quote un quote, okay? It's very very clear.

Avraham Burg: All of them.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Exactly. So you have 9,000,000 dialogues, you know. 

Avraham Burg: It’s 14,000,000. 14,000,000 monologues. Yeah. Go on.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: But but, I mean, this is very very different, obviously, in the Catholic experience. You know exactly who your interlocutor is, and who speaks for the church, which makes a dialogue possible, in a different way. 

Avraham Burg: Father Anthony, I think you beautify a little bit. Okay? In the sense that you know that within the church you have so many streams and so many just take, for example, the current Pope. And Pope, the former one. So the difference between more traditional, more progressive, German, Latin American. The nuances which are.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: That's a point well taken. And nevertheless, there's an ecclesiology. There's an ecclesiology that's clear, even if it gets blurry very very quickly. The the the fact that there's a Vatican, the the fact that there is a pope, whoever he is, is a structure that doesn't exist in, you know, and it's it's not to say by any means that pope always speaks for all Catholics or anything like that, and, I mean, Catholic theology doesn't doesn't pretend or think that, but the the point is just back to, could there be a Jewish Nostra Aetate? I mean, there could be a group of Jews. I mean, I have good friends, who are very engaged in Jewish Christian relations, and, you know, writing letters and doing these, in fact, writing to the Pope and getting answers and this sort of thing, but who are they speaking for? You know, 

Avraham Burg: Partly themselves. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: For themselves or the signatories or something like that, but it's a different, I think I just don't see the mechanism for it.

Avraham Burg: I understand what you say, but, for example, if Pope Ratzinger, no, that was not the name, Cardinal Ratzinger at the time. Right? Say something about abortion for the sake of it. So many American Catholics do not listen and they speak differently as Catholics, etcetera, etcetera. So it's a question of the political mechanism. How do you work with the system in order to listen to other voices? But, actually, I ask a question of psychological question rather than a theological question. You think that it's possible that one day the Jews in Israel, not in the West, will overcome the phobia of the entire Christian world, want to crucify us? Or I'll take it, you know, a step further. In the eyes of many Israelis, I will never say old because you never have all.. the Christian foundation or the Christian seed and the two poisonous fruits that still haunt the Middle East, colonialism and holocaust, are still very, very much alive. And therefore, the trust is very problematic. You think that they will come and we, the Jews, will trust you Christians?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: It's a question for you. I don't know.

Avraham Burg:  Look at me, not in the room. But look at us. You see us. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. Well, I mean, as a good challenge, I suppose, one should and must say that Christian 

civilizations, Christian societies need to show themselves trustworthy before that happens. There's I mean, this is back to, you know, coming from a Christian country or something. I mean, what counts, you know, the kind of radical Islamic interpretation of, I don't know the Crusades. They speak about the present military operations of the West as crusades, and I think that's, I mean, obviously, radically to misunderstand a highly secularized society, and so to what extent…

Avraham Burg: Of today. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Exactly. And so to what extent, this is also back to the question of supersessionism. What was Roman political policy, and what was Christian theology? I mean, do we attribute everything to Christianity that a nominally Christian country does or did? I mean, that's where this question of church teaching is actually very important. It's very, very easy to say, I mean, that, okay, the Catholics who don't actually subscribe to church teaching on abortion are not abiding by what the church says. It's not in doubt what the church says and what it teaches. It's a different thing than what actual Christians do, but you can't criticize the teaching based on the practice. So, I think this comes back to the question of trust. I mean, when did church teaching, formal church teaching, ever betray the trust? Okay. That's a different thing than bad Christians. Then you can ask the question, you know, does religion have the ability to make good Christians? I mean, what do you judge Christianity by? Do you judge it by its saints, you know, the success stories or the failures? Do you judge a university, you know, by the people who fail? The way they sell it is the people who succeed. I mean, I think these questions of evaluation are gonna touch the sensibility of, you know, of Jewish people about whether we can trust, you know, Christian society, something like that. What is it? What is Christian society? What is Christianity? Do I trust Christianity? In the end, these are abstract. It comes down this is the particular. I think that the Jewish experience is always on the pole of the particular, and it's gonna come down to a lot of these kinds of 14,000,000 monologues.

Avraham Burg: Yeah. The problem with particularism is the “what aboutism”? Okay. You have 99% of the Catholics are A, but what individual does the opposite but what about him? Right. Okay. So leave this for example. I'll tell you, I listened very carefully to what you're saying. It's a food for thought for me for after because I believe that the Jewish learning or studying system is a bit different in one sense. The teaching should never get too far away from the capability of the one or the community to perform. You never sanction something on the public if the public cannot meet the challenge. So it's a bit different than the abstract goodness that you're talking here. So I have to think a little bit about it, but I'll say as follows, answering my own question about the Jewishness and reestablish trust. I would say there is one thing that for me for many many years is a source of optimism. When I look at Judaism versus Islam and Judaism versus Christianity, with Islam what we have in common is the oneness of the God. We don't have the dilemma of trinity which challenges the dogma, the paradigm. But on the other hand, with Christianity, we have a shared book. The old testament. So, okay, I can fight with you day in and day out about the interpretation and the meaning of the next, of series two. Okay, but I don't have this shared text with the Muslims. So in between the two, I have a feeling that it is possible to have a learned shared process of learning together, redefining borders together, and then have a shared Nostraitatte. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Right. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy, actually, to hear that and to share that. I mean, both Christian experience and Jewish experience can't be reduced to western experience, but there's also a lot of convergence and a lot of synergy, between you know, the Jewish community and the Christian community in building a culture. And I think - 

Avraham Burg:  In the West. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: In the West. 

Avraham Burg: But not in the Holy Land.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: There's a different challenge. But even back in the Holy Land, there's, I mean, a huge number. I don't know if it's a majority or not, but, I mean, there's a major presence of western culture and western values. I mean, Israel, as a state, has, you know, strives to embed these western values. I mean, so there's a shared cultural patrimony that is a massive common ground for trust, and understanding. I mean, so, we don't always have to jump immediately to scriptural exegesis. There's also, you know, traditions of music, traditions of, of art and literature, and all these sorts of things that we understand and respect and treasure together, and those are human contacts, and I think those are - 

Avraham Burg: That's fantastic. Your dialectic process is amazing. You say not everything which is Western is Christian, but Westernism might be the common denominator to build a bridge between this Israel, Jewish Israel, and that Catholic element in the West? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. Absolutely. It's the common denominator precisely, and, all the more in the context, I mean, of this nation state. I mean, the very idea of a nation state, it's Westphalia. I mean, it's we we can say that that colonialism is is the problem, and, I mean, there's there's lots and lots of problems of colonialism, but it's it's an ambiguous phenomenon because it imports it imports an entire civilizational paradigm, and we live within that, whether we like it or not. And to that extent, I mean, it's the ambiance of trust.

Avraham Burg: We started with a person. I said, father Anthony, tell me about yourself, and we went to the open prairies of the Midwest. Right. I once tried to run on a very winter-ish day, the golden mile of Chicago.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Never again. 

Avraham Burg: Would never again. Now talk to me. Narrow your field your depth of field. Talk to me about your corner of Jerusalem. Where is Father Anthony’s Jerusalem Corner?

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: You know, it's beautiful because it's small. It's neighborhoods like this. I mean, I live on Nablus Road. I live in view of Damascus Gate, which is the most troubled spot in the city. 

Avraham Burg: Traffic is awful. I mean, no separation between the pavement and the road. I mean, every commerce, commercial exchange happens on both. Soldiers, Observant 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Yeah. It's all there. But the falafel is great.

Avraham Burg: But the falafel is good, hummus is good. And everybody is actually molded into the gate into the city. Christians, Muslims, religious, Jews. Tourists. So you live there.

Fr. Anthony Giambrone:  And, I mean, and it's a theater, you know, the way it descends, and, I mean, it's a kind of amphitheater just watching Jerusalem. I mean, there's something magnificent about it, for that reason, just the way that it's kind of the mise en scene of the drama of Jerusalem for me. And you think too of just what those walls have seen. Damascus Gate is dear to me, because it's my neighborhood. I see it the moment I step out my door, but if there's one place where I go to forget Damascus Gate or to get a different perspective, it's Gethsemane, and I can't tell you what a privilege it is.

Avraham Burg: The church or the whole valley there? 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: The church very specifically, and next to -

Avraham Burg: Universal one, all nations. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: The church of all nations, which is there, always moved me. I mean, up in this beautiful mosaic, I mean, it's the starry sky, but you have all the nations, including the Americans that are up there. There's something about that, that, you know, even to be under the heavens like that, and it's the promise to Abraham. Okay? Look and count the stars, and it's all the families of nations. And this is also, that particular place where Jesus prayed, and, I mean, to that extent, to go there, to pray in that spot is just a kind of communion with this is a place not where Jesus went to pray, to seek communion with his father, but it's also a place where he's brought to that limit case of his own humanity. I mean, he's sweating blood, on the brink of his cruel and unjust murder. So, you know, when you're brought to these moments, whatever the moments they are, they can be beautiful moments too. But for me, it's a wonderful place of prayer. And since COVID, it's also been very quiet. 

Avraham Burg: I love the Mount of Olives when you stand at the top of it, which is the hill above the Gethsemane. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Gethsemane. 

Avraham Burg: And I see Christians standing there and they know this is how Jesus came from the Jordan Valley, climbed up from Jericho Road, walked down to the city, towards him, meeting his fate. And I looked down and I said, wow, my grandfather is buried here. And I'm sad about him and it's apropos, humanity, the human dimension of the city. And when I listen very carefully to our conversation, I say to myself, there is no Gethsemane in Rome. There is no Damascus gate in Rome. But maybe father Anthony and Avrum can meet in Rome only in order to talk about these places. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: It was a pleasure. 

Avraham Burg: Thank you very much, father Anthony. 

Fr. Anthony Giambrone: Thank you.

Avraham Burg: God bless you.