JCFJ and Gardiner street chruch are hosting a live hybrid book launch on Monday 19th October at 7:00pm.
Audiences will gather in three audience hubs: Belfast Jesuit Centre, Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality, and St Xavier’s, Gardiner Street, Dublin, for a short talk from author David Neuhaus SJ who will join us live via video link. This will be followed by a guided conversation and Q&A.
The book will be available to purchase at all venues.
About The Book
A divided, traumatised and even dehumanised people such as those we find in the Holy Land – Palestine and Israel – is in life-giving need of transformation. In this book, Fr David Neuhaus SJ argues that the Christians of the Holy Land may play a key part in fostering such transformation — not as a neutral bridge, for Christian Palestinians are just as oppressed as their Muslim neighbours, but as a leaven in society.
Few are as well-placed to analyse the past, present and future of Palestine/Israel as Fr Neuhaus: the son of refugees from Nazism, raised in a Jewish family and later ordained a Jesuit Catholic priest, who grew up under South African apartheid and has lived as an Israeli citizen in Jerusalem for almost fifty years. His reflections, collected in this book, offer the reader an informed and empathetic overview of the issues and realities at stake, free from the propaganda and disinformation so common in much of the media. He also calls us to stand in solidarity with our Christian brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.
Who will step up to help heal the traumatised societies of the Holy Land — to be a voice for justice, an agent of peace, a guide towards the transformation that must come?
Günther Simmermacher, editor of The Southern Cross and author of The Holy Land Trek.
About the Author
David Neuhaus SJ was born to a German Jewish family who fled to South Africa to escape the Nazis. Growing up in apartheid South Africa opened his eyes to the injustice of the apartheid system and he felt compelled to be an advocate for change. His parents sent him to Israel to be educated at 15. It was here that a close friendship with a Palestinian family led to a growing awareness of the injustice under which Palestinians were living. Meanwhile a friendship with an Orthodox religious sister would lead him on a journey towards Christianity, and into the Society of Jesus.
Fr David offers a unique perspective from the crossroads of Jewish, Christian, and Palestinian life. His reflections draw on decades of pastoral ministry, biblical scholarship, and a lifelong commitment to justice and peace in the Holy Land.
