Saint Leo University’s Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies Hosting Eternal Light Award Dinner on November 17 in Tampa

Since 1999, Saint Leo University’s Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies (CCJS) has presented its Eternal Light Award to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the cause of Catholic-Jewish relations. Receiving the award this year is Dr. Joseph Sievers, professor emeritus of Jewish History and Literature of the Hellenistic period at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, where he began teaching in 1991. 

CCJS will host its Eternal Light Award Dinner: An Evening of Dialogue, 6 – 9 p.m., Sunday, November 17, at Higgins Hall at St. Lawrence Catholic Church, 5225 N. Himes Ave., Tampa, FL 33614. The public is invited to this special event as the center strives to build mutual respect and understanding between Catholics, Jews, and all people of goodwill during an extremely difficult time. 

Registration is required by Friday, November 1. Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available at https://your.saintleo.edu/ccjs/elad. For more information, contact Laurie Gens at laurie.gens@saintleo.edu or (352) 588-7711. 

Serving as co-chairs of the event are Father Len Plazewski of Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa and Rabbi Joel Simon of Congregation Schaarai Zedek in Tampa.  

Sievers is the 20^th recipient of the Eternal Light Award. His keynote address will be How Encounters with Jews and Jewish History Changed My Life as a Catholic Christian. The respondent is Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, a past Eternal Light Award recipient and the Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. 

Since 2008, Sievers has served as a consultor to the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. From 2003 to 2009, he served as director of the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Sievers has authored numerous scholarly publications especially in the fields of Second Temple Judaism and in Jewish-Christian relations. He is the co-editor of such volumes as Good and Evil after Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today (2001), co-edited with Jack Bemporad and John T. Pawlikowski; The Catholic Church and the Jewish People: Recent Reflections from Rome (2007) co-edited with Philip A. Cunningham and Norbert J. Hofmann; Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today: New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships (2011), co-edited with Philip A. Cunningham, Mary Boys, Hans Hermann Henrix, and Jesper Svartvik; and The Pharisees (2021), co-edited with Levine, and published in both English and Italian.

History of Saint Leo’s CCJS 

The importance of the interchange of ideas and dialogue among Catholics and Jews prompted the formation of Saint Leo University’s Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies in 1998. Rabbi A. James Rudin said he noted at that time that Florida had an increasing population of Jews and Catholics, and that dynamic demographic trend was likely to continue. “There was no Christian-Jewish academic center south of Baltimore at that time,” he said.  

Rudin met with the then-Saint Leo College President Arthur Kirk Jr., who liked the rabbi’s proposal of creating an interreligious center on campus. Kirk, Rudin, and Bruce M. Ramer, then-president of the American Jewish Committee, signed a joint statement establishing CCJS. 

As the college grew and became a university, the late Bishop Emeritus John J. Nevins of the Catholic Diocese of Venice (FL); and now Bishop Emeritus Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg (FL) became co-founders of CCJS. These leaders recognized the need in the state for an academic center devoted to the biblical and theological study of Catholic-Jewish relations and interreligious dialogue, as emphasized by the Second Vatican Council. 

Today, the CCJS is a leading academic center for the study of Catholic-Jewish relations.