Shevet Achim Honorees

Celia Deutsch is a Sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame de Sion, also known as the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, a Roman Catholic religious order with a particular commitment to interfaith understanding.

Victoria J. Barnett is one of the world’s preeminent scholars of religion and the Holocaust, as well as a leading expert on the German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Burton L. Visotzky is the Nathan and Janet Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, where he also serves as the Louis Stein Director of the Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies and director of the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue.

Philip A. Cunningham is Professor of Theology and Director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations of Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Interested in biblical studies, religious education, and theologies of Christian-Jewish relations.

Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies, and Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science; she is also Affiliated Professor, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge UK.  For many years she served as the reviews editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 

Abraham Skorka served for almost twenty years as the rector of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano Marshall T. Meyer in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He also taught Talmud and Rabbinic Literature there and was dean of its Rabbinical School. In addition, he has served for decades as a rabbi for the Benei Tikva Congregation in Buenos Aires. 

Alice L. Eckardt is Professor Emerita, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, where she taught in the Religion Studies Department for many years.  She is a member of the Board, Executive Committee, and Program Committee of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding (IJCU) at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA.  

Ed Parish Sanders, a New Testament scholar, was for many years the Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion at Duke University and Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University. His research has been extremely influential in the study of the world of Late Second Temple Judaism and in the understanding of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus within that world. His work has also provided important new insights into the origins of both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism that has many implications for the relationships between Jews and Christians today and their own self-understandings.

Irving Greenberg is a Modern Orthodox rabbi, scholar and author. He is known as a strong promoter of greater understanding between Judaism and Christianity.

Mary C. Boys, a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, is Dean of Academic Affairs and since 1994 the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York City. She also serves as an adjunct faculty member of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Teachers College, Columbia University. She has been on the faculty of Boston College and a visiting Lecturer of Religious Education at Princeton Theological Seminary, Claremont School of Theology, John Carroll University, Villanova University, and St. Mary's College (London, England). She has also been a Lilly Research Fellow and a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for 2005.

Leon Klenicki joined the Anti-Defamation League as director of Jewish-Catholic relations in 1973 and in 1984 became its director of interfaith affairs, a position he held until 2001. In these capacities he was an important voice of American Judaism over four decades of improving Catholic-Jewish relations after the Second Vatican Council. Rabbi Klenicki was the author and co-author of hundreds of books and papers dealing with the theological and practical aspects of improving relations between Christians and Jews. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI named him a Papal Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.

John T. Pawlikowski, a priest of the Servite Order, serves as Professor of Social Ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where he also directs the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program in the school's Cardinal Joseph Bernardin Center.  He served for six years as President of the International Council of Christians & Jews.  He was also appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and reappointed for three successive terms by Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. He currently serves on the Governor's Commission for Holocaust and Genocide in his home state of Illinois.     

A. James Rudin is Senior Interreligious Advisor for the American Jewish Committee. He had previously served since 1968 as the AJC's interreligious affairs director. He is past Chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations. He has participated in meetings with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, in World Council of Churches conferences in Geneva, and is founder of the National Interreligious Task Force on Black-Jewish relations. 

Franklin Sherman is Founding Director of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding of Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania. He began his teaching career at the School of Religion of the University of Iowa, teaching subsequently at Mansfield College, Oxford, England, and for 23 years at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where he served for ten years as Dean. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago as well as academic institutions in Switzerland, Israel, Zimbabwe, and Japan.

Judith Hershcopf Banki is director for special programs at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York City. A pioneer and veteran of Christian-Jewish relations, her work began before the Second Vatican Council when as an aide to Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum at the American Jewish Committee she coordinated pivotal studies in the presentation of Jews and other minorities in Catholic school textbooks. These studies were submitted to the Vatican and contributed to the development of its landmark declaration, Nostra Aetate.

Dr. Eugene J. Fisher served for thirty years as the specialist in Catholic-Jewish relations at the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  He is currently the Distinguished Professor of Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Florida.