Inaugural Paul Wattson Lecture at Fordham University
The Faith of Others: The Inspiration of Interreligious Dialogue in Light of Nostra Aetate
Dr. Susannah Heschel
Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies
Dartmouth College
Monday, October 20, 2025
6:00-7:30 PM, with reception to follow
McNally Amphitheatre & Atrium
Fordham University at Lincoln Center
140 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023
Free and open to the public; also livestreamed
The Paul Wattson Lectures honor the memory of Servant of God Father Paul of Graymoor (1863–1940), founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement and pioneer for the cause of Christian unity. These annual lectures, hosted at distinguished universities in the US and internationally, feature national and international leaders in the fields of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue to speak on urgent contemporary questions. The 2025 Paul Wattson Lecture, the first to be offered at Fordham, also honors and builds upon the legacy of the “Nostra Aetate Dialogues” organized at Fordham since the early 1990s to address compelling, and sometimes controversial, topics at the core of Jewish-Catholic dialogue.
In October 2025 we commemorate the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, which attended to the history of Catholic misrepresentation and mistreatment of Jews and provided a baseline for Catholic interreligious engagement in the contemporary world. Our interfaith era of these past sixty years is indeed a remarkable moment in history, given the two thousand years of tensions, often violent and horrific, between Christians and Jews. What has brought us to the present moment and what is our path going forward? Since the end of World War II, historians and theologians, Jewish and Christian, have focused enormous attention on the history of Christian views of Judaism, sometimes called Christian anti-Judaism. We have examined the links between theological criticisms of Judaism and modern antisemitism and questioned the responsibility of Christian teachings for the Holocaust. In her lecture, Professor Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College) will propose new ways to conceptualize the relationship between the two religions that will move us toward more positive, productive relations. Having grown up in a home in which ecumenical discussions were vital, Prof. Heschel will recount personal memories of her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and of the many Christian theologians and clergy who came to their home. Taking up the theological as well as the historical trajectory that led to Nostra Aetate, she will give particular attention to the relationship between Rabbi Heschel and Augustin Cardinal Bea, charting the new theological directions they represented regarding divine inspiration and prophecy.
Responding to Prof. Heschel will be Heather Miller Rubens, Executive Director of the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (Baltimore), who will look from this history into the present and future—reflecting on the powers and limits of Nostra Aetate in our own time, as well as on its significance beyond the Catholic-Jewish relationship (not least in terms of contemporary Islam).
About the Speakers
Susannah Heschel, PhD, is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and chair of the Jewish Studies Program and a faculty member of the Religion Department. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish and Protestant thought during the 19th and 20th centuries, including the history of biblical scholarship, Jewish scholarship on Islam, and the history of anti-Semitism. Her numerous publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press), which won a National Jewish Book Award, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press), and Jüdischer Islam: Islam und Deutsch-Jüdische Selbstbestimmung (Mathes und Seitz). She has a forthcoming book, co-written with Sarah Imhoff, The Woman Question in Jewish Studies (Princeton University Press. Heschel has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Frankfurt and Cape Town as well as Princeton, and she is the recipient of numerous grants, including from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, and a yearlong Rockefeller fellowship at the National Humanities Center. In 2011-12 she held a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and during the winter term of 2024 she held a research fellowship at the Maimonides Institute at the University of Hamburg. She has received many honors, including the Mendelssohn Prize of the Leo Baeck Institute, and five honorary doctorates from universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany. Currently she is a Guggenheim Fellow and is writing a book on the history of European Jewish scholarship on Islam. She is an elected member of the American Society for the Study of Religion and the American Academy for Jewish Research.
Heather Miller Rubens, PhD, is s the Executive Director and Roman Catholic Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. She is responsible for advancing the organization’s vision to build an interreligious society in which dialogue replaces division, friendship overcomes fear, and education eradicates ignorance. Heather is an experienced teacher, public speaker, facilitator, and scholar-practitioner of interreligious learning and dialogue. She develops educational initiatives that foster interreligious learning and conversation for the public in the Baltimore-Washington corridor and online. In her research and writing Heather creatively focuses on the theoretical, theological, ethical, and political implications of affirming religious diversity and building an interreligious society. She is currently working on a book entitled In Good Faith: An Argument for the Interreligious Society. Heather is a member of the Committee on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is an invited member of the Christian Scholars Group and she has also served in leadership positions with the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations and the Catholic Theological Society of America. She holds degrees from Georgetown University (B.A.), the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (G.Dip.), and the University of Chicago (A.M. and Ph.D.). She has taught at Lewis University, DePaul University, and St. Mary’s Seminary, and she served as a Visiting Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary.
About the Organizers
The 2025 Paul Wattson Lecture at Fordham University is co-sponsored and co-organized by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, and, at Fordham: the Departments of Theology and Jewish Studies, the Center on Religion and Culture, the Francis and Ann Curran Center for Catholic Studies, and Campus Ministry.
The Franciscan Friars of the Atonement recognize the pain of living in a broken world, seeing these wounds within ourselves, in our relationships, in the Church, and between different faiths. Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, Fr. Paul Wattson, SA, Servant of God, founded the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement to walk as brothers alongside those who are lost and need God’s healing. The Friars work with individuals through healing and rehabilitation programs such as St. Christopher’s Inn and the Do Not Fear to Hope HIV/Aids support group. Additionally, the Friars are devoted to ecumenism on a global scale, seeking to promote dialogue within the whole of Christianity and between all religions. In 1967, following the Second Vatican Council, the Friars founded Graymoor Ecumenical Institute (now Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute), which works to cultivate genuine unity through scholarship, solidarity, and peacebuilding dialogue.
At Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York, the Department of Theology advances the critical and constructive study of the ideas, symbols, narratives, beliefs, and practices of religious traditions, with particular attention to the rich diversity of Catholic Christian theology. In the tradition of Jesuit education, the Department promotes the informed exploration of faith and justice from ecumenical, interreligious, and global perspectives, aspiring to do so in an imaginative, interdisciplinary manner that values the important contributions of the humanities, arts, and sciences. The Department of Jewish Studies offers courses in ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern Jewish history, culture, law, literature, and contemporary society, providing students with a nuanced understanding of the living and historical traditions of Judaism, the Jewish people, and on the modern State of Israel. Jewish Studies at Fordham seeks especially to understand Jewish history and culture within the larger framework of Jews’ interaction with other groups, and particularly Jewish-Christian relations.
Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture explores the complex relationship between faith and contemporary life; through public events and conversations with experts and artists, scholars and faith leaders, the CRC seeks to engage and elevate the public dialogue about religion and culture, the mind and the soul, inclusion and identity, politics, and the arts. The Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies aims to promote the understanding of Catholic thought and practice, explore Catholicism’s diverse manifestations in American contexts, and create opportunities for informed and compassionate engagement with the religious and social issues of our time. And Fordham’s Campus Ministry, rooted in the university’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and committed to a flourishing multi-faith community, empowers Fordham students, staff, and faculty to thrive by cultivating the values at the center of their lives, developing spiritual practices and resources, building meaningful community, and sharing talents generously in service of a more just and loving world.