In partnership with JUF, NSCI is proud to co-host this lecture, part of a longstanding series that maintains the dialogue between Jews and Catholics on issues affecting their relationship. The keynote speaker will be Prof. Mary C. Boys, SNJM. Cardinal Blase Cupich will offer opening remarks, and Rabbi Geffen will introduce and host the event. The lecture topic is described below.

Recovering a Jewish Jesus: An Imperative for the Church
This lecture will explore how and why early followers of Jesus lost sight of his Jewish identity and analyze the historical consequences of this loss for both Christians and Jews. In continuity with Cardinal Bernardin’s 1995 Jerusalem Lecture on antisemitism, it will then examine the necessity in our time of recovering a Jewish Jesus, including the obligation of Christians to learn anew about Judaism from Jews.

Mary C. Boys is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, as well as its former Academic Vice-President and Dean. Having previously served as a professor at Boston College, she is the author of six books, including Redeeming our Sacred Story: The Death of Jesus and Relations between Jews and Christians. Boys is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, The Catholic Theological Union, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Gratz College and Misericordia University. She is the current chair of the Committee on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. A Seattle native, she has been a vowed member since 1968 of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, a congregation of Roman Catholic women.

This lecture is jointly sponsored by: The Archdiocese of Chicago, AJC-Chicago, Anti-Defamation League, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago Board of Rabbis, DePaul University, JUF/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, and the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership.