Poulin Joan:The Joseph Emanuel Remember
I don't remember when I first met Joseph Emanuel but his impact on my life was profound and lasting.
The years spent working with Joseph when he was General Secretary of the Israel Interfaith Association were rich in experience, in encounters with amazing people (whom Joseph seemed to attract) and in learning how a man like Joseph had the stamina and vision to bring his ideals to fruition. Joseph's ideals were as broad as the universe, as high as the heavens and as deep as the human soul. they hinged on promoting peace and understanding among all human beings, but especially in his own little corner of the world, in Israel, between Jews and Arabs as well as well as among the different religious groups in the country: Jews, Moslems, Christians, Bahai, Druze. His preoccupations encompassed organizing interfaith encounters in Israel among the various religious groups, promoting dialogue groups of Jews and Christians throughout the cities and towns in the country, youth dialogue groups and many other projects. He was ready to help with any initiative that was proposed to promote peace.
The utopian idea of Father Bruno Hussar to establish a village where Jews and Arabs would live together and work out their problems peacefully was just such a project. Joseph did everything he could to help Bruno and his team realize his dream until finally Neve Shalom-Wahad el Salaam was established and is flourishing to this day.
His goals did not only include the local scene. Joseph was involved in organising conferences on Jewish-Christians understanding in Spain, France, England as well as in many other countries of Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. He encouraged the founding of Jewish-Christian Associations in these same countries in collaboration with the International Council of Christians and Jews founded in 1947, whose head office is in the former residence of Martin Buber in Heppenheim, near Frankfurt, in Germany.
Besides promoting dialogue among different religious groups, Joseph was also passionate about providing educational opportunities to study the Bible in Israel for different religious groups.
Joseph's pet project in this area was to organize a course especially designed for African clergy who spent a couple of months studying Biblical subjects at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The clergy groups consisted of members of every Christian denomination in Africa and were held in french and english in alternate years. The course included Biblical subjects and Judaism taught by prominent scholars from the university and elsewhere in Jerusalem, hebrew language classes every day and social events to introduce the Africans to Israeli everyday life and to Israeli people, prominent and otherwise.
The students also visited Biblical sites around Jerusalem and throughout the Holy Land: archaeological excavations, historical sites, places known from Gospel stories. I was privileged to help organize as well as guide these excursions as well as other activities for the course. We took the opportunity while we travelled to visit development projects in Israel: in the Negev, for example, to learn about Israeli advances in desert survival (mud-brick housing adapted to a desert climate, arid-lands' irrigation methods, what plants could be adapted to dry climates etc.).
Joseph worked closely with the Department of International Cooperation in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs who financed the project along with some private donors. It was necessary also to get the cooperation of various governments to obtain visas from African countries, some of whom did not then have diplomatic relations with Israel.
The feedback we received after the students returned to their own countries was unanimously positive. Their experience in israel changed forever their view of Scripture. and Judaism. Not only did the Biblical stories come alive when they walked in the land where the patriarchs and prophets lived and where Jesus travelled teaching his disciples and the crowds, but discussions with Israeli scholars on the latest developments in Biblical archaeology, philology, history and exegesis helped greatly in their pastoral work back home.
The passing of Joseph is a great loss to the cause of mutual understanding among Jews, Christians and Moslems everywhere but also for the cause of peace in Israel.