Co-sponsored by the Center for Catholic Studies and the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, Rabbi Visotzky will present “Fratelli Tutti: the Good Samaritan and the Rabbi.”
What are the limitations of interreligious dialogue? Are we really "all brothers?" Should we be wary of sibling rivalry? On Thursday, April 7, at 7:30 p.m., Rabbi Burton Visotzky, PhD, will discuss Pope Francis’ “Fratelli Tutti” (All Brothers) encyclical, and share his thoughts on the pope’s extension of Vatican II’s famous “Nostra Aetate” declaration regarding the Church and non-Christian religions.
Rabbi Visotzky’s lecture,“Fratelli Tutti: the Good Samaritan and the Rabbi,” the 16th Annual Lecture in Jewish/Christian Engagement, will take place in Fairfield University’s Dolan School of Business Event Hall. This in-person event is free and open to the public, and will also be livestreamed for virtual attendance. Register for the livestream at fairfield.edu/cs.
Director of the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), Rabbi Visotzky also serves at JTS as Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies, and the Louis Stein Director of the Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies.
With an EdM from Harvard and a PhD from JTS’s Rabbinical School, Rabbi Visotzky met Pope Benedict in 2007 while serving as master visiting professor of Jewish Studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He met Pope Francis in 2014 while serving as distinguished visiting professor at Rome’s Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum). He has been an adjunct faculty member at Union Theological Seminary since 1980.
Rabbi Visotzky is the author of ten books, editor of seven other volumes, and has written more than 125 articles and reviews. His book, Aphrodite and the Rabbis: How the Jews Adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism as We Know It, was published in 2016.
Rabbi Visotzky served on the United States Holocaust Museum’s Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust. He currently serves on a steering committee for the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Genocide Prevention and on the United Nations Inter-Agency Task-Force’s Multi-Faith Advisory Council. He is a life-member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 1995-96, Rabbi Visotzky collaborated with Bill Moyers on the ten-part PBS series, Genesis: A Living Conversation. In 1998, he consulted for DreamWorks on their film Prince of Egypt, and in 2012 he worked with Christiane Amanpour on her mini-series, Back to the Beginning.
Rabbi Visotzky has been repeatedly named to the Newsweek/Daily Beast list of “The 50 Most Influential Jews in America.”
Register for livestream viewing of the 16th Annual Lecture in Jewish/Christian Engagement at fairfield.edu/cs, or join us in-person at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 7 in Fairfield University’s Dolan School of Business Event Hall, located at 1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT 06824.
