Roy Schoeman: Salvation is from the Jews

This is a fascinating book by a Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism, Roy Schoeman.

He explains carefully how the Old Testament leads directly into the New Testament and neither makes sense without the other.

He explains that God's promises to the Jews have never been negated, apply now to the Church but that, even so, the Jews as a race, a people and even in their religious observances today, still have a part to play in salvation history.

But don't get the idea that he thinks Jews need not convert to Catholicism, as many Catholic bishops nowadays claim. On the contrary, he believes that Christ is the fulfilment of the promises of Adonai (the Lord) to the Jews.

In his second book, he provides wonderful tales of Jewish converts to the Faith, all of them remarkable and holy men and women.

This book is about the role of Judaism in salvation history from Abraham to the Second Coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in glory.

It is filled with learned commentary and scholarship and will reward and enrich the faith of any Catholic reading it.

Our Lord as a child teaching the Jewish doctors in the Temple

The author, Roy Schoeman, was born in a suburb of New York City of "Conservative" Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany.

His Jewish education and formation was received under some of the most prominent Rabbis in contemporary American Jewry, including Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, probably the foremost Conservative Rabbi in the US. Rabbi Arthur Green, later the head of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College was his religion teacher and mentor during high school and early college. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, a prominent Hasidic Rabbi with whom he lived in Israel for several months, was another of his teachers.

His secular education included a BSc from MIT and an MBA magna cum laude from Harvard Business School.

Midway through a career of teaching and consulting (he had been appointed to the faculty of the Harvard Business School, aged 26) he experienced an unexpected and instantaneous conversion to Christianity which led to a dramatic refocus of his activities.

Since then he has pursued theological studies at several seminaries, helped produce and host a Catholic Television talk shows, and edited and written for several Catholic books and reviews.

I warmly recommend this fascinating book. I also recommend his web-site at

http://www.salvationisfromthejews.com/

Professor Roy Schoeman, Jewish convert to Catholicism

and author of Salvation is from the Jews

And - better still! - Roy is a traditional Catholic who prefers the traditional Roman rite of mass.

Why?

Because it connects us more fully with the Catholic and Jewish past and is more faithful to the New and the Old Testaments. And because it is more fully Catholic.

Yet more proof- if any more were still needed - that the traditional rites are better supported by scholarship and learning.

...