A powerful and
moving story of the remarkable Jewish woman who converted to
Catholicism, became a nun, achieved remarkable success in the
male-dominated world of German philosophy, and was sent to a Nazi
death camp when she refused to deny her Jewish heritage.
Edmund Husserl, the
founder of phenomenology, declared Edith Stein the best doctoral
student he ever had (even abler than Heidegger, who was also his
pupil at the time). A prayerful woman of deep spirituality and
authentic mystical experience, she remained an influential, active
philosopher all her life. Though born and raised in a very religious
Jewish family in Germany, she not only converted to Catholicism, but
became a Carmelite nun and followed in the footsteps of Teresa of
Avila and John of the Cross.
Edith Stein
vigorously opposed Nazism from the outset and urged Pope Pius XI to
put the church on record against Hitler. A model Catholic, a
brilliant intellectual, yet a profoundly humble soul, she affirmed
her solidarity with her suffering Jewish people no matter the cost.
Edith Stein was arrested by the Nazis at a Carmelite convent at Echt
in Holland and sent to her death at Auschwitz.
Waltraud Herbstrith
has fashioned a warm, memorable portrait of this woman who, as Jesuit
philosopher Jan Nota points out in the introduction, "discovered
in Christ the meaning of human existence and suffering ... Edith
Stein was one of those Christians who lived out of a hope
transcending optimism and pessimism." Hers is a voice that
speaks powerfully to all of us today, and a life that stands as
testimony to the profoundest values of human existence, the
significance of the individual, and the truths of faith that can
reconcile Christian and Jew, philosophy and religion, oppressor and
oppressed to heal a troubled world.
Measures 5.25" by 8".
Paperback, 207 pp.