The CCJR is an association of centres and institutes in the United States and Canada devoted to enhancing mutual understanding between Jews and Christians. Its annual meeting is an occasion for in-person exchange and mutual growth.
Since 2008, the CCJR Shevet Achim Award has gone to persons who have made outstanding contributions in the Jewish-Christian arena. As scholar, teacher and practitioner, Sr Celia has demonstrated her passion for interfaith understanding, from her youth to the present day.
Professor Deutsch is currently Research Scholar in the Religion Department at Barnard College/Columbia University. With a quarter century of university teaching behind her, she continues to be involved in educational initiatives at local, national and international level.
She serves on the Theology Committee of the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ), as well as on the Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Commission of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York. In her parish in Brooklyn, she is co-ordinator of interfaith relations, and she co-coordinates the Interfaith Coalition of Brooklyn, a group of five communities – Jewish, Christian and Muslim.
A permanent presence in Christian-Jewish dialogue, Sr Celia brings a unique set of personal qualities to everything she does, inspiring those around her, as interreligious activists Rabbi David Sandmel and Sr Lucy Thorson NDS conveyed in the laudations they gave during the award ceremony. Celia’s own words of thanks also gave insights into the journey in dialogue that shaped who she is today.
It is a lifelong journey in the true sense of the word, that began consciously when, as a six-year-old with a Catholic mother living in a Christian environment, she discovered that her father was Jewish.
Throughout her schooling in the post-Shoah era, Celia struggled to come to terms with the contradictions she observed. Fortunately, her parents modelled a positive form of interfaith dialogue at family level in their everyday life, and encouraged her to feed her curiosity by reading – which she did voraciously – to understand her heritage and form her identity.
Drawn to religious life from a young age, Celia’s gravitation towards the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Sion was a reflection of her passion for interfaith values and relationships, and her desire to deepen her understanding of dialogue in the presence of difference and with reference to the Bible, and to share her discoveries with others. Since joining Notre Dame de Sion, Celia’s story has been a succession of steps into the unknown.
When Nostra Aetate called Catholics to make ground-breaking changes in the way they understood themselves, the Church, and their relationships with people of other faiths, she lived the sense of newness and possibility, alongside one of uncertainty about how to proceed.
Time working at the Sion SIDIC Jewish-Christian documentation centre in Rome opened Sr Celia to a global view and a heightened awareness of the issues in Jewish-Christian relations in different parts of the world. There she seized the opportunity to engage with a wide range of people in an environment that embraced diversity.
Celia’s innate curiosity accompanied her on her academic path. Studies in Canada and the USA provided ground for scholarly exploration.
Celia was a member of the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations and of the US Bishops Advisory Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations.
Today her research at Barnard College/Columbia University focuses on early Jewish and Christian social and religious/intellectual history as well as on Jewish-Christian relations.
Sr Lucy recalled colleagues and friends sharing how Celia matched her serious, disciplined approach to scholarship with one of humility and lightness.
A traditional Jewish scribe in Brooklyn shows a Torah scroll he is working on to Celia during her student years.
During Sr Celia’s teaching career in the Barnard College/Columbia University Religion Department from 1987 to 2012, Sr Lucy remembered often hearing her speak with sincere fondness of the college students she taught, who in turn describe her as caring, welcoming and inclusive. “She has a special gift,” said Lucy, “of making others feel welcome and of building meaningful relationships.”
Sr Lucy also described the generosity with which Celia so readily shares her experience and knowledge with others, in particular with young people – the next generation – to empower them in interfaith dialogue.
Between 2017 and 2023 Celia made a number of visits to Zimbabwe, where she organised and conducted short courses for Holy Trinity College in Harare. During the pandemic, she joined Sr. Kasia Kowalska and Rabbi David Sandmel, in teaching an online course for HTC.
Rabbi Sandmel, who team-taught with Sr Celia on two Zimbabwe courses in person, as well as the online course, described his collaboration with Celia as one of the highlights of his career. He talked about Celia’s caring and committed nature and the spark of excitement and enthusiasm she brings to what she does. He was struck by Sr Celia’s dedication to both scholarship and pedagogy, and the way she cared for the subject matter and the students equally.
The Zimbabwe experience was an eye-opening revelation for Celia, as she witnessed a form of Jewish life she’d never known before, that of the Lemba people, an indigenous Jewish community present in much of southern Africa. Contact with the Harare Lemba Congregation led her to question her own definition of Jewish-Christian relations and the broader potential they might have.
The Interfaith Coalition of Brooklyn Sr Celia co-coordinates in New York is further testimony to her openness to new challenges. The coalition brings together Jews, Christians and Muslims, with different first languages, from across the social scale.
“Personally, I have yet to come across someone more persevering and committed than Celia is in the diverse local interfaith communities she serves in Brooklyn,” commented Sr Lucy.
In his laudation, Rabbi Sandmel addressed Sr Celia directly, affirming that she embodies the Hebrew verse from which the name of the Shevet Achim Award is derived: “Hineh mah tov umah naim shevet achim gam yachad”; known to Christians as Psalm 133:1: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is when siblings dwell together as one.”
“You see Jews and Christians as siblings,” he said, “Indeed, you see all people as siblings.”
Although she had made the premise at the outset that world issues would not be central to her words of thanks on the evening of the award ceremony, Sr Celia did touch briefly on times of pain, loss and trauma she has lived on her interfaith journey, not least over the past year. She felt compelled to share her profound sense of question about where to go. “Where is the road leading,” she asked, “in this new world, this sorrow-filled, polarized, violent world in which war and displacement and climate catastrophe overwhelm all of us?”
Instead of proffering answer, Celia extended an invitation to all those present to take yet another bold step into the unknown: “The relationships we so cherish must be fostered, strengthened and lead us to new horizons,” she said, “perhaps beyond our present vision.”