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Rebecca Alpert Jim Biechler Marcus Braybrooke Ellen T. Charry Leobard D'Souza David Efroymson Gabriele Feyler Stefan Feyler Eugene Fisher Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer Krystina Gorniak-Kocikowska Yitz Greenberg Wan-Li Ho Sanaullah Kirmani Reinhard Kirste Hans Küng Lihua Liu Jack Malinowski Patricia Martinez Sergio Mazza Alan Mittleman Ronald Modras Paul Mojzes Malcolm Nazareth Angelika Quade Ida Raming Virginia Kaib Ratigan John Sahadat Simone Schaupp Ingrid Shafer Shu-hsien Liu Thomas Thompson Catherine Berry Stidsen
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Ellen T. Charry Tribute to Arlene and Len Swidler In a very direct way I owe my survival to Len Swidler. Having recently lost my husband at a young age, my life is now my professional life, and that I owe to Len's careful and deliberate opening of doors for me over a period of ten years. I think this is what it means to be a guardian angel. Len and I met sometime in the mid 1970s at the Bat Mitzvah of the daughter of one of his students. I had already become involved in local Jewish-Christian dialogue discussions, and so we had a common interest. He later ushered me into a wonderful Muslim, Christian, Jewish dialogue at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, where, over a period of about four years, I learned a tremendous amount. He enticed me into the religion department at Temple, although at the time I was not pursuing the doctorate. He set me to work as the children's book editor at JES, a strategic move apparently, since I am now myself editor of a theological journal. My first published article was also in JES, in 1981. With encouragement from my teachers, I realized that I could not leave school after the master's degree and began studying German. Len's insistence on learning scholarly languages carried the department on this important point. He was amazingly gracious with his time. I recall being in his study and working on a German translation. I could not remember the meaning of erinnern, and he tried to coach me, saying, "You can't remember?" I couldn't! As I was completing the doctorate, it was a bad season for academic job-seekers. Len approached me and asked if I would be interested in a job in New York with the National Conference of Christians and Jews. It worked out wonderfully for me and for my family, and from there I was able to return to the academic world where I now flourish. Although I met Arlene through Len, she and I shared our own work together. In the halcyon days of feminism, she was putting together a book of feminist liturgies, and my husband and I contributed one that we had created at the birth of our daughter. I even recall talking about recipes with her one evening at their home, in the burgeoning days of vegetarian cookbooks. It is an honor to count Len and Arlene among my teachers. Ellen T. Charry
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