"Seeing with the Eyes": the Role of Language in the Dispute about the Carmel in Auschwitz

Abstract

If there is any value in the study of mysticism and its use of imaginative language, it is to facilitate the merging of worlds and not their collision. The international controversy surrounding the Carmelite monastery at Auschwitz reverberated at political and interfaith levels and could be analyzed from several points of view - theological, historical, anthropological, symbolic, and nationalistic.
While these angles will be included, when relevant, this work will use language as the primary prism with wich to understand this bitter debate. Further, I will speculate about the language of a potential dialogue between the Carmelite tradition and the Hasidic Jews. Both groups are representative of a mystical stream within their faiths and both honor a place that goes beyond words and rational, logical discourse.