As regards Edith's upbringing one must say that she neither appropriated the Jewish tradition fully, nor did she practice her religion as a committed Jewess would do. She did not grow up in a very pious Jewish family as the 1965 edition of Life in a Jewish Family would suggest.  As regards knowledge of her faith, it appears minimal. There was some acquaintance with the synagogue and some idea of Jewish Sabbath home customs. As regards the Torah her knowledge was ambiguous. She was however familiar enough with the Bible to tell Bible Stories stories to a seven year old friend, Helmut. [11]   She also new enough to resent the “talmudic sophistry” of legalistic interpretations. [12]  

 Susanne Bartzdorff, Edith's niece, on the other hand, has pointed out that although she has some knowledge of the Bible, it was indeed quite limited. Edith, says Bartzdorff, did not know the commandment against eating leavened bread throughout the week of Passover, stems directly from the Bible (Nm 28:17). Instead says Bartzdorff, she comments that these laws were “expanded with the stubborn consistency characteristic of the Jewish mind”. Here we need to make a little digression. It must be pointed out that Bartzdorff was using her own translation which she thinks is better than that done by Sister Josephine Koeppel. Says Bartzdorff: “My translation is closer to the original text than that of Sr. Josephine Koeppel, retaining its lightly pejorative meaning.” One could surmise that Koeppel is softening any rough edges with possible canonization of her co-religious in mind.

Let us return to the story of Edith's religious education. Batzdorff sums up her aunt Edith's religious upbringing thus: “Edith Stein had little real knowledge of Judaism and, despite her bent for scholarship and research, she never seems to have shown any interest in making up for this lack in her knowledge.” [13] Edith did not know the psalms and Hebrew prayers, nor the Hebrew language.  Edith lost her Jewish faith and took some time to find a new faith. But there was just enough I would think, to allow her to recall it in later life when she was a Catholic.

As regards religious practice, there is no doubt that Edith came from good religious pedigree on her mother's side of the family. We know that Edith's great grandmother was a “truly pious woman” according to Edith's mother. [14] She went to synagogue and prayed a lot and kindled Sabbath lights at home. And according to Erna, Edith's sister, Edith's mother was also a “truly devout Jewess”. [15] Growing up at home the Sabbath was prepared and celebrated every Friday night as Paul, an older brother, came home precisely for this. [16]   Overall her religious enculturation at home was not very strong or convincing, according to Bartzdorff. Her knowledge of Judaism was minimalist, and in spite of her intellectual talents as a student and scholar, she did not try to make up for this lacuna.  Why this was so, we can only surmise. Edith as well as Erna, her sister and my mother, both had the same upbringing. In Judaism in those days, girls were not typically given more than a superficial Jewish education. “My mother never learned Hebrew and knew little of Jewish history or liturgy.” As regards Edith's rather shaky upbringing in the Jewish tradition, Bartzdorff goes on to conclude: ” She witnessed some holidays observances, but about the ‘'High Holy Days'', Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, she only remembers that she was kept out of school and had the leisure to read a good book” [17]  

She also points out Edith's ignorance of some customs. Batzdorff thinks Edith has misunderstood the customs of the day of Atonement preparation where all Jews ask forgiveness of everyone before going to the synagogue. Edith recalls seeing her mother go from bed to bed to bid each one farewell; but Batzdorff thinks this was the asking (in silence) of forgiveness of all the children. [18]   Bartzdorff refers to a second occurrence of her ignorance: she cites the case involving Edith and her friend Eduard Metis, when Edith  apparently did not know that the law forbidding a Jew to carry anything on the Sabbath only applied to the street, not to the house. [19]

Edith did not go to the synagogue every week; on the contrary only rarely. [20] Edith herself commented on the composition of her class at school pointing out that there were other Jewesses in her class, but “none of us received a strictly orthodox upbringing.” [21]   Batzdorff referring to her late years pointed out that “Most of Edith's relatives and Jewish friends were not religiously observant”. [22]   After attending a funeral of a Jew she critically commented on the prayers: “However, nothing of faith in a personal life after death, nor any belief in a future reunion with those who had died, lay behind those words.”  Edith continued: “Many years later, when for the first time I attended a Catholic funeral, the contrast made a deep impression on me. But how consoling and calming were the words of the liturgy which accompanied the deceased into eternity!” [23]   Her comparison with the Catholic ritual may suggest that she was happy to leave the Jewish ritual behind her. Bartzdorff has another possible explanation:  “perhaps my aunt felt the need to justify in her own mind her decision to leave Judaism and embrace the Catholic faith by pointing out flaws and weaknesses in the beliefs and observances of her ancestral faith.” [24]  

At fifteen she had given up any faith, any belief in God [25] as she herself admits. As she grew she drifted away from Judaism although some of her friends continued to be Jewish. At twenty-four she was a phenomenologist (having read Husserl and Bergson); she was impressed during this period of her life by the faith of Max Scheler. In 1921 she read The book of Her Life, by St. Teresa of Jesus, and converted to Catholicism.  As the time between her conversion and her death was relatively short, (twenty years), there is little evidence to show that she had hung on to her Jewish tradition in some way. Did she carry with her, her experience of the transcendent in the early years of her life? We do not know. From the above evidence that we have reviewed, there appears not to have been sufficient grounding in the Jewish tradition to allow for a dual identity when she converted.

As with religious conversion there is always something of the old religion that remains. Certainly with Edith Stein, there may not have been much to remain, but some there was. One incident that reflects this relates to the years just before she joined the Carmelites. She felt her Jewishness more than ever. So much so that she wrote to Pope Pius XI asking for an encyclical condemning the anti-Semitic policies of the National Socialist Government in Germany. In a letter written in October 1938 to the Mother Superior of an Ursuline convent in Dorsten, she makes these noteworthy comments. “I cannot help thinking again and again of Queen Esther, who was taken from her people for the express purpose of standing before the King for her people. I am a very poor and helpless little Esther, but the King who chose me is infinitely great and merciful.” [26]

So what is the answer to our question posed at the beginning: is Edith Stein a good example of dual religious belonging? We certainly do have a case where there was one dominant religious affiliation (Roman Catholicism)  and a second (Judaism) which is secondary to the first. But can we say Edith drew on it in a continuous manner? She did not know Hebrew, she did not pray Jewish prayers. Occasionally there were allusions to the Torah as in the case of Esther cited above. But there does not appear to have been any continuous drawing on Judaism. Some overlap of teachings which arises from the obvious commonalities of Judaism and Christianity and their sacred writings, is clearly to be expected. I would think one could say that, based on the writings mentioned above, there was not continuous drawing on this second religion, so we do not have a good example of dual religious belonging in the case of Edith Stein.