by: Jonathan A. Greenblatt | February 09, 2017 Your Holiness,
This week, in synagogues all over the world, Jews will read Shirat Ha-yam, the “Song of the Sea” from the book of Exodus that Miriam, Moses and the Israelites sang after they miraculously passed through the Sea of Reeds on dry land.
As a newly free people, they expressed their thanks to God for their redemption, saying:
Who is like you, o eternal, among the…
60 Results
Back
December 21, 2016 Editor’s Note:A Muslim academic and a Jewish interfaith rabbi recently sat down together for a discussion about the spate of hate crimes that have taken place in the aftermath of the 2016 election campaign and what can happen with Jews and Muslims work together to combat hate speech.
The following conversation between Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, Director of the Holocaust and Genocide Institute at Manhattan College, and Rabbi David Sandmel, Director of Interreligious…
GRADE LEVEL: Elementary School, Middle School, High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Language, Speaking and Listening Commemorating National Hispanic Heritage Month
In commemoration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we present this resource to help teachers engage students in thinking broadly and critically about the Hispanic American experience in all of its complexity. In highlighting the significant events as well as people that have made a substantial contribution…
Expresses Disappointment for Church’s Endorsement of Report Calling for Alternatives to Two State Solution New York, NY, June 27, 2016 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed disappointment at a number of problematic Israel-focused motions endorsed last week by the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly, including a report calling on the church to explore alternatives to the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an overture advocating the church study…
by: Rabbi David Sandmel | June 05, 2016 The Times of Israel The General Conference of United Methodist Church recently concluded its quadrennial gathering, which this year was held in Portland, Oregon. I and many others in the Jewish community, not to mention many Christians as well, were pleased with the outcome of a number of votes on resolutions concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Inter alia, the Church rejected resolutions calling for divestment or for investment screens…
by: Jonathan A. Greenblatt | October 27, 2015 PBS - Religion & Ethics Newsweekly The promulgation, on October 28, 1965, of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Church’s Relations with Non-Christian Religions, may be the most important moment is post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian relations and interfaith relations writ large.
In its fourth chapter, Nostra Aetate effectively overturned centuries of what the noted French Jewish historian…
by: Lorraine Array March 23, 2015
Recent incidents around the world remind us of the power of hate and vitriol to permeate our religious, cultural and national borders. ISIS continues to expand its alliances and fear-mongering tactics. The world is in many ways paralyzed to see a way forward, and the need for solutions capable of building bridges of understanding and respect has never been greater.
In this spirit, in early 2013, the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) Connecticut Office…
Engage students in activities that get them to think broadly and critically about the Black experience in all of its complexity.
GRADE LEVEL: Elementary School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Speaking and Listening The First Girl to Pitch a Shutout in the Little League World Series
In 2014 Mo’Ne Davis, a 13-year-old girl, made news headlines as the first girl to ever pitch a shutout in the Little League World series. At that time she was considered the “most talked about baseball player on earth right now” according to many observers in the sports world. Mo’Ne (pronounced Moh-nay…
GRADE LEVEL: Elementary School, Middle School COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Writing, Speaking & Listening SEL STANDARDS*: Self Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, Responsible Decision-Making Bullying is a major problem in our schools. When it targets aspects of a person’s identity, it is called identity-based bullying, and may include bias about appearance, race, culture, gender and gender expression, language, religion, socioeconomic status,…
GRADE LEVEL: Elementary School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Language Using Poetry to Teach about Identity
Reading and writing poetry can provide an opening for young people to explore the various aspects of their identity, including their name, race and ethnicity, physical characteristics and more.
April is National Poetry Month, a good opportunity to explore poetry with your students. Because poetry does not require strict sentence structure or the usual grammar rules…
by: Abraham H. Foxman | February 26, 2014 The Huffington Post Ten years ago, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" film was released amid a swirl of controversy and after a relentless public relations campaign playing up the director's celebrity status and his adamant refusal to change the film amid concerns of insensitivity and anti-Semitism. Gibson's "Passion" was a passion of hate. His film bought into all of the troubling representations of the Passion that fortified church-based…
July 12, 2013 The Anti-Defamation League commends the International Council of Christian and Jews (ICCJ) for its comprehensive statement about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which calls on religious institutions and groups to refrain from issuing one-sided declarations in attempting to promote a resolution to the dispute. The statement by ICCJ, one of the world’s oldest and most respected international Christian-Jewish organizations, urges religious bodies and leaders to recommit…
by: By Abraham H. Foxman | April 18, 2013 The Huffington Post One of the first things Argentinian native Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio did after being elected pope on March 13 was to send a message of friendship to Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni -- and, by extension, the Jewish people.
"I sincerely hope to be able to contribute to the progress that relations between Jews and Catholics have enjoyed since the Second Vatican Council," wrote Cardinal Bergoglio, who took the name Pope Francis…
January 02, 2013 Q. What is the basis for ADL's concerns about Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"?A. We first learned about Mr. Gibson's plans to make a film based on the final hours of Jesus' life in a New York Times Magazine article that appeared in February 2003. An early version of the script was shared with us. In August 2003, an ADL representative saw a rough cut in Houston. On January 21, we saw a version of the film at a screening in Orlando, Florida. We had hoped to see the film…
by: Abraham H. Foxman | July 11, 2007 Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) – With anti-Semitism resurgent in the world, one of the encouraging elements for the Jewish people, particularly if one is to compare things today to the 1930s and 1940s, is the remarkable change in the Catholic Church's attitudes toward Jews. In the past four decades, a conceptual revolution has taken place in the church's relationship with the Jewish people. The first step came with Vatican II and its…
August 01, 2006 The following is the text of Mel Gibson's apology to the Jewish Community for his anti-Semitic statements. There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of Anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge. I am a public person, and when I say something, either…
In 1965, the Second Vatican Council made historic changes to church policies and theology. Among them was Nostra Aetate, Latin for "In Our Time," a document that revolutionized the Catholic Church's approach to Jews and Judaism after nearly 2000 years of pain and sorrow.
Section four of Nostra Aetate repudiates the centuries-old "deicide" charge against all Jews, stresses the religious bond shared by Jews and Catholics, reaffirms the eternal covenant between God and the People of…
Freedom of religion is one of our nation's most cherished liberties. It is at the very foundation of America. Our nation's Constitution protects religious freedom for all, prohibits religious tests for public office, and mandates separation of church and state. These are essential American ideals and values, which candidates for public office should respect.
Candidates for public office are, of course, free to worship as they choose. And they should feel comfortable explaining their…
The central narrative of Christian theology is the passion, i.e. the trials and crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. There are four different accounts of the passion in the gospels of Christian Scriptures, in which Jews play different roles. All these accounts culminate in the death and resurrection of Jesus as revealing God's saving power available to humanity. Good Friday and Easter celebrate respectively the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as the high points of Christian creed and…