IJCR Archives

In his new book Jewish Muslims, speaker David M. Freidenreich uncovers the hidden history of Christian Islamophobia and its surprising connections to long-standing hatred of Jews. He makes the compelling case that, then and now, hate-mongers target "them" in an effort to define "us." Analyzing anti-Muslim sentiment in texts and images produced across Europe and the Middle East over a thousand years, he shows how Christians intentionally distorted reality by alleging that Muslims were just like Jews. The disdain premodern polemicists expressed for Islam and Judaism was never really about these religions, but rather about their own visions of Christianity—a dynamic that similarly animates portrayals of Muslims and Jews today.

David M. Freidenreich is the Pulver Family Professor of Jewish Studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. 

VIDEO RECORDING OF EVENT 

The Catholic Church is unique among the Christian traditions in that its organizational and spiritual center, the Holy See, is also an internationally recognized state, located in Vatican City. It thus has an ambassadorial corps and formal legal relations with nations, including those in the Middle East. Join us as a church official who has lived and worked on the border of Jerusalem (Israel) and Bethlehem (West Bank) surveys the present situation in the Middle East from the viewpoint of the Catholic Church, whose members are “called to be artisans of peace, reconciliation and development, to promote dialogue” (Pope Francis, Dec. 14, 2014).

Rev. Russ McDougall, C.S.C. is the Executive Director of the Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Previously, he has served as Campus Minister and lecturer in theology at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Rector of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, and Formation Director, Academic Dean and lecturer in Old Testament at the Queen of Apostles Philosophy Centre in Jinja, Uganda. 

VIDEO RECORDING OF EVENT

Co-sponsored with the SJU Faith-Justice Studies Program

The struggle over Israel/Palestine is not only another geopolitical competition among competing nationalisms. It also concerns sacred territory that involves local Jews, Muslims, and Christians as well as worldwide faith communities, each with their own interests and stake in what transpires. This presentation argues that secular and political issues are often entangled with religious claims. Although some argue that history, political rights, and justice have replaced religious claims, they actually coexist and often complement the theological. 

S. Ilan Troen is Lopin Professor of Modern History, emeritus at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and Stoll Family Professor in Israel Studies, emeritus at Brandeis University, USA. His new book, Israel/Palestine in World Religions: Whose Promised Land? has been praised for its sensitivity to the many religious and political forces that shape the conflict.  

Video Recording of Event

Speaking at the annual Catholic-Jewish Colloquium in Cleveland, sponsored by the ADL Cleveland and the Diocese of Cleveland on April 9, 2024, Institute Co-Director Philip Cunningham examines selected texts from both Jewish and Catholic writers to discern how Catholic-Jewish relations are being affected by the violence in the Middle East since October 7, 2023. 

Video Recording of Event

The Torah contains three great love commandments: love of God, love of neighbor, and love of the stranger/sojourner.   Love of the stranger/sojourner, repeated for emphasis in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy, represents one of the Torah's greatest moral revolutions.  Rabbi Shai Held probes the meaning of the commandment, asking why it was so radical in its (and our) time, and exploring the relationship between memory of past sufferings and commitment to present-day love. Rabbi Dr. Shai Held is President and Dean of the Hadar Institute, which he co-founded in 2006. He is the author of the new book, Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life. 

Video Recording of Event 

In 1545, Michelangelo completed one of the most famous works of European art: a massive marble sculpture of Moses holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Yet the muscular figure also has the strange feature of horns protruding from Moses' head. Their history is complex, entangled with the difficulties of translating ancient languages, the layers of Jewish and Christian interpretations of a challenging biblical passage, the history of artistic representations, and the long and fraught history of anti-Judaism. Join us as an expert on this famous artwork reveals some of the twisting and knotty history of the horns to establish the religious and artistic contexts that informed Michelangelo’s decision to place horns on the greatest of Jewish prophets and that continue to inform contemporary responses to the work.

Asa Simon Mittman is Professor of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico, where he teaches Ancient and Medieval Art, as well as thematic courses on monsters and film. He is author of Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (2006), and co-author with Susan Kim of Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript (2013, awarded a Millard Meiss Publication Grant from the College Art Association and an ISAS Best Book Prize),

Video Recording of Event  

In her new book with this title, Magda Teter describes how Christian theology of late antiquity cast Jews as “children born to slavery,” and how the supposed theological inferiority of Jews became inscribed into law, creating tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority. With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World. Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution pervading European Christendom. 

Magda Teter is professor of history and holds the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of several books, including the National Jewish Book Award winning, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth; Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation; and Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland. 

Video Recording of Event 

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2023, 5:00-6:30 P.M. 

The Bible challenges the Jewish people to be “a blessing for all the families of the earth.” Yet in the biblical and Talmudic eras most gentiles were assumed to be idolators. In the Middle Ages, most rabbis considered their Christian neighbors idolators, and Christian enmity sharpened the otherness Jews felt toward their Christian neighbors. Muslims were monotheists, but Jewish-Muslim relations were sometimes positive and at other times difficult. In the modern era, though, Jews found themselves in a new relationship with their gentile neighbors, most importantly Christians after the Second Vatican Council. How should Jews relate toward gentiles today, and what are the bounds of Jewish tolerance about gentiles and their religions, and specifically Christians and Christianity? Join us as we welcome back to SJU, Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn to discuss his new book, Israel and the Nations: The Bible, The Rabbis, and Jewish-Gentile Relations.

Eugene Korn holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and is an ordained Orthodox rabbi. He has taught general and Jewish philosophy at Columbia, Yeshiva, and Seton Hall Universities. His books include To Be a Holy People: Jewish Tradition and Ethical Values; Jewish Theology and World Religions; Christianity in the Eyes of Judaism; Plowshares into Swords? Religion and Violence; and Covenant and Hope. His works have been translated into Hebrew, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Video Recording of Event 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2023, 5:00-6:30 PM

Catholic teaching since 1965 has been groundbreaking in its condemnation of antisemitism and racism, and also in its affirmation of Jewish-Christian dialogue and the Jewish roots of Christian faith. Regrettably, it often does not name white supremacy as a driving force behind the interconnected evils of antisemitism and anti-Blackness that shape the modern West. However, Black Christian thought helpfully confronts white supremacism directly. Yet incorporating the Black Christian tradition into the work of Christian-Jewish reconciliation poses challenges as well as opportunities, revealing the need for further dialogue, reflection, and collective struggle. 

Andrew Prevot holds the Joseph and Winifred Amaturo Chair in Catholic Studies at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Mysticism of Ordinary Life: Theology, Philosophy, and Feminism (2023); Theology and Race: Black and Womanist Traditions in the United States (2018); and Thinking Prayer: Theology and Spirituality amid the Crises of Modernity (2015), along with numerous essays on spiritual, philosophical, and political theology.   

Video Recording of Event

Monday, September 11, 2023

Ever since the Second Vatican Council concluded in 1965, there has been conflict in the Catholic community over its proper interpretation. Should its new approaches to many topics, including Catholic relations with Jews, be understood in terms of discontinuity, continuity, or reform with regard to pre-Vatican II teachings? While Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis have each in their own way sought to build friendship between Catholics and Jews, their efforts are inevitably entangled with the internal church debates over the Council. Join us as a leading authority on the history and administrative inner workings of the Catholic Church explores these dynamics. 

Massimo Faggioli is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University.  He received his PhD in Religious History from the University of Turin in 2002 and later continued his studies on the Second Vatican Council at the renowned institute of “Giovanni XXIII" for Religious Studies in Bologna, Italy. The author of many books and publications, a recent article discusses, "The Crisis in the Reception of Vatican II in the Catholic Church and the Return of Antisemitism." 

Video Recording of Event

Thursday, April 27, 2023

The rise of the internet and social media has enabled Jewish teachings to travel far beyond the boundaries of established Jewish communities. Non-Jews from particular Christian Evangelical churches have converged with certain Orthodox rabbinic authorities through online platforms, where they are developing a messianic Zionist vision and slowly adopting an interpretation of scripture and Jewish law from the Israeli religious-right wing. This new form of Jewish internet proselytizing offers a concrete solution to those non-Jews who feel lost in the boundary zone between Christianity and Judaism. Drawing on her forthcoming book, Prof. Feldman will describe how such Christians are being invited to become Bnei Noah, The Children of Noah, a new Judaic faith that is a harbinger of messianic times, and to support the construction of a new, third Temple in Jerusalem and a renewal of animal sacrifices there. 

Rachel Z. Feldman is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College and the author of the forthcoming Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age: Jews, Noahides, and the Third Temple Imaginary.

Video Recording of Event

Institute Director Philip A. Cunningham offered reflections on the Gospel of John at Eastern University in St. David, PA on. April 12, 2023. He discusses the dangers of inadvertently promoting hostility to Jews today without providing guidance about this Gospel's frequent negative use of the collective phrase "the Jews." He also points to the conversation between Jesus and Peter in John 13 as giving great inspiration about Christian service as based on friendship. Drawing these two themes together, he concludes with thoughts about Jews and Christians as covenantal friends, assisting each other in living out their respective covenantal duties to God. 

Video Recording of Event 

Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 7 p.m. 

The Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations of Saint Joseph's University was the principal sponsor of a new, unprecedented opinion poll of 1,241 American Catholics—a sample that reflected the demographics of the American Catholic population—to assess their feelings about their Jewish neighbors, their understanding of Catholic relations with Jews, and their opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This program for the first time made some of its findings public on such topics as responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, preferences between Israeli and Palestinian claims, and familiarity with official Catholic teaching. The study can be compared in part to earlier similar surveys of Evangelical Christians conducted by the two scholars who were our guests for the evening, Dr. Kirill Bumin and Dr. Motti Inbari, who joined the Institute's directors, Dr. Philip Cunningham and Dr. Adam Gregerman in presenting its results.

Video Recording of Event

Thursday, February 16, 2023 at 7 p.m.  

Pope Francis often remarks that the time we live in “is not simply an epoch of changes, but an epochal change.” It is an age in which “our ways of living, of relating to one another, of communicating and thinking, of how different generations relate to one another and how we understand, and experience faith and science” are rapidly transforming. The greater our knowledge, the more we become aware of our ignorance and uncertainty, all while facing enormous global challenges, such as pandemics, climate change, and nuclear catastrophe. Many scientists are interested in spirituality and mysticism, while many religious people are fascinated by scientific questions. The Kabbalah teachings of “tzimtzum,” “Ein Sof,” and “yechidah,” and the idea of the Cosmic Christ help both Jews and Christians to develop new approaches to the hidden and unattainable than is possible through “conventional” science or religion. In short, both are palpably encountering Mystery and becoming aware of their limits. As Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, “The awareness of the unknown is earlier than the awareness of the known.”

Dr. Paolo Gamberini, S.J., who hails from the Pontifical Theological Faculty in Naples (Italy), holds the Saint Joseph's University Donald I. MacLean, S.J. Chair for 2022-2023.  

Video Recording of Event

Dr. Philip A. Cunningham, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, Rev. Dr. Joseph Sievers.

Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, February 6, 2023 

In Christian writings and homilies through the centuries, “Pharisee” has served as a label for one who is hypocritical, self-righteous, legalistic, or money-loving. Unfortunately, the image has fed—and continues to foment—negative perceptions of Jews in general and other persons or groups the speaker or writer despised. But who were the Pharisees, really?

This program explored what we know—and don’t know—about these teachers of the past who are also in some ways the predecessors of all forms of modern Judaism. The program started with an initial presentation by the co-editors and contributors to The Pharisees, a multidisciplinary volume that addresses the question historically, theologically, and pastorally. This was followed by interactive roundtable discussions during which the panelists joined participants in exploring some practical suggestions for incorporating a nuanced understanding of the Pharisees in preaching, teaching, and catechesis.

This event was co-sponsored by Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Office of Mission & Ministry, Georgetown Law, and Georgetown Law Campus Ministry.

Video Recording of Event

Dr. Adam Gregerman and Dr. Lev Topol 

International Council of Christians and Jews webinar, February 5, 2023

Hostility toward Jews is a phenomenon notable for its longevity and durability. While the term “antisemitism” was only coined in the late 19th century, Jews were hated, persecuted, and discriminated against for many centuries before. A wide variety of reasons were given to justify this animus (e.g., theological, political, racial), often reflecting dramatically different contexts and worldviews. This indicates some of the discontinuities between expressions of hostility toward Jews in diverse settings. However, there are stunning continuities as well, even in these very different settings. This reveals some of the common features of antisemitism and the surprisingly persistent influence of certain ideas. Join us for a discussion of the complexity of claims of both continuity and discontinuity in hostility toward Jews and how this is relevant in the present, a time when such hostility is increasing.

Video Recording of the Event 

AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast 

Thursday, January 25, 2023

A disturbing trend over the past couple of years has been the rise of antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks antisemitic incidents, says 2021 was the worst year in decades and that 2022 will look similar once the numbers are tabulated. We’re in a five-year upswing overall.

Let’s not give any more oxygen to acts of hate. Instead, we are thrilled to be sharing this conversation host Mike Jordan Laskey recently had with Dr. Philip Cunningham and Dr. Adam Gregerman, two scholars who have devoted their careers to building bridges between Jews and Catholics. Phil and Adam lead the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. The institute was founded in 1967 in response to the Second Vatican Council.

Phil is Catholic and Adam is Jewish, and their shared leadership models the type of engagement the institute is all about. You’ll see this sort of collaboration on display throughout the episode. Mike asked them for a brief historical overview of the relationship between Catholics and Jews, and why the promulgation of the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate was such an important turning point. Adam and Phil also talked about the work they’re doing today, and how we can build relationships across religious divides without erasing each faith’s uniqueness.

PODCAST

Oxford Interfaith Forum webinar

January 23, 2023

Philip A. Cunningham

After the horrifying events of the Shoah, the Catholic and many other Christian communities felt morally compelled to ask whether centuries of Christian religious hostility to Jews and their marginalization in medieval Christendom helped make possible their genocide under the Third Reich. This program will consider how difficult it was for theologians to grapple with the "blood curse" tradition that had permeated Christian thought for over a millennium. However, once they began to reject that notion, unprecedented theological possibilities for a positive relationship between Christians and Jews became apparent. Using Vatican texts in particular, the presentation will trace the incremental theological developments and key benchmarks in a process that led to the formulation that Christians and Jews are co-covenanting companions.   

Video Recording of Event

Monday, November 14, 2022 at 7 p.m.  

The International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC, www.ijcic.net) represents Jews around the world through dialogues with the Vatican, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the World Council of Churches, the World Evangelical Alliance, and has also begun to engage with international Muslim organizations. This consortium of eleven Jewish organizations was founded in 1970, in response to the dramatic, positive transformation of Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism, notably the Roman Catholic Church’s Nostra Aetate. Here its Chair discusses IJCIC's mission and current and planned future interactions with officials of these various religious traditions, with special attention to Jewish-Catholic relations. He will consider topics that are difficult, as well as those on which there is much agreement.

Rabbi Dr. David Fox Sandmel is Chair of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations and Senior Advisor on Interreligious Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League.

Video Recording of Event

Philip A. Cunningham 

Boston College, School of Theology and Ministry

October 27, 2022

Since the Second Vatican in the 1960s, the Catholic Church has actively pursued dialogue and good relations with the people of all the world's religions. Relations with the Jewish people, however, are understood to be especially unique and even crucial. And yet, after nearly sixty years, this relationship is still only in its infancy and must be vigorously pursued, as this presentation will explore.

Video Recording of Event 

Wednesday, October 19. 2022 at 7:00 p.m.

Few topics in Catholic-Jewish relations are as controversial as Pope Pius XII’s decision to avoid direct public criticism of Hitler or his regime, and to remain publicly silent in the face of the Shoah (Holocaust). When he died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving many questions about what he knew and did during World War II. In 2020, Pope Francis directed that those archives be opened. Based on these newly accessible archives, and official documents from Italy, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, historian David Kertzer has just published a landmark study, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler. It reveals that a German prince was a secret go-between the pope and Hitler and that Pius XII’s fear of Communism, desire to protect Catholic interests, and early expectation that the Axis nations would be victorious all impelled him not to denounce Hitler and Mussolini.

At this unique program, David Kertzer introduced The Pope at War, which was followed by an interactive exploration of it with Institute directors Philip Cunningham and Adam Gregerman. 

Video Recording of Event

Holy Week presents a unique opportunity for Catholics and Christians to reexamine their ongoing relationship with the Jewish community.

Professor Philip Cunningham and Professor Adam Gregerman of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia share with producer Gina Christian how the post-Vatican II dialogue between the two faiths offers reasons for hope, and opportunities for more work to be done.

Listen to the Podcast

Getting Away From Anti-Jewish Ideas About the Death of Jesus

Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 7 p.m.

Christians have always thought about the religious meaning of the death of Jesus. In this webinar, Dr. Jesper Svartvik will show that this has often been based on mistaken views of the role of Temple sacrifices in biblical Judaism, which led to an anti-Jewish theology. Drawing on his new book, Reconciliation and Transformation: Reconsidering Christian Theologies of the Cross, he will offer a biblically-grounded theology of the cross, according to which God is making all things new.

Speaker: Rev. Dr. Jesper Svartvik holds the Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations at the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. He previously served as the Krister Stendahl Chair of Theology of Religions, which included teaching and research both in Jerusalem and Lund, Sweden.

Video Recording of Event

Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front, 1939-1945

Monday, February 7, 2022 at 7 p.m.

The forgotten history of American terrorists who, in the name of God, conspired to overthrow the government and formed an alliance with Hitler.

On July 14, 1939, two hundred Philadelphia police and a crowd of six thousand overflowed Philadelphia’s Metropolitan Opera House to hear famed “radio priest” Father Charles E. Coughlin commission a Mr. John F. Cassidy to lead his new Christian Front organization. Six months later, FBI agents burst into Cassidy’s home, arrested him, and seized military-grade rifles, ammunition, and homemade bombs. J. Edgar Hoover’s charges were incendiary: the group, he alleged, was planning to incite a revolution and install a “temporary dictatorship” in order to stamp out Jewish and communist influence in the United States.

In the recently published book, Nazis of Copley Square, Jesuit scholar Dr. Charles Gallagher provides a crucial missing chapter in the history of the American far right. The men of the Christian Front imagined themselves as crusaders fighting for the spiritual purification of the nation, under assault from godless communism. The Front’s antisemitism was inspired by Sunday sermons and by lay leaders openly espousing fascist and Nazi beliefs.

Gallagher chronicles the evolution of the front, the transatlantic cloak-and-dagger intelligence operations that subverted it, and the mainstream political and religious leaders who shielded the front’s activities from scrutiny. Nazis of Copley Square offers a grim tale of faith perverted to violent ends, and its lessons provide a warning for those who hope to stop the spread of far-right violence today.

Speaker: Dr. Charles R. Gallagher, S.J. is Associate Professor of History at Boston College. The author of numerous books and articles, he specializes in American Catholic history; Vatican diplomacy; U.S. diplomatic history; 19th- & 20th-century American social history; American religious history; and history of the Shoah (Holocaust).

Video Recording of Event

Can the Bible be approached both as sacred scripture and as a historical and literary text?

Monday, November 8, 2021 at 7 p.m.

Ten years ago, Marc Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, and the late Daniel J. Harrington, SJ—respectively a Jew, a Protestant, and a Catholic—published an important book that provides the title of this program. Do critical biblical studies—the scholarly process of establishing the original contextual meaning of biblical texts with the tools of literary and historical analysis—undermine religions and their interpretations of the Bible, or do they enhance them? This question engages scholars and clergy alike, and often disturbs students and others exposed to biblical criticism for the first time, either in university courses or through their own reading. The three authors concluded that an awareness of new archeological evidence, cultural context, literary form, and other tools of historical criticism can provide the necessary preparation for a sound religious reading. And they argue that the challenges such study raises for religious belief should be brought into conversation with religious traditions rather than dismissed. This program will continue the conversation on these topics with two of the book’s original authors, who will be joined by a prominent Catholic biblical scholar.

Marc Zvi Brettler is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Duke University. He is co-editor of  The Jewish Annotated New Testament, co-author of The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently, and author of How to Read the Jewish Bible and The Creation of History in Ancient Israel and Reading the Book of Judges.

Peter Enns is the Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University. He is the author of The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable To Read It, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins, and Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament.

Mark S. Smith is the Helena Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary. His most recent books are Where the Gods Are: Spatial Dimensions of Anthropomorphism in the Bible World, Poetic Heroes: The Literary Commemoration of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World, and God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World.

Video Recording of Event

Thursday, October 21, 2021 at 7 p.m.

In the early modern period, Jews and Christians began to appreciate the Bible not just as a religious text, but as a historical text that could contain internal contradictions, and which was shaped by the rituals, beliefs, and practices of ancient societies.  This recognition was threatening to traditional understandings in many ways and in both communities. This presentation explores how three early modern Jews (Saul Levi Morteira, Menasseh ben Israel, and Benedict Spinoza) delved into the history of biblical times, and how their work helped to set the stage for today’s collaborative and non-polemical biblical research by Christians and Jews together.

Dr. Benjamin Fisher is Associate Professor and Director of Jewish Studies at Towson University in Baltimore. His research focuses on the history of the ways in which Jews in diverse settings have studied and taught the Bible, the origins of modern critical approaches to biblical scholarship in Jewish and Christian communities, and the impact of the Protestant Reformation on Jewish religious culture.

Video Recording of Event

October 14, 2021

In collaboration with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. sponsored this panel discussion on the relationship of Christian teaching to antisemitism. The panel was on the occasion of a carving of Elie Wiesel being added to the cathedral’s Human Rights Porch. The panelists were Dr. Rebecca Carter-Chand, Dr. Philip Cunningham, Dr. Benjamin Sax, and Rev. Dr. Kate Sonderegger.

Video Recording of Event

Monday, September 13, 2021 at 7 p.m.

Inspired by the recently published book by SJU economics professor Dr. Nancy Ruth Fox (Profits and Prophets: Market Economics and Jewish Social Ethics), she and SJU professor of Catholic Social Ethics Dr. James O’Sullivan discuss public policy issues from their respective traditions’ principles of social justice. Topics considered include minimum wage, immigration, and climate change. Watch this timely Catholic-Jewish dialogue on questions in the forefront of national public discourse today!

Video Recording of Event

Webinar on Monday, May 3, 2021 at 7 p.m. (EDT)

By special arrangement with the producers, Abramorama, the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations invites you to view this new documentary and then to join in a panel discussion of it.

In this provocative look at strange political bedfellows, Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein investigates the political alliance between American evangelicals and Israel’s right wing, and their influence on United States foreign policy. Why do American church leaders encourage parishioners to make donations to Israel, even from poor communities? Millions of American Evangelicals are praying for the State of Israel. Among them are the Binghams, a dynasty of Kentucky pastors, and their Evangelical congregants in an impoverished coal mining town. They donate sacrificially to Israel’s foremost philanthropic organization, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, because they fervently believe the Jews are crucial to Jesus’ return. This film traces this unusual relationship, from rural Kentucky to the halls of government in Washington, through the moving of the American Embassy in Jerusalem and to the (shelved) annexation plan of the West-Bank. View the documentary’s trailer HERE.

About the Webinar Panelists:

Dr. Yaakov Ariel is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research has focused on Protestantism, especially Evangelical Christianity, and its attitudes towards the Jewish people and the Holy Land; on Christian-Jewish relations in the late modern era; and on the Jewish reaction to modernity and postmodernity. The author of numerous books and articles on these topics, his book, Evangelizing the Chosen People, was awarded the Albert C. Outler prize by the American Society of Church History.

Dr. Caitlen Carenen is Professor of History and department chair at Eastern Connecticut State University. Her areas of expertise include the relationship between American religious history and foreign policy, and particularly American Religious History, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and the history of the United States in the Middle East. Among her many publications is the book, The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel.

Video Recording of Event

Webinar on Monday, March 15, 2021 at 7 p.m. (EDT)

A special screening of the new film! 

By special arrangement with producer Martin Doblmeier and Journey Films, the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations is proud to invite you to view this new documentary and then to join with the producer and others in discussing it.

About the film (See the trailer HERE):

Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish-born rabbi who escaped to the United States from Nazi Germany and became one of the most influential public theologians and civil rights activists of the twentieth century, is the subject of the latest documentary by Martin Doblmeier and Journey Films: “SPIRITUAL AUDACITY: The Abraham Joshua Heschel Story.” The descendant of Hasidic rabbis and a “brand plucked from the fire” of the Holocaust, he was a friend and ally of Martin Luther King, Jr., helped begin a new friendship between Jews and Catholics, opposed the Viet Nam War, and brought the Hebrew prophets to life — not only by his words, but also by his deeds.

The film’s title, SPIRITUAL AUDACITY comes from Heschel’s response to President John F. Kennedy, who invited him to a White House conference on race and religion, intended to derail a planned march on Washington. Susannah Heschel recalls her father’s response, sent by telegram: “‘I propose that you, Mr. President, declare a state of moral emergency. The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.’”

About the webinar panelists:

Martin Doblmeier, the producer of SPIRITUAL AUDACITY, holds degrees in Religious Studies, Broadcast Journalism and three honorary degrees in Fine Arts and Humane Letters. Since 1984 he has produced and directed more than 30 films focused on religion, faith and spirituality. He combines a lifelong interest in religion with a passion for storytelling. His films explore how belief can lead individuals to extraordinary acts, how spirituality creates and sustains communities and how faith is lived in extraordinary ways.

Susannah Heschel, Ph.D., is the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of biblical scholarship, and the history of antisemitism. Her numerous publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, which won a National Jewish Book Award, and The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. She also edited a collection of her father’s essays, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays of Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Ph.D., is the rector emeritus of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano Marshall T. Meyer in Buenos Aires and recently completed an appointment as University Professor at Saint Joseph’s University. He co-authored with his friend Pope Francis the best-selling book, On Heaven and Earth. His Jewish spirituality in the Masorti (Conservative) movement was heavily shaped by Heschel’s pupil, Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer and by Heschel’s influential essay, “No Religion is An Island.”

Philip A. Cunningham, Ph.D., co-directs the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations and is a professor of theology at SJU. Past president of the International Council of Christians and Jews, he is the author of Seeking Shalom: The Journey to Right Relationship between Catholics and Jews and of the forthcoming Maxims for Mutuality: Principles for Catholic Theology, Education, and Preaching about Jews and Judaism.

Moderator: Adam Gregerman, Ph.D., co-directs the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations and is associate professor of Jewish studies at SJU.  The author of Building on the Ruins of the Temple: Apologetics and Polemics in Early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, he is Vice-Chair of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations, reviews editor of Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations. and a member of the Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Video Recording of Event

Themes in Enabling Dialogue about the Land: A Resource Book for Jews and Christians 

Sunday, February 21, 2021 at 1 p.m. EST

The editors and three contributors to the new book sponsored by the International Council of Christians and Jews explore themes about the Land and State of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the volume addresses.

Welcome: Anette Adelman, ICCJ General Secretary

• “Living Jewishly in the Land,” Dr. Deborah Weissman, ICCJ, Jerusalem
• “A Christian Life in a Wounded Land,” Dr. David Neuhaus, S.J., Pontifical Biblical Institute, Jerusalem
• “Israel in Jewish Theologies,” Rabbi Dr. Ruth Langer, Boston College
• “Israel in Protestant Theologies,” Rev. Dr. Jesper Svartvik, Boston College
• “Israel in Catholic Theologies,” Dr. Philip A. Cunningham, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia

Moderator: Dr. Adam Gregerman, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia

Video Recording of Event

Sunday, January 31, 2021 at 1 p.m. EST

The Institute directors have a conversation with the authors of a new book that explores how Jews and Christians can learn from and understand each other better by examining how they read many of the same Bible stories through different lenses.

In their new book, esteemed Bible scholars Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Brettler, co-editors of the widely acclaimed The Jewish Annotated New Testament, take readers on a guided tour of the most popular Hebrew Bible passages referenced in the New Testament to explore how Christians, Jews, and scholars read these ancient texts differently. On January 31, they will discuss why they wrote this book, which reveals what Jews and Christians can learn from each other and shows how to appreciate the distinctive perspectives of each.

Since the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations aims to “increase knowledge and deepen understanding between Jews and Catholics through shared study,” the four colleagues will then chat about the dynamics of this kind of interreligious text study, particularly in the specific context of interaction between Jews and Catholics. Participants will be invited to join in the conversation.

Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Department of Jewish Studies. She has also taught at Swarthmore College, Cambridge University, and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. She is the author of many books, including The Misunderstood Jew and Short Stories by Jesus. 

Marc Zvi Brettler is the Distinguished Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University.  He has also taught at Yale University, Brown University, Wellesley College, Brandeis University, and Middlebury College.

Video Recording of Event

November 9, 2020

As a follow-up to the Philadelphia screening of the film “Holy Silence” last March, Dr. Brown-Fleming will discuss the status of the newly-opened Vatican archives from World War II and their importance in understanding the actions of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, including what are the crucial questions that those materials could help answer.

Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming is the Director of International Academic Programs at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Her area of research is the relationship between Germany and the Vatican during the pontificates of Pius XI and Pius XII, as well as Catholic antisemitism in that period.

Video Recording of Event

October 25, 2020

This webinar is offered in collaboration with the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations, of which the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations is a founding member.

Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna is a University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun is a Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, where he directs the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.  He also chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, and serves as Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

Author or editor of more than thirty books on American Jewish history and life, his American Judaism: A History  (Yale 2004), recently published in a second edition, won six awards including the 2004 “Everett Jewish Book of the Year Award” from the Jewish Book Council. His most recent books are (with Benjamin Shapell)  Lincoln and the Jews: A History (St. Martin’s, 2015), and When General Grant Expelled the Jews (Schocken/Nextbook, 2012). His annotated edition of Cora Wilburn’s previously unknown 1860 novel, Cosella Wayne (University of Alabama Press), has also just appeared.

Respondents:

Dr. Heather Miller Rubens is the Executive Director and Roman Catholic Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (www.icjs.org) in Baltimore.  Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, she studies how religious communities navigate political, legal, and cultural spaces, as well as how different religious communities relate to one another in particular contexts.

Rabbi Dr. Lance J. Sussman has served as the Senior Rabbi of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel of Elkins Park, PA since 2001. Previously, he was Associate Professor of Jewish History at Binghamton University, SUNY. Rabbi Sussman has also taught at Princeton, Hunter College and Rutgers. He holds a Ph.D. in American Jewish History from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, studying under Jacob Rader Marcus.

Moderator: 

Dr. Victoria J. Barnett was Director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from 2004-2019. She also served as one of the general editors of the 17-volume Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, the complete English edition of Bonhoeffer’s writings published by Fortress Press. Her most recent book is “After Ten Years”: Dietrich Bonhoeffer for Our Times.

September 14, 2020

Monday, September 14, 2020, 7:00-8:30 p.m. 

The post-Second World War “journey of friendship” between Jews and Catholics, as Pope Francis has called it, has shown the world that it is possible for two communities that had been estranged and hostile to one another for over a millennium to come together in a new and enriching relationship. Today our country is experiencing a reckoning in terms of its racist legacy. What helpful lessons can be learned from the ongoing Catholic and Jewish experience of rapprochement? Two leaders in the national Catholic-Jewish dialogue will discuss the connections between interracial and interreligious relations.

Guest Speakers:

Rev. Dr. Walter F. Kedjierski is the Executive Director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He holds an Ed.D. in Interfaith and Ecumenical Education from the Graduate Theological Foundation in Mishawaka, Indiana and a Ph.D. in Dogmatic/Spiritual Theology from the Graduate Theological Foundation’s Foundation House at Oxford University.

Rabbi David Straus is the  Senior Rabbi at Main Line Reform Temple | Beth Elohim in Wynnewood, PA. He is a co-convener of the Religious Leaders Council of Greater Philadelphia, and serves on the board and executive committee of the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia. He is the chair of the National Council of Synagogues which meets regularly with members of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, National Council of Churches, and the Evangelical Community.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 7:30 p.m.

Join us for a special webinar as Philadelphia’s new archbishop, the Most Rev. Nelson Pérez, and Rabbi Abraham Skorka, SJU University Professor, discuss Catholic-Jewish relations and some pressing issues facing both communities in American society today.

Video Recording of Event

Thursday, July 16, 2020 – 7:00 p.m. 

A special program offered in collaboration with the Villa Maria Education and Spirituality Center

This virtual presentation is Co-Sponsored by Rev. George Balasko in memory of Rabbi Samuel Meyer as part of the Villa Maria Annual Nostra Aetate Lecture Series.

Since the Second Vatican Council in 1965, interactions between Jews and Catholics have become more frequent and positive than ever before in history. Official and informal dialogues have multiplied, and religious leaders in both communities have reconsidered and reformed long-held ideas about each other in a process that still continues. This “journey of friendship,” as Pope Francis has called it, has led to a new interreligious relationship that is exemplified by his own long friendship and dialogues with Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Buenos Aires. It is also depicted in an original sculpture, “Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time,” at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, blessed by Pope Francis in 2015. The artwork shows the Synagogue and the Church learning from each other’s experiences of God in a relationship of mutuality. Join us for this story of a new beginning that gives great hope for the future. 

Presenter: Philip A. Cunningham, Director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations of Saint Joseph’s University

Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 11 a.m.

A webinar co-sponsored with the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome

On June 13, 1960, Prof. Jules Isaac met with Pope John XXIII. Their dialogue led directly to the conciliar declaration Nostra Aetate and the Jewish-Catholic dialogue that has now unfolded for six decades.  This webinar marked the 60th anniversary of this historic event by featuring two international leaders of the dialogue: Dr. Mary Boys, SNJM and Rabbi Dr. Irving Greenberg!

Video Recording of Event

April 30, 2020

Institute Director Dr. Philip Cunningham and Dr. Gemma Simmonds, CJ discuss the hit film “The Two Popes.” The film is a biographical drama about Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, played respectively by actors Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. Hopkins was nominated for best supporting actor and Pryce for best actor by the Academy Awards for their performances.

Gemma Simmonds is a sister of the Congregation of Jesus. An honorary fellow of Durham University and past president of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain, she has studied at the universities of Paris, London, Rio de Janeiro and Cambridge, where she undertook a doctorate in theology. She is the Director of the Religious Life Institute in Cambridge.

Video Recording of Event

April 13, 2020

This webinar sponsored by the America-Israel Friendship League featured Rabbi David Rosen and Institute Director Dr. Philip Cunningham.

Jews and Christians this year are celebrating their respective sacred springtime holy days of Passover and Easter in the midst of a plague of biblical proportions.  As COVID-19  calls for us to work even more closely together to make it through, we are reminded to reflect on the amazing journey both faiths are on together  – coming from nearly 2,000 years of hatred and contempt to the positive trajectory of the last 50 years. Today, we continue to build bonds of understanding, education and friendship between the Jewish people and Israel and the Catholic Church. Join us to hear from two of the world’s leading experts leading the  path towards a deeper positive relationship between Jews and Catholics, which in turn, serves as a historic model for improving multi-faith relations around the globe.

Rabbi David Rosen, former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, is the International Director of Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee and Director of AJC’s Heilbrunn Institute for International Interreligious Understanding.  He is a past chairman of IJCIC, the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations.  Rabbi Rosen is a member of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s commission for Interreligious Dialogue; and serves on the Council of the Religious Institutions of the Holy Land.

Video Recording of Event

Tuesday, March 3, 2020, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Teletorium in Mandeville Hall

A Film by Steven Pressman [trailer]

Pope Pius XI from the documentary “Holy Silence.” The film examines whether Jewish lives would have been saved had Pope Pius XI or his successor, Pope Pius XII, issued a statement urging the protection of Jews in Axis-held Europe. (PerlePress Productions)

In 1933, the vast majority of Germans belonged to a Christian church. A third of the population (around 20 million) were Roman Catholic, whereas the Jewish community represented less than 1% of the population. As the Nazi Party’s power and antisemitism spread across Europe, how did one of the world’s most influential institutions—the Catholic Church—address and confront the Nazi regime and its laws, particularly the persecution of Jews? Holy Silence is a new thought-provoking documentary that examines the individuals who played a crucial role in shaping the Vatican’s response to the rising Nazi threat across Europe. Stories include: a humble Jesuit priest from New England, a leading American industrialist dispatched on a mission by President Franklin Roosevelt, and high-ranking officials within the Vatican determined to carry out their own objectives.

In collaboration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, SJU is honored to host a special Philadelphia screening of this important new documentary, including a discussion with its director Steven Pressman.

A Two-Part Spring Series Featuring Rabbi Abraham Skorka

Co-author with Pope Francis of On Heaven and Earth

Forum Theater, Campion Student Center

1. Christianity

Monday, January 27, 2020

Response:

Dr. Philip A. Cunningham is Co-Director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations

2. Islam and the Religions of Asia

Video Recording of Event

Monday, February 10, 2020

Responses:

Dr. Umeyye Isra Yazicioglu is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies

Dr. David Carpenter is Associate Professor of Asian Religions

Video Recording of Event

Wednesday, November 6, 2019, 7-8:30 p.m.

North Doyle Banquet Hall, Campion Student Center

This presentation discusses how supporters of slavery in the United States and Europe used the Bible and other religious arguments to justify the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans in Europe and the Americas from the 1400s to the late 19th century. Yet, those who advocated the abolition of slavery also called upon the Bible to condemn it as immoral. The dispute demonstrates the complex place of the Bible in American society and jurisprudence.

Dr. Paul Finkelman is the President of Gratz College in Philadelphia and the author of Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (2014); Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court (2018) and Defending Slavery (2019). He has been cited in four decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, numerous other courts, and in many appellate briefs.  He has lectured on slavery, human trafficking, and human rights at the United Nations, throughout the United States, and in over a dozen other countries, including China, Germany, Israel, and Japan.  In 2014, he was ranked as the fifth most cited legal historian in American legal scholarship in Brian Leiter’s “Top Ten Law Faculty for Scholarly Impact, 2009-2013.”

Session 3 of the three-part fall 2019 series:

In this series, three outstanding speakers discuss the experiences of African Americans and Jewish Americans in the predominantly Protestant Christian ethos of the United States. The social constructs of “race” and “religion” and notions of “whiteness” and “blackness” have all interacted in complex ways in the lives of the two groups, which have both similarities and differences as minorities often either forcibly taken or forced to flee from the lands of their birth. You are invited to any or all of the presentations.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 7-8:30 p.m.

North Doyle Banquet Hall, Campion Student Center

Youth literature about and written by Ashkenazi Jews, Christian African Americans, and African American Jews all rely on themes of suffering to graft their subjects into the American body politic. This rhetorical strategy has failures and weaknesses in an age of growing white supremacism. Reading “multi-directionally,” we can see how Jewish and African Americans utilize similar literary strategies but also where their historical experiences differ, and what happens at the intersection of those two identities, as in the case of author Julius Lester and others.

Dr. Jodi Eichler Levine is Director of American Studies, Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization, and Associate Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. The author of Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature (2013, 2015), she analyzes what is at stake in portraying religious history for young people, particularly when their histories are traumatic ones. Her work is located at the intersection of Jewish studies, religion in North America, literature, material culture, and gender studies. Future projects include a book on Jewish women, material culture, politics, and performance, currently titled Crafting Judaism: Creativity, Gender, and Jewish Americans and ongoing research into Jewish children’s literature, popular culture, race, ethnicity, and religion in the USA.

Session 2 of the three-part fall 2019 series:

The Intersection of “Race” and “Religion” in the USA: African Americans, Jewish Americans, and Trauma

In this series, three outstanding speakers discuss the experiences of African Americans and Jewish Americans in the predominantly Protestant Christian ethos of the United States. The social constructs of “race” and “religion” and notions of “whiteness” and “blackness” have all interacted in complex ways in the lives of the two groups, which have both similarities and differences as minorities often either forcibly taken or forced to flee from the lands of their birth. You are invited to any or all of the presentations.

Wednesday, September 25, 2019, 7-8:30 p.m.

North Doyle Banquet Hall, Campion Student Center

Historically, the concept of an ideal community that is populated with ideal people includes appeals to nostalgia, as seen in the fictional idyllic 1960s television town of Mayberry. The ideals look innocent on the surface, but they are arranged according to a cultural template that actually gives license to exclude and to do harm to others who seem outside the template.

Dr. Reggie L. Williams is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and an expert on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Protestant minister who was executed for participating in an assassination plot against Hitler. His 2014 book, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance was selected as a Choice Outstanding Title in 2015 in the field of religion. His research interests include Christology, theological anthropology, Christian social ethics, race, politics and black church life. His current book project is a religious critique of whiteness in the Harlem Renaissance, entitled Interrogating Theological Anthropology in the Harlem Renaissance: The Figure of the Human as a Problem for Christian Ethics. In addition, he is working on a book analyzing the reception of Bonhoeffer by liberation activists in apartheid South Africa.

Session 1 of the three-part fall 2019 series:

The Intersection of “Race” and “Religion” in the USA: African Americans, Jewish Americans, and Trauma

In this series, three outstanding speakers discuss the experiences of African Americans and Jewish Americans in the predominantly Protestant Christian ethos of the United States. The social constructs of “race” and “religion” and notions of “whiteness” and “blackness” have all interacted in complex ways in the lives of the two groups, which have both similarities and differences as minorities often either forcibly taken or forced to flee from the lands of their birth. You are invited to any or all of the presentations.

September 18, 2019

Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Dr. Philip A. Cunningham from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia discuss the facts on the ground during the Second Temple period, which includes the time of Jesus of Nazareth, with regards to the group known as the “Pharisees.”  Skorka and Cunningham detail the Pharisees’ relations with Jesus before the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, as interpreted in the Gospel of Matthew after that event, and their connection with what would become the rabbinical establishment in post-Temple Judaism.  The two scholars also touch on their meetings with Pope Francis and how contemporary interfaith educational efforts regarding the truth about the Pharisees can help heal the ancient wounds of antisemitism caused by misunderstandings and polemics about the Pharisees’ historical role and their true identity.  A program of AJC Westchester/Fairfield and the “Shared Roots, Divergent Paths” Series at Iona College, this event was recorded at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY on September 18, 2019.

Video Recording of Event

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Providence College

Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Dr. Philip Cunningham

A discussion of the importance of further advancing dialogue and mutuality between Christians and Jews.

Video Recording of Event

Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

McShain Hall: Haub Conference Center, Large Maguire Room

The Passover Meal, the Seder, marks one of the major feasts on the Jewish calendar. Passover is also important for Christians since the story of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is a principal element of many Christian observances, especially during Holy Week. The Seder meal is a wonderful way for Christians to have a direct experience of Jewish spiritual life, and for both communities to rededicate themselves to a world in which slavery and injustice are no more.

The Passover Seder at SJU is a full catered kosher meal. Participants will join in the prayers, songs, and celebration in as close to a traditionally Jewish form as possible.

Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Campion Student Center: Doyle Banquet Hall North

From Monday, January 7 through Thursday, January 10, 2019, the Institute welcomed twenty scholars from eight countries to study together major issues in Christian-Jewish relations. Participants heard and discussed papers on topics that included identity and borders, fulfillment, Jewish and Christian missions, Christology, covenant, the Apostle Paul, and the connections between Christian-Jewish relations and global religious pluralism.

On Tuesday evening, an open session of the conference provided an experience of its deliberations in a “fishbowl” format. Dr. Gavin D’Costa from the University of Bristol, U.K. presented his paper, “Catholic Theology and the Promise of the Land as Part of the Jewish Covenant.” Dr. Amy-Jill Levine from Vanderbilt University responded, followed by a general discussion among all the conference participants and the audience. This was an unusual opportunity for intensive theological dialogue and reflection. 

Video Recording of Event

May 8, 2019

University Professor Rabbi Abraham Skorka offered this lecture during an international conference “Jesus and the Pharisees: An Interdisciplinary Reappraisal,” sponsored in Rome by the Pontifical Biblical Institute. He examines the writings of the medieval sages Rashi, Nachmanides and Maimonides for their understanding of the relationship to those called the Perushim (usually rendered as the Pharisees) with the Early Hasidim, the later Hasidim (holy or pious ones), the Early Hakhamim and the later Hakhamim (the sages or wise ones). He concludes that the Medieval writers used the word Perushim in particular circumstances with regard to a pious Jew who fulfills the commandments in a very intense or zealous way. Despite the many cases in the Talmudic literature where the teachings of the Perushim were seemingly accepted by the Hakhamim, there is not sufficient evidence to allow us to see the Hakhamim as the continuation of the Perushim. Nevertheless, many of the teachings of the Perushim were adopted by the Hakhamin since they maintained a spiritual vision that (in contrast with the Sadducees and other sects) remained in many respects the view and vision of the Jewish people throughout the generations.

May 9, 2019

Institute Co-Director Philip Cunningham offered this multimedia presentation during an international conference “Jesus and the Pharisees: An Interdisciplinary Reappraisal,” sponsored in Rome by the Pontifical Biblical Institute. This presentation summarizes the results of three content analyses of Catholic religion textbooks and one of Protestant textbooks in the United States over the past several decades in terms of their presentations of the Pharisees. These studies are supplemented with surveys of current textbook materials in the United States and Italy, and a parallel content analysis of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  The Italian texts were studied by Dr. Maria Brutti. The presentation examined the reasons why textbook treatments of the Pharisees and Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries are so challenging and concluded with concrete recommendations for improvement in the future.

Video Recording of Event

May 9, 2019

Institute Co-Director Adam Gregerman gave this presentation at a conference called “The Identity of Israel: Jews, Christians, and the Bible” at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto. He discusses the following questions:

• What is the status of the biblical covenant with the (original) people of Israel / the Jews after Christ?
• What tensions are raised for Christian theology with the rejection of supersessionism?
• If the Jewish covenant with God is valid, should Christians seek to convert Jews?
• If God’s covenant with the Jews remains valid, do the specific land promises within it also remain valid?
• If the Old Covenant with the Jews remains valid, of what value is the New Christian Covenant?

Video Recording of Event

August 19, 2019

Institute Co-Director Philip A. Cunningham was interviewed today on the radio program “AJC Live” by host Scott Richman, regional director of American Jewish Committee of Westchester/Fairfield. This edition of the biweekly radio show focused on the ancient Jewish sect known as the Pharisees. Who were they, and how were they perceived then and now? This show explored these questions as part of a continuing process to build better relations between Christians and Jews. Dr. Philip Cunningham, Professor of Theology at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia was interviewed by AJC Westchester/Fairfield Director Scott Richman on this issue in anticipation of his visit to Westchester. Dr. Cunningham will speak on the topic of the Pharisees, along with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, on September 23rd at Iona College as part of the “Shared Roots, Divergent Paths” series of programs. Also joining the show were Dr. Elena Procario-Foley, Driscoll Professor of Jewish-Catholic Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at Iona College, as well as Nancy Fried-Tanzer who chairs the Shared Roots, Divergent Paths series on behalf of AJC Westchester/Fairfield.