By Sharon Nazarian | Senior Vice President for International Affairs January 25, 2018 The Forward Last week, American Zionists were told they could not be part of the feminist movement — again. A number of pro-Palestinian groups, most notably the Palestinian American Women’s Association, boycotted Saturday’s L.A. Women’s March. They wouldn’t attend due to the fact that actress Scarlett Johansson, known to be a proud Zionist, was one of the speakers. Hardly…

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…

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: 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…