Roughly 3,500 years into the great experiment known as Judaism, and things are going better than we could have possibly imagined and more painfully than we might have hoped. We’re rocking a rich global culture, an independent Jewish state, and nifty inventions like Google and braided egg bread. We Jews also continue to experience vile…
(JTA) — Pope Francis lamented anti-Semitic attacks and spread a message to ban the anti-Semitism during an audience with Jewish emissaries. The Pope on Monday received for first time delegates of the World Congress of Mountain Jews at the Vatican. Two weeks after the attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 worshippers Francis said in…
Following a meeting with Pope Francis to discuss the protection of Jewish cemeteries in Europe and combating child sex abuse, a delegation of Hasidic Jews broke out in song and dance. Rabbis locked arms, men played guitars and the Pope seemed to bob up and down slightly. A video of the scene went viral. Then…
In his push to open up Catholic communion to the divorced and remarried, Pope Francis has portrayed his critics as stubborn legalists and Pharisees who “sit in the chair of Moses and judge.” It’s language that, for at least one rabbi, evokes anti-Jewish stereotypes. The flare-up was highlighted in the religious journal First Things. In…
A Toronto rabbi and his wife received a blessing from the pope as a wedding anniversary gift. To mark their 70th year together, Rabbi Erwin Schild and his wife, Laura, were presented with a handwritten scroll stamped with the papal seal and a photo of Pope Francis. The couple was presented with the honor by…
Could a lengthy document, written in Latin and published after extensive theological debates, overturn centuries of animosity between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people? Closing the book on almost 2,000 years of persecution seemed nearly impossible when the Second Vatican Council adopted Nostra Aetate, the Catholic Church’s historic rejection of the notion that Jewish…
Historian David Kertzer won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography detailing how Benito Mussolini’s secret relationship with Pope Pius XI influenced the Italian dictator’s persecution of his country’s Jews. Kertzer, a professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University, was recognized in the biography-autobiography category for “The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of…
(Reuters) — Elio Toaff, the chief rabbi of Rome for half a century and a pivotal player in Christian-Jewish reconciliation, has died at the age of 99. Toaff, who a spokesman said died on Sunday night, was Rome’s chief rabbi in 1986 when then-Pope John Paul II made the first visit by a Roman Catholic…
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