Catholic Bishops and Jewish Leaders Launch New Tool to Combat Antisemitism
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have partnered to release a groundbreaking resource aimed at confronting rising antisemitism through education and awareness. The new publication, “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition,” builds on AJC’s original glossary of antisemitic terms while adding Catholic teachings and commentary to counter such hatred.
The 61-page document, released on December 11, 2023, comes at a critical time. According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents in the United States increased by more than 200% between October 2023 and September 2024 compared to the previous year, with over 10,000 reported incidents including harassment, vandalism, and physical assaults.
“This Catholic edition of Translate Hate is a groundbreaking project for Catholic-Jewish relations and could not come at a more needed time, as we are experiencing the most dramatic rise in antisemitism since the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Noam Marans, AJC Director of Interreligious Affairs.
The glossary, which has grown from 25 entries in its initial release to approximately 65-70 terms today, addresses various forms of antisemitic expression, from traditional religious-based prejudices to contemporary social media memes. For example, it defines and condemns the ancient “deicide” charge that wrongly blamed Jews for the death of Jesus Christ, which the Catholic commentary notes was “a classic anti-Jewish charge leveled against the Jewish people for nearly 17 centuries.”
Bishop Joseph Bambera of Scranton, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, emphasized the importance of education in fighting antisemitism. “The only way in which we will ever combat antisemitism is to understand it,” he said, noting that many people don’t realize how hurtful certain common references to Jewish people can be, as these attitudes have been “passed down from one generation to the next in families and neighborhoods.”
The collaboration marks a significant milestone in Catholic-Jewish relations, building on the foundation laid by the 1965 Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate, which transformed the Church’s relationship with the Jewish community by formally rejecting antisemitism and the deicide charge.
Holly Huffnagle, AJC U.S. Director for Combating Antisemitism, explained the resource’s practical application: “The first step in combating antisemitism is being able to understand and identify it. Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition presents this information in a way that can be used at all levels of Catholic and Jewish formal and informal education.”
Rabbi Marans noted that contemporary antisemitism represents a “three-headed monster” comprising “the skyrocketing toxicity of hate in the U.S. and in the world,” the growing historical “distance from the reality and the lessons of the Shoah,” and the challenge of social media, which he said “feeds on hate” through its algorithms.
The USCCB plans to distribute the document to every bishop in the United States and to ecumenical and interreligious officers in every diocese. The resource will be regularly updated with additional Catholic commentaries as the glossary of antisemitic terms expands.
This initiative represents what Rabbi Marans called a “shehechiyanu moment” – a time for marking new beginnings in Catholic-Jewish relations, though he acknowledged that some tensions remain, particularly regarding recent Vatican statements about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Bishop Bambera concluded that healing centuries-old wounds between Catholic and Jewish communities requires ongoing effort: “If we listen with care, if we open our own hearts and minds to what we can learn from one another, I think we’re well on the way to achieving a more peaceful coexistence.”
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