As 2023 began, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had recently returned to power with a right-wing governing coalition that included radical Jewish nationalists, raising questions of Jewish identity and inflaming relations with Muslims over the use of the holy sites around the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex and the Western Wall.

When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 from Gaza, at the end of the Jewish High Holidays, it named its deadly assault “Al-Aqsa Deluge,” painting the violence as a religious war. But Hamas’ action has become a major turning point in the 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, embroiling emotions around the world and subjecting Jews far from the fighting to antisemitic insults and violence.

Though the war dominated news about Judaism and Jews for the latter part of 2023, there were also signs of revival amid the turmoil. A year in review:

Here, I call on religious leaders and members to frame the state of healthcare in the United States within the context of their faith.

The horrific COVID pandemic exposed an ugly truth about our nation’s medical system.

The lethal plague shattered the quality of life for all Americans, but it also revealed an unfair, fractured health system that does not always provide equal access to effective medical services. The deadly pandemic underscored the urgent need for such high-quality universal health care.
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It is an imperative that rests on three fundamental principles. First, as Americans, we envision ourselves as a decent and compassionate society rooted in profound religious beliefs about the sanctity of life. Second, given the special nature of health care, it is an absolute requirement to foster and protect human life, especially the young, the infirm, and the elderly. Finally, society’s obligation is based on the self-evident fact that a healthy population enhances the spiritual, economic, and political strength of a nation.

Despite anti-Semitism in the United States and lukewarm support by President Roosevelt, three Christian employees in the Treasury Department saved 200,000 European Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust. Reprinted by permission of NCR Publishing Company, from the original source.

More than 70 years have passed since the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, but the public controversy surrounding our 32nd president continues to intensify.

Roosevelt’s critics claim that if he had utilized the full extent of U.S. power, many European Jews could have been saved from the mass murders carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the Holocaust.
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FDR’s supporters remind us that America was rife with anti-Semitism even during World War II, and while the president in 1942 was fully aware of Hitler’s genocidal war against the Jews, Roosevelt believed the best way to save Jewish lives was a laser-like maximum military effort that would force Germany’s “unconditional surrender” as quickly as possible.

A specter is haunting America and it is not socialism and certainly not communism. It’s the obscene specter of Americans being forced to kneel in submission to an extremist “winner take all” religious ideology seeking to transform the United States into a “Christian nationalist” country where Christian supremacy in its many forms supersedes all human laws – including and especially the American Constitution.

In my book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans For The Rest Of Us (Thunder’s Mouth Press 2006), I warned that a well-financed and highly organized group of religious and political leaders was seeking to impose their narrow radical beliefs and harsh public policies on the US, even as our nation’s population was increasingly multireligious, multiethnic, and multiracial.

Some critics accused me of writing about a “nonexistent” threat from the religious right. One reviewer called my work a “paranoid rant” while another detractor wrote that my “alarmist” views were “exaggerated and implausible.”

​Their belief was: ”It can’t happen here in America”, but 17 years later we know better. “It” can happen, indeed, is happening here led by a well-financed and well organized group that I label “Christocrats” that has grown in numbers, political power and public visibility.

“It’s very easy to get stale, to go into neutral instead of staying in drive,” says Rabbi James Rudin, a resident at Cypress Cove, a LeadingAge member in Ft. Myers, FL.

For Rudin, 88, “staying in drive” is a natural continuation of a lifetime of work and a notable career. He is an internationally known leader in interfaith relations, having served as interreligious affairs director for the American Jewish Committee (AJC) for more than 30 years. He still serves AJC as a senior adviser and sits on the organization’s Board of Governors.

Rudin’s career has involved endless international travel, relationships with popes and other religious and political leaders, and activism on religious tolerance and human rights. In November, Rudin received The Papal Knighthood of the Order of St. Gregory for his life’s work in building Catholic-Jewish relations. He is only the third American rabbi to receive the honor.

Though Rudin says he’s retired, he remains active as a writer, public speaker, and historian. His fifth book, “The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents,” published last year, tells the inside story of the significant issues and relationships at the heart of his life’s work. He writes regularly for Religion News Service and serves as an advisor for the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo University near Tampa. Rudin was a co-founder of the Center in 1998.