​(RNS) — These are the most important events and trends of the year in Jewish life, from the horror of violent anti-Semitism, to the hope of a burgeoning birth rate in Israel.

1. The political stalemate in Israel. After a pair of inconclusive national elections, both Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu, leaders of the two largest political parties, failed to build a viable governing coalition in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. At year’s end, Netanyahu, despite being formally indicted for criminal activities, tenaciously remained in power as prime minister. An unprecedented third election to resolve the deadlock is scheduled for early March 2020.

2. The resurgence of violent anti-Semitism. Nearly 75 years after the end of the Holocaust and World War II, violent acts of anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews and Judaism) sharply increased during the year, including fatal hate crime shootings at a San Diego-area synagogue and a Jersey City kosher market and an unsuccessful attempt to kill worshipers on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in Halle, Germany. They were but three of the growing number of both physical and verbal attacks on Jews in the U.S. and Europe. In France, 89% of French Jewish students report experiencing anti-Jewish abuse and, since 2003, a dozen people have been murdered in that country for the sole reason that they were Jewish.

​(RNS) — There have been more positive encounters between Roman Catholics and the Jewish people since the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 than there were in the first 2,000 years of the Christian church. But one major flashpoint has remained unresolved: the bitter controversy swirling around the role played by Eugenio Pacelli, whose 19-year pontificate as Pius XII began in 1939, in the wartime treatment of European Jews.

Today Pope Francis announced that the Vatican archives covering Pius XII’s reign will at last be opened. I have been personally involved in this dispute for more than three decades and have long demanded that this obstacle needs to be fully and finally removed if the historic revolution in Catholic-Jewish relations is to deepen and advance.

The most serious charge made against Pius XII by his critics, Catholic and Jewish, is that he was inactive, indifferent, and ineffective in the face of Nazi Germany’s horrific policy of mass murder during the Holocaust, when six million Jews were killed in the heart of what Pope John Paul II has called “Christian Europe.”

​(RNS) — Philip Roth’s death at age 85 marks the end of an extraordinary writing career. In my mind, Roth was the greatest American author of the past 60 years.

I’m a fast reader and usually get through most novels quickly. Not so with Roth’s many remarkable writings. His carefully crafted books demand slow reading because of his rich, tightly composed prose. Indeed, I often reread his words again and again simply to admire his magnificent command of the English language.

​(RNS) — For most people April 19 is just another springtime day on the calendar: the baseball season is well underway, it’s often the date for the Boston Marathon, and the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., are usually just past their peak.

But April 19 is deeply embedded within my personal memory bank.

On that date 75 years ago, in 1943, I was a youngster traveling with my family from Alexandria, Va., to Pittsburgh to participate in a Passover seder at my grandparents’ home located in what was then rightly called “The Steel City.”

It was the midst of World War II, and my father, a U.S. Army major, was stationed at Fort Belvoir. He had carefully accumulated enough rationing coupons to provide sufficient gasoline for the round trip in our 1940 Chrysler.

(RNS) — “Go Home N—-r.”
In late September, five African-American students in the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Preparatory School, located on the academy’s Colorado Springs, Colo., campus, confronted those three words on their dormitory message boards.
When he learned of the obscene message, Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Jay B. Silveria was furious. Silveria, a combat jet pilot who grew up in an Air Force family, quickly summoned the school’s 4,000 cadets and 1,500 staff members to hear him deliver a powerful lecture on the evils of prejudice and racism.
​“If you’re outraged by those words, then you’re in the right place,” Silveria said. “That kind of behavior has no place at the prep school, has no place at USAFA (the Air Force Academy) and has no place in the United States Air Force. We would all be naive to think that everything is perfect here. We would be naive to think that we shouldn’t discuss this topic. We would also be tone deaf not to think about the backdrop of what’s going on in our country. Things like Charlottesville and Ferguson, the protests in the NFL.”

(RNS) As a freshly minted rabbi, I was an Air Force chaplain at Itazuke Air Base in Japan. Two days after my arrival at the base, I was officially introduced to Itazuke’s commander. He was a gruff fighter pilot who in physical appearance and style of speaking could have been John Wayne’s clone.  Read Entire Article HERE. 

by A. James Rudin

This year marks the anniversaries of four historical events that changed world history and continue to affect millions of people today.
By coincidence, all four events took place in years that end with the number seven: 1897, 1917, 1947, 1967. The number seven, while lucky for gamblers, also plays a major role in Jewish life. The ancient seven-branched menorah or candelabrum is the official symbol of the modern State of Israel. Shabbat, the seventh day of the week, signifies the completed work of creation. Seven blessings are recited at Jewish weddings, and there are seven biblical matriarchs and patriarchs. So maybe it’s no accident that some important historical events have taken place in the years ending with the number seven. 

by A. James Rudin

Losing one’s friends to death is the price we must eventually pay for the gift of being alive, and last week I paid a steep one when Cardinal William H. Keeler, the 14th archbishop of Baltimore, died at age 86.
Laudatory obituaries noted the cardinal’s membership as a youth in the Boy Scout movement, where he met many Jewish and Protestant Scouts. The obituaries also recounted his 1955 ordination to the priesthood and his participation as a special adviser during the Second Vatican Council, when the world’s Catholic bishops overwhelmingly adopted the historic Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”) declaration that represented a revolutionary change in the church’s teachings toward Jews and Judaism. 

by A. James Rudin

(RNS) A decade ago, a critic accused me of writing a book about a “nonexistent” threat from the religious right. One reviewer called my work a “paranoid rant” while another detractor wrote my “alarmist” views were “exaggerated and implausible.”

In “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans For The Rest Of Us,” published in 2006, I had warned that a well-financed and highly organized group of religious and political leaders was seeking to impose their narrow extremist beliefs and harsh public policies on the United States, even as our nation’s population was increasingly multireligious, multiethnic, and multiracial.

The intention of that group, whom I labeled “Christocrats,” was to establish a white-dominated nationalistic “Christian America” officially buttressed and ruled by judicial, presidential and congressional law.