(RNS) — In a year dominated by the miseries of COVID-19, not all the news in the Jewish world was about the virus — and even some events driven by the pandemic were not without a silver lining. Herewith, a subjective look at the most important news stories of the year:

Anti-Semitism continues to surge

​Seventy-five years after the end of the Holocaust, the continuing upsurge of virulent, often lethal anti-Semitism, especially in the United States and Europe, led all other news for Jews in 2020. The rise of the extremist group the Proud Boys, the spreading influence of the vile QAnon conspiracy that now includes members of the U.S. Congress, and the constant, unfounded anti-Jewish attacks on Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros provided anecdotal evidence that anti-Jewish attacks will again be the most common religious hate crime, as they were in 2019.

(RNS) — Four overarching realities will define relations between Christians and Jews in the coming years.

The first two, demography and geography, are linked. Since the fifth century, Europe and, more recently, North America, have been the centers of Christian population, clerical leadership and religious thought. Today, thanks to rapid population growth in South America, Africa and Asia, most of the world’s Christians reside in the Southern Hemisphere.

This trend is accelerating even as the number of Christians is holding steady or actually declining in Europe and North America, where Christians and Jews are older and fewer in number than their co-religionists in the rest of the world.
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Recent figures report that since 2000, the Catholic population grew by 33% in Asia, by 15.6% in Africa, and by 10.9% in Central and South America. The increase in the European Catholic population since 2000 was only 1%.

Rabbi James Rudin returns to discuss the history leading up to, and Judeo Christian relations since, Nostra aetate (Latin: In our time), the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council.

Rabbi A. James Rudin has served on the American Jewish Committee’s professional staff for thirty-two years and served as the AJC’s Interreligious Affairs Director. He is currently the AJC’s Senior Interreligious Adviser and a member of the organization’s Board of Governors.
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Rabbi Rudin is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Religion and Judaica at Saint Leo University and teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University Renaissance Academy.

Rabbi James Rudin joins Common Threads joins us to discuss the history leading up to, and Judeo Christian relations since, Nostra aetate (Latin: In our time), the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council.

Rabbi A. James Rudin has served on the American Jewish Committee’s professional staff for thirty-two years and served as the AJC’s Interreligious Affairs Director. He is currently the AJC’s Senior Interreligious Adviser and a member of the organization’s Board of Governors.

​Rabbi Rudin is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Religion and Judaica at Saint Leo University and teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University Renaissance Academy.
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He served congregations in Kansas City, Missouri and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and was a United States Air Force Chaplain stationed in Japan and Korea.

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(RNS) — Fifty-five years ago, on Oct. 28, 1965, an extraordinary global religious “game changer” took place in Rome.

​At the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, after three years of intense deliberation and debate, the world’s Roman Catholic bishops voted overwhelmingly that day to adopt the historic declaration titled “Nostra Aetate (In Our Time).”
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The proclamation, promulgated by Pope Paul VI, set in motion a revolution of the human spirit and sparked a serious and systematic effort by the Catholic Church as well as other Christian bodies around the world to transform their past bitter relationships with Jews and Judaism.

The English translation of the original Latin text, only 624 words in length, rejected the ancient lethal and odious charge that the Jews were “Christ killers.” (It was the Roman occupiers of the land of Judea who executed Jesus.)
The specific term “anti-Semitism” (hatred of Jews and Judaism) appears in “Nostra Aetate”: The church, it reads, “ … decries hatred, persecution, (and) displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”
The declaration also specifically called for “mutual understanding and respect” and the establishment of “biblical and theological studies” as well as “fraternal dialogues” between Catholics and Jews.
Pope Paul VI in 1963. Vatican City official photo/Creative Commons

This June marks 60 years since my rabbinical ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. However, those six decades have not diminished my appreciation of the rabbinic mentors who symbolically escorted me to rabbinical school and upon whose shoulders I stand to this day.

My journey began when I was a 6-year-old student at Temple Rodef Sholom in Pittsburgh during Sukkot 1940. While standing on the building’s front steps, Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof, the congregation’s senior rabbi, handed me a bright red apple to commemorate the fall harvest holiday.

I proudly took the rabbi’s gift home, where it was treated as a sacred object, sitting on our mantelpiece as long as nature would allow.

The following year, my father was called to active Army duty and stationed at Fort Belvoir near Alexandria, VA, where we joined Temple Beth-El, the local Reform congregation. But Rabbi Freehof’s influence remained strong in our home, because Rodef Sholom regularly sent us printed texts of his sermons and book reviews.
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Even as a youngster, I appreciated his beautifully crafted phrasing, his command of Jewish sources, and how his love of Shakespeare was woven into many of his writings -- and during the darkest days of World War II, Rodef Sholom’s rabbi always ended his sermons with realistic hope. His public book reviews attracted audiences of both Jews and Christians, numbering between 1,500 and 2,000.

​The four power International Military Tribunal (IMT) took place in Nuremberg, Germany between November 1945 and October 1946. Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union joined the United States in bringing 24 Nazi leaders to justice after the end of World War II.

Three U.S. accounts – Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Nuremberg (2000), and The Nuremberg Trials (2006) – present the IMT as a triumph of the American justice system. But Soviet participation in the trial, if noted at all, is usually portrayed as negative, crude, and obstructionist.

Indeed, at the time many Americans believed the USSR should have been tried for its own criminal behavior, especially the wartime massacre of 22,000 Polish military officers in the Katyn Forest; the Soviets falsely claimed the Nazis committed the slaughter. In addition, in August 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a non-aggression pact that divided Poland between the two dictatorships and gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland a month later, launching World War II.
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Francine Hirsch, the Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written a brilliantly researched, compelling narrative, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II, that shatters the negative perception of the Kremlin’s role in the Nuremberg Trial. She asserts the USSR was central in establishing the pioneering legal framework required for the IMT.

Alan Dershowitz is arguably America’s most famous law professor and defense attorney. His celebrated clients have included Claus von Bulow, Jeffrey Epstein, Patty Hearst, O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, and Harvey Weinstein. Dershowitz is a familiar voice and face on television, where he usually presents controversial legal views that draw attention and debate.

Although he was a supporter of Barack Obama, Dershowitz ultimately broke with him because he believed the president “engineered” a “pernicious” anti-Israel United Nations Security Council resolution in late 2016. However, Dershowitz backed Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House and has opposed efforts to impeach President Trump. He seems to enjoy being unpredictable in staking out provocative positions.

He is not, however, unpredictable on matters involving Israel. In his new book, Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client (All Points Press), Dershowitz underscores his love affair with and his passionate defense of the world’s only Jewish state: “There was never a time that Israel was not part of my consciousness.”
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The 80-year-old lover of Israel describes his youthful attraction to Zionism and, after 1948, his commitment to the survival and security of the newly independent Jewish state. He grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, attended Yeshiva University High School, Brooklyn College, and graduated first in his Yale Law School class. For many years he was a distinguished Harvard Law School professor.