Rudin grew up in Alexandria, Va., where he was one of 10 Jewish students in a school of about 240. The Jewish kids were all friends, as they knew one another from the synagogue. But there was not a lot of mixing with the Christian population. Young Jim Rudin’s father was asked, as a man with no vested interest, to judge his neighbors’ Christmas decorations each year, and this was the beginning of Jim’s interaction with the Christian community — a positive one.