New Catholic-Jewish resource looks to 'translate hate' and counter antisemitism

New Catholic-Jewish resource looks to 'translate hate' and counter antisemitism
By Gina Christian , OSV News

(OSV News) -- Catholic and Jewish leaders have created a new tool to tackle record-high levels of antisemitism through education and awareness.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the American Jewish Committee have teamed up to release "Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition," a resource that confronts antisemitism by cataloging anti-Jewish slurs, while providing Catholic teaching that counters such hatred.

The document was unveiled Dec. 11 by Bishop Joseph C. Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania, chairman of the USCCB's Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, and Rabbi Noam Marans, the AJC's director of interreligious affairs.

The 61-page glossary of antisemitic terms and commentary, available in pdf format on the AJC's website, builds on the AJC's "Translate Hate" initiative, which was first released in 2019, said Rabbi Marans in a Dec. 10 interview with OSV News.

"It began with a few dozen (terms) as part of stopping antisemitism, (which) starts with understanding it," he said. "Now it's up to about 65-70 terms."

The document uses the working definition of antisemitism adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA. That summation states that "antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."

Among the contemporary examples of antisemitism listed by the IHRA are calling for the killing or harm of Jews; dehumanizing or demonizing them; accusing them of killing Jesus (known as the "deicide" charge); claims that Jews kill non-Jews for the ritual use of victims' blood (the "blood libel" trope); denying or minimizing the Shoah (the preferred Hebrew term for the Holocaust); collectivizing them for real or imagined harm; implicating them in conspiratorial theories regarding economic, governmental or other sociocultural control; and accusing them of overriding or blind loyalty to the state of Israel.

The Catholic edition of "Translate Hate" begins with forewords by both Bishop Bambera and Rabbi Marans, and includes numerous images of antisemitic tropes culled from recent periodicals and social media posts.

Rounding out the detailed explications of each term is an extensive bibliography of Catholic resources on Catholic-Jewish relations, drawn from the Second Vatican Council, papal documents, pontifical commissions and councils, and the USCCB.

Rabbi Marans admitted that the process of compiling the glossary was a painful one.

"It's not pleasant to flip through the industry of hating my people," he said.

According to data from the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitism -- which has been on the rise in recent years -- spiked to historic levels following Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, when militants from the Gaza Strip gunned down more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took over 240 civilians and soldiers hostage. The ensuing Israel-Hamas war, which has threatened to become a wider regional conflict, saw numerous campus protests at U.S. colleges and universities during which antisemitic incidents were reported.

"We're dealing with a three-headed monster with antisemitism," Rabbi Marans said.

He listed "the skyrocketing toxicity of hate in the U.S. and in the world," the historical "distance from the reality and the lessons of the Shoah," and "social media."

That last is "an enormous challenge," said Rabbi Marans, since "it feeds on hate.

"It's designed to do so because of its algorithms: keeping customers and sucking people in to escalate," he said. "And secondly, it allows near or complete anonymity."

He said the AJC is working "very closely with social media companies" to ensure "control of the excesses of certain types of hate speech, while assuring freedom of expression."

Rabbi Marans noted the timing of the AJC-USCCB's collaboration was "particularly poignant," given the latter's 2022 launch of an initiative titled "The Fruits of Dialogue: Catholics Confronting Antisemitism."

Speaking to OSV News Dec. 10, Bishop Bambera said that "Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition" is "one result of that" effort.

Rabbi Marans also said the new document's release presages the upcoming 60th anniversary of "Nostra Aetate," the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, which featured the Catholic Church's first formal denunciation of anti-Jewish hatred.

"Nostra Aetate" ("In Our Time"), promulgated in 1965 by St. Paul VI as part of Vatican II, deplored "hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone," while affirming the "spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews."

Specifically, "Nostra Aetate" refuted the historic deicide charge against the Jewish people, stating that while "Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ ... what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today."

In addition, said the text, "although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures."

"All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ," the document states.

That language marked a seismic shift from centuries of what French historian Jules Isaac had called a "teaching of contempt" toward the Jewish community by Catholic and other Christian theologians.

In 1948, Isaac, a renowned Jewish academic whose wife and daughter were murdered at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland, published "Jésus et Israel," the first full analysis of Christian anti-Judaism. The year before, Isaac also helped to develop the International Council of Christians and Jews' "Ten Points of Seelisburg," which stressed Christianity's need to recover a historically and theologically accurate understanding of Judaism.

Scholars have documented a brief but pivotal June 13, 1960, meeting between Isaac and St. John XXIII as the major catalyst behind "Nostra Aetate." Soon after, the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity -- led by Cardinal Augustin Bea, a Jesuit -- was specifically tasked with addressing Catholic-Jewish relations, a project that ultimately led to the secretariat drafting Vatican II's "Nostra Aetate."

Bishop Bambera told OSV News the full reception of "Nostra Aetate" at every level of the Catholic Church remains far from complete.

"I think the substance of 'Nostra Aetate' ... has resonated with church leaders for the most part, and with a fair number of the Christian faithful," he said. "I think where we have fallen short is we simply have not communicated and taught well the substance of this document."

Bishop Bambera said that "the only way in which we will ever combat antisemitism is to understand it."

"Part of the problem we face is that people don't even realize at times that the comments that are made, and the attitudes (held), and just common references to the Jewish people in particular, have been passed down from one generation to the next in families and neighborhoods, in various communities," he said. "I think people don't even realize how hurtful those things are."

Some anti-Jewish tropes, said Bishop Bambera, "have the potential to unleash tremendous hatred and destruction to a community of people."

He said that reading through "Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition" highlights the historical sweep of antisemitism.

"It reflects centuries and centuries of hatred, of discrimination and of persecution," said Bishop Bambera.

Combating antisemitism is also part of the church's responsibility to foster ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, which is not "an add-on," but "at the core of who we are called to be," said Bishop Bambera.

"We never feign any sense of unity for the sake of the term," he said. "But we (are) true to who we are, and in the process, work with who we are and our partners in dialogue."

Learning and listening are crucial to that task, said the bishop.

"We have to know who we are as Catholic Christians, and what the church teaches about our relationships with other Christian communities, particularly in light of this conversation that we're having with our Jewish brothers and sisters," he said. "They are our partners. We share a patrimony. Our roots as Christians are in the Jewish tradition, and we need to know that. We need to be able to embrace that."

Healing the centuries-old wounds between the Jewish and Catholic communities will take time and effort, said Bishop Bambera, emphasizing that "anything that is worthwhile is worth working for."

He said, "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."