I signed this pledge today and invite my readers to do so as well, wherever you live around the world, whether you are Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Please read this commitment to Interfaith Relationships carefully, and if you believe in this declaration of commitment, click onto the link at the end of the statement and include your signature. I thank you in advance.

An Invitation to Recommit to Interfaith Relationships in These Tumultuous Times

In this year of 2025 in the Western calendar, defining religious observances for Jews, Christians, and Muslims occur within days of each other. Jews commemorate liberation from slavery at special Passover meals. Christians celebrate freedom from the slavery of death brought by the resurrection of Jesus. Muslims celebrate Eid-al-Fitr as the joyful culmination of Ramadan, uniting in prayer, charity, and reinvigorated communal experience. This convergence provides a moment that our world in turmoil desperately needs, a moment to continue the progress of the past several decades in deepening interfaith relationships.

Our world is living through a time when relations among people of different faith traditions are under great stress. The ICCJ, being especially dedicated to dialogue between Jews and Christians, as well as trilateral dialogue with Muslims, believes that the violent and polarized world of today urgently needs such dialogues to continue and, indeed, to intensify in the months and years ahead.

The ICCJ has composed a declaration of recommitment to the work of dialogue, including specific practices to enhance it.

We invite any individual, organization, or institution that cherishes interreligious amity to join us in our resolve by endorsing the declaration and enacting its values in their own lives and circumstances.

A Pledge Sponsored by the International Council of Christians and Jews

The First and Second World Wars killed over one hundred million people and made refugees of hundreds of millions more. Empires fell. Nations were born. Weapons with unimaginable power were devised, threatening the very existence of life on our planet. Nonetheless, from this carnage and chaos positive initiatives arose, including in many places an historically unprecedented transformation in relationships between Jews and Christians.

Appalled and traumatized by the industrialized slaughter of two-thirds of European Jewry, people in both communities sought rapprochement after nearly two millennia of estrangement and antipathy. Christians had to confront a long history of anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence, while Jews had to risk hoping that Christian overtures were truly sincere. Crucial turning points were a conference in Seelisberg, Switzerland in 1947, which led to the founding of the International Council of Christians and Jews, and the Catholic Church’s 1965 Second Vatican Council declaration Nostra Aetate and the 1967 report of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, “The Church and the Jewish People.”

The quest for open dialogue and sincere friendship between Jews and Christians raised many moral, theological, and social questions and shed new light on each community’s self-understanding. After centuries of mutual ignorance and polemic, it took time to build trust and to learn how to speak to one another. Gradually, a unique era of dialogue, understanding, and mutual enrichment began. As never before, unfolding differently in various parts of the world, Christians and Jews, while forming civic collaborations and deep personal friendships, studied together in exceptional depth, some becoming expert in the other’s history and texts. These dialogue partners explored religious ideas that previously were avoided. Understanding themselves to be journeying together in God’s covenantal presence, they found new respect for each other’s religious integrity, leading many churches to disavow missions to convert Jews. Such efforts and experiences were models to engage with other religious communities, especially Muslims.

Over the years there have been disputes and missteps. The journey has been a complicated and uneven one. The post-Shoah geographic concentration of Jews in Israel and major cities in the United States means that most Christians around the world cannot personally engage in interreligious dialogue with Jews. In various times and places, religious radicalism dehumanizes people by setting them against each other along religious lines. Even though peace often seems an impossible dream, there are Jews, Christians, and Muslims who have nevertheless steadfastly pursued dialogue and friendship for decades. Their courageous efforts are signs of hope to people everywhere.

The war between Israel and Hamas in the wake of October 7, 2023, which has longstanding regional and intercontinental aspects, has shaken interreligious amity to a degree not seen since World War II, and will have long-term consequences. Among some Christians and Jews old stereotypes and suspicions about each other have resurfaced. Around the globe, antisemitic bigotries and even violence have surged, provoking fear. Although people view and are impacted by the current crises in diverse ways, all are haunted by the tragic death toll. Yet we who cultivate interreligious friendships yearn for and must prepare and work for the day when peace will dawn and both Palestinians and Israelis, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, will prosper in peace and security.

THE SIGNATORIES OF THIS PLEDGE RESOLVE that interreligious dialogue cannot be a victim of these or any other attacks or conflicts. Indeed, dialogue is more important than ever. We believe it to be God’s will and our holy calling. Wherever we live and whatever our circumstances, we pledge to:

• Be blessings for one another and therefore for the world,
• Support one another in our covenantal responsibilities to God,
• Share each other’s joys and sorrows,
• Actively oppose religious prejudice, including especially antisemitism, Islamophobia, or anti-Christianity, and bear truthful witness for each other when misrepresented or defamed,
• Review our religious teachings, rituals, and practices to address any elements that caricature or teach disrespect for each other, or that in any way racialize or dehumanize anyone,
• Continue and deepen the joint study of subjects that urgently need attention, such as: Christianity as more of a credal religion in comparison to Jewish self-understanding as a peoplehood, the land and state of Israel in Jewish and Christian spirituality, the meaning of the Jewish identity of Jesus for Jews and Christians today, the ongoing implications of the Shoah for Christians and for Jews, their bonds in the scriptural Word of God, their traditions of ethical reasoning, and how they can speak and act together for the good of humanity and creation,
• Seek to develop deeper interreligious friendships with Muslims, and
• Better discern the divine Presence in each other’s communities, traditions, and rituals.

In making these commitments, we pray that God will bless our efforts and continue to accompany us in our search for deepening and lasting interreligious friendship and understanding.

^{THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHRISTIANS AND JEWS (ICCJ)
MARTIN BUBER HOUSE, HEPPENHEIM
APRIL 2025}

To endorse this pledge, go to – https://www.iccj.org/resources/iccj-statements/iccj-declaration-2025.html