With Rabbi Darby Leigh, Rev. Hannah C. Brown, and Dr. Jacob Meskin
This is a 6-session class. The first and last sessions will be in person only. The remaining sessions will be online only.
Session 1: Sunday, September 15
4:00-5:30 pm (In-person Only at West Concord Union Church)
Session 2: Sunday, September 22
7:00 pm (Online Only)**
Session 3: Sunday, September 29
7:00 pm (Online Only)**
Session 4: Sunday, October 6
7:00 pm (Online Only)**
Session 5: Sunday, October 13
7:00 pm (Online Only)**
Session 6: Sunday, October 20
4:00 pm (In-person Only at Kerem Shalom)
ATTENDANCE WILL BE LIMITED so please RSVP by September 13, 2024
**Zoom link for online participation will be provided**
Join Rabbi Darby and Rev. Hannah C. Brown, Pastor of the West Concord Union Church, along with Hebrew College Senior Lecturer Dr. Jacob Meskin, for teachings on Christian-Jewish relations, open to members of KS and the WCUC.
Thoughtful Jews and Christians stand at a rare moment in the early twenty-first century. Recent developments point to a future that might be very different from what was often a sad and tragic past. For example, the famous declaration “Nostra Aetate,” issued by the Catholic Church in 1965, offered a new and sympathetic perspective on Jewish-Christian relations. In addition, fascinating advances in scholarship by both Jewish and Christian researchers, have invited all of us to re-imagine, in radical ways, the complex emergence of what we now call “Christianity” from its original matrix—namely the Judaism of the first century of the common era.
These and other developments promise new hope for those of us who seek to repair the complex and often tragic history of Jewish-Christian relations, and who look forward to Jews and Christians living side by side, in their respective faiths, as friends and allies who have much to learn from each other.
In this unique six-session course, members of Kerem Shalom and the West Concord Union Church will join together as a group to study both the often-painful history of Jewish-Christian relations and the exciting new insights and paradigms that may help us learn from the past and begin to forge a different future. As we get to know each other in our ongoing dialogue, we will be working together to understand what happened in the past, why it happened, and, above all, how grasping the deep reasons behind past events may help to liberate us to envision a better future together.
We will be joined in our conversations on several occasions by Rabbi Darby Leigh and Reverend Hannah C. Brown. Some of the topics that we will study together include The Jewishness of Jesus; The Essential role of Paul and the Relationship Between his Teachings and Judaism; The Nature of Rabbinic Judaism; Church Doctrine and Theological Ideas About Jews in the Middle Ages; The Crusades; The Reformation and the Jews; Modern European Attitudes Toward the Jews; Vatican II and the Jews; and Contemporary Reflections on Jewish-Christian Relations.