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The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation Statement on Christians in the Middle East

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:35:00 GMT

JUNE 8, 2010 – We, the leaders of The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding (CJCUC), are distressed over the decline of Christians throughout the Middle East. In the last 50 years, the Christian populations in the region have dropped significantly in every country except Israel. This trend has accelerated in the last 10 years.

Christians were once a majority in Lebanon, but today they comprise only 30 percent of all Lebanese. Four out of every five Maronite Christians have left the country. Assyrian Christians have left Iraq in large numbers, and a significant number of Coptic Christians are now leaving Egypt due to religious persecution. In Iran, Christian rights have been curtailed. There are no Christian citizens in Saudi Arabia, and American soldiers and foreign workers are barred from displaying their Christian faith in public. In many Middle East countries, Muslim conversion to Christianity is a capital offense.

In the Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza), Christians are declining dramatically. Bethlehem was always a Christian city. When Israel ceded authority of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority in 1995, it was more than 60% Christian. Today it is less than 20% Christian. Many Christians having the means to leave are doing so. Ramallah too was once a Christian city, but today it has less than 7,000 Christians out of a total population of 25,500. There are only 3,000 Christians left in Gaza out of 1.5 million people, and more than 2,000 Christians have left Gaza since Hamas took control two years ago.

Christians suffer from housing shortages in Jerusalem, as well as occasional discrimination and hostile behavior from Israelis. The Israeli government needs to work to ensure that these problems are solved for Israel to live up to its ideals of a democracy committed to protecting the rights of all its citizens independent of race or religion.

Yet the Christian population of Israel continues to grow. There are approximately 120,000 Arab Christians and 30,000 non-Arab Christians citizens of Israel today, compared to 35,000-40,000 Christians when Israel was founded in 1948--nearly a 400% increase

In Jerusalem, Christians numbered 30,000 when Jordan conquered the ancient city in 1948. That number dwindled to 10,000 by the time Israel retook control in 1967. Today the number of Christians in Israeli Jerusalem is up to 15,000 but is again decreasing.

So in the Holy Land, there are two different and opposite phenomena at work: A decline of Christians in Palestinian territories, and an increase of Christian population in Israel.

The CJCUC is committed to Jewish-Christian harmony and the welfare of all people in the Middle East, particularly the Jewish and Christian minorities of the region. Their security and religious freedom are fundamental historic, democratic and religious rights, and their continued presence is important to prevent the Middle East from becoming an intolerant totalitarian region.

In light of the difficult plight of Christians throughout the Middle East, it calls on all people to work for Middle East peace and the security and rights of Christians in the region.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, PhD, Chief Rabbi of Efrat
Rabbi Eugene Korn, PhD, American Director
David Nekrutman, Executive Director

The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC) was founded in 2008 by Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin, a prominent leader in today’s Modern Orthodox Jewish world. The Center is located in Efrat, southwest of Jerusalem in Gush Etzion.

In appreciation of sister Rose Thering, O.P., Ph.D., from the NCLCI

Thu, 13 May 2010 02:25:00 GMT

The following tribute was read at a public memorial service for Sister Rose at the Newark New Jersey Cathedral on September 13, 2006

IN APPRECIATION OF SISTER ROSE THERING, O.P., Ph.D., FROM THE NATIONAL CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE FOR ISRAEL

Sister Rose Thering – a teacher of teachers, a committed friend, loved by many all over the world, a diminutive nun who shook the male-dominated world of the Roman Catholic Church and forced it to pay it attention to what she had to say. Having exposed the Church’s history of false teaching about Jews and Judaism she devoted her life to making sure that the Church never stopped working to correct the errors of its past. To make sure, as much as possible, that the church’s teachings were corrected she devoted herself to teaching teachers how to teach without bearing false witness. As a teacher, Sister Rose was an early advocate of Christian-Jewish dialogue for all people, not just a few church and synagogue leaders.

Sister Rose was also an early activist for Christian-Israel relations and demonstrated her commitment by helping to create the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI) in 1978. As NCLCI’s Executive Director (1989-1995) she would go anywhere to speak about Christian support for Israel and to generate more of it. She worked tirelessly to make sure that Israel, the issue of a God-given holy land, was a topic addressed at all conferences and workshops on Christian-Jewish relations because she understood that without Israel, Christian-Jewish dialogue was incomplete. Sister Rose also recognized that Christians who were too judgmental toward Israel were demonstrating that they were not engaged in the dialogue, or were not listening to their dialogue partners.

In this time of war in the Middle East, terrorism, growing antisemitism and a diminishing commitment of some Christian denominations to Christian-Jewish relations, we miss Sister Rose’s leadership – but she left us her stimulating example. It is up to us to continue what she began and to do what she taught us to do.

May the memory of Sister Rose Thering continue to be a blessing and an inspiration for many generations to come.

David Blewett
NCLCI National Director

About Sister Rose

Thu, 13 May 2010 02:07:00 GMT

The following letter was written by Moshe Aumann, retired Israeli diplomat, in Sister Rose Thering’s memory and sent to the Jerusalem Post:

Sir, - Sister Rose Thering, whose death was reported in this morning’s Post (May 14), richly deserves all the words of praise and appreciation written about her in that article, in all that concerns the healing of old wounds in the Christian-Jewish relationship. What I found missing there, however, was mention of Sister Rose’s notable contribution to the fostering of better relations between Christians and the State of Israel.

Having known Sister Rose personally ever since her service as Executive Director of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (1988-1995), during part of which time I served as Minister-Counselor for Church Relations at the Israel Embassy in Washington, I can attest to her deep-seated and wholehearted support of the State of Israel and its people, as we struggle for a fair hearing in the court of world public opinion. This was reflected also in Sister Rose’s many visits to Israel, in her capacity as organizer and director of the Annual Seton Hall Study Tour of Israel – and on numerous other occasions. She was also, among other things, a member of the Board of Directors of the America-Israel Friendship League.

I pray that many, in both of our communities, Jewish and Christian, may continue to be inspired by her sterling example.

MOSHE AUMANN
Jerusalem

The woman behind 'Nostra Aetate'

Thu, 13 May 2010 02:27:00 GMT

Pivotal Figure
THE WOMAN BEHIND ‘NOSTRA AETATE’
Judith Banki

Those who knew Sr. Rose Thering, OP, as a fellow nun, a friend, colleague, teacher, or activist, mourn her death and celebrate her courage. Although she lived a long and productive life-dying May 6 at the age of eighty-five-her passing leaves a huge hole in the fabric of Jewish-Catholic relations. To me, she was a cherished friend for more than forty years.

I met Rose in 1960, shortly after I joined the American Jewish Committee (AJC). She was then earning a PhD at St. Louis University. How Roman Catholic textbooks and teachers’ manuals portrayed other faith communities was her dissertation topic. Her research project had been inspired by the AJC, but it was an independent study, carried out and supervised by faithful adherents of the religion studied. I was sent to meet Rose, to learn what her research findings were, to coordinate those findings with parallel (Protestant and Jewish) textbook self-studies, and to bring all the research to public attention.

We were both distressed by the hostility and calumny found in descriptions of Jews and Judaism in the textbooks. The accusations against Jews included bearing collective guilt for the death of Jesus, and thereby being accursed and rejected by God. The suffering and persecution of the Jews over the centuries-at the hands of Christians-were understood as signs of providential punishment. These libels were later described as “the teaching of contempt” by the French historian Jules Isaac. Rose’s research provided the crucial basis for the request made to the Second Vatican Council by the AJC for the church to issue an authoritative repudiation of the religious roots of anti-Semitism. I believe that the evidence of anti-Semitism Rose uncovered helped convince the council fathers of the need for what eventually emerged, after a long and bitter struggle, as Nostra Aetate.

Transformed by the implications of her research, Rose became an activist as well as a teacher. She was not easily cowed by official resistance. (In the award-winning film, Sister Rose’s Passion, about her unique contributions, Rose reports that a bishop urged her not to publicize her findings. “Don’t hang out our dirty laundry in public,” he said. “Well,” she said, “I hung it out!”)

Rose joined Seton Hall University’s newly established Institute of Judeo-Christian Studies in 1968. There, she threw her prodigious energies into the task of raising a generation of Catholic clergy, teachers, and students free from the poison of religious anti-Semitism and respectfully aware of the Jewish roots of their own tradition. Five years after the promulgation of Nostra Aetate, she and Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum cohosted a conference at Seton Hall exploring whether the teachings of Nostra Aetate had been implemented in Catholic high school and college education. She was determined that her findings would not gather dust in the historical archives of Vatican II, and worked in many ways to keep the issues alive. Rabbi Tanenbaum encouraged her work, and they remained close colleagues. After his death in 1992, Rose lent her energy and expertise to the Advisory Council of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligous Understanding, the organization named to perpetuate his work.

As a professor at Seton Hall and director of the university’s annual study tour to Israel, Rose became an influential figure in her field. She led more than fifty trips to Israel, and defended that nation against bias through her commitment to the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel. She traveled to Austria to protest the inauguration of Kurt Waldheim when his record as a Nazi officer during World War II was publicly revealed-and made headlines when she was strip-searched at the airport. Always courageous, occasionally cantankerous, she was not intimidated by titles-political or religious. Today, the Sister Rose Thering Endowment for Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton Hall provides scholarships for hundreds of teachers in New Jersey schools to facilitate teaching about the Holocaust and genocide.

A number of her fellow academics and professional colleagues were interviewed for Sister Rose’s Passion. I was among them. I observed that Rose had absorbed and internalized so much Jewish history that she intuitively reacted to situations as a Jew would: that she had “a Jewish heart,” combined with a Roman Catholic conscience. It was a potent combination!

With all Rose’s spiritual depth, there was a wonderful down-to-earth quality about her. When the rules for women’s religious communities changed after Vatican II and a number of nuns adopted contemporary clothing, I remember waxing sentimental about the graceful appearance of sisters in their habits. (Actually, I was recalling a newspaper photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. marching in the street with one or two nuns, and I believed the sisters’ “uniforms” added symbolic value to the march for civil rights.) After I invoked the gracefulness of their habits, Rose cut me short with a single comment: “Ah, Judy,” she said, “you never had to wear one!” She taught me a valuable lesson that day. Never wax romantic about the rules that regulate other peoples’ lives.

On May 1, 2001, Rose Thering finally received long overdue acknowledgement for the role her research had played at the Second Vatican Council, an award from the International Liaison Committee of the Holy See’s Commission on Relations with the Jews and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations. It was my privilege to present the award to her, and I hailed her as a planter of mustard seeds, which have and will continue to produce a harvest of understanding and mutual respect.

We often hear that the passing of a leader signifies “the end of an era.” I fervently hope that is not true in this case. In the past forty years, the theological and institutional support for the church’s traditional hostility and contempt toward the Jews has been largely uprooted. The work is far from finished, and there has been a falling off in the vitality and enthusiasm that marked the immediate post-Vatican II period. But with Sr. Rose’s indefatigable energy and commitment as example, we will honor her memory by rededicating ourselves to her goals.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Judith Banki
Judith Banki is director of special programs at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York City.

Sister Rose Thering - a tribute from the NCLCI

Thu, 13 May 2010 02:26:00 GMT

David Blewett is Sister Rose Thering’s successor as Executive Director of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel. This tribute was read at Sr. Roses’ funeral on May 9, 2006, by Dr. Richard Lux, Vice President of the NCLCI Executive Committee.

by David Blewett

The Christian Church has lost a unique pioneer and we have all lost a creative teacher, a unique leader and a cherished friend.

While Jews and Christians around the world are morning the death of Sister Rose, they are also remembering and celebrating how this little Catholic nun from Plain, Wisconsin, shook the foundations of the Christian Church and helped usher in a new reality – the era of Christian-Jewish relations. And Sister Rose never stopped shaking that ecclesiastical structure. Sister Rose continued to challenge the church in its growing relationship with Judaism and the Jewish community through the rest of her life.

One of the issues she was most critical of was the relationship of the Christian church to the Jewish homeland, Israel. For Sister Rose, support for Israel was a natural part of Jewish-Christian relations. She never really understood how Christians could participate in Christian-Jewish dialogues and claim to support Jews and Judaism while ignoring Israel; it made no sense to her.

It was her profound concern for the Church’s attitude towards Israel that led her to join other Christian leaders in 1978 to establish the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI). Apart from the years that she served as NCLCI’s Executive Director (1989-1995), Rose was a Vice-President of NCLCI’s Board of Directors and an active member of NCLCI’s Executive Committee. From personal experience I can testify that Sister Rose was as well known in Washington, DC, and in Jerusalem as she was on the Seton Hall campus where she was Professor Emerita of Jewish-Christian Studies and where the Sister Rose Thering Endowment Fund is based.

Sister Rose loved Israel and wanted everyone to share her devotion. She spoke about Israel everywhere she went; she never missed an opportunity to speak well of Israel and Israelis including to cab drivers, flight attendants and shop keepers. Most of all, Rose expressed her love of the land by taking people to Israel. She led over 50 Christian tours to Israel, many made up of students, faculty and supporters of Seton Hall University, others made up of NCLCI members.

Today, as the Christian-Israel relationship is going through an especially difficult period we draw strength and encouragement from Sister Rose’s example. May her accomplishments and her memory continue to challenge and be a blessing to all of us.

Sister Rose Biographical Sketch

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:13:00 GMT

Dr. Rose Thering, O.P. (1920-2006)
NCLCI Board of Directors Vice President (1978-1988, 1995-2006)
NCLCI Executive Director: 1988 – 1995

An activist, scholar and teacher, Sister Rose Thering dedicated her life to improving Christian-Jewish relations. As a young girl she was uncomfortable with the message of Christian intolerance toward Jews that she was exposed to in Catholic schools. Most pre-Vatican II religious texts portrayed Jews as the people who killed Jesus. At St. Louis University, her doctoral study focused on how Catholic teaching materials dealt with ethnic groups and other faiths, primarily Jews and Judaism. Her research contributed to the deliberations during Vatican II that produced the Vatican document Nostra Aetate (1965), a declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions.

Sister Rose was a tireless lecturer raising awareness of the tenets of Judaism and Catholicism and helping to eradicate intolerance. She earned more than 80 humanitarian awards including the Anti-Defamation League’s Cardinal Bea Interfaith Award (2004), the first woman to receive the award; and the prestigious Jerusalem Award (1987), which was presented to her by Mayor Teddy Kollek. She led over 60 tours to Israel. She also testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of the bill that would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

1920 – Rose Thering born in Plain, Wisconsin (Aug. 9).
1936 – Rose Thering enters the St. Catherine of Siena Convent as an Aspirant in Racine, WI.
1938 – Rose Thering becomes a novice at St. Catherine of Siena.
1940 – Sister Rose takes her first vows and enters the Dominican order. She begins her teaching career at St. Aloysius School in Saux City, WI, teaching the third grade.
1943 – Sister Rose transfers to Wausaukee, WI, to teach 60 students in grades four through six.
1946 – Sister Rose takes final vows and begins teaching at Holy Name School (sixth grade) in Racine, WI.
1948 – Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel (May 14).
1950 – Knesset establishes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
1952 – Sister Rose becomes Mistress of Aspirants at St. Catherine of Siena Convent.
1950s – During the summers, Sister Rose completes her master’s degree at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN.
1957 – Sister Rose begins her doctoral studies at St. Louis University in St. Louis, MO. Her research focuses on how Catholic religious teaching materials present other faith, racial and national groups.
1961 – Sister Rose receives her Ph.D. from St. Louis University.
1962 – Pope John XXIII convenes the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council – “Vatican II”.
1965 – Vatican II adjourns under Pope Paul VI after adopting Nostra Aetate: The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to non-Christian Religions, due in large part to Sister Rose Thering’s doctoral thesis. Nostra Aetate formally brings to an end the church’s accusation that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus (Oct. 28).
1967 – Jerusalem is reunited under Israeli control.
1968 – Monsignor John M. Oesterreicher invites Sister Rose to the Institute of Judeao-Christian Studies as Coordinator of Special Programs at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ.
1970 – Sister Rose makes her first of 54 trips to Israel for study, teaching and reflection.
1972 – Sister Rose, under the auspices of Seton Hall University, organizes the first of many Menorah Studies Tour, 30-day study tours of Israel for educators from across the United States.
1973 – Sister Rose becomes a full-time professor in the School of Education at Seton Hall University.
1978 – Sister Rose Thering joins the Rev. Drs. Franklin Littell, David Lewis, Arnold Olson and Bill Harter in founding the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI).
1979 – Pope John Paul II visits Warsaw and Auschwitz, the first Pope to visit a Nazi death camp, and in so doing sends a strong message to the Christian world regarding the need to confront and atone for the sins committed against Jews.
1982 – Sister Rose visits the Nazi death camps in Poland. The New Jersey Holocaust Education Commission convenes under Governor Thomas Kean for the purpose of promoting Holocaust education in public, private and parochial schools. Governor Kean appoints Sister Rose to the Commission, an appointment that is renewed by Governors Florio, Whitman, DiFrancesco, McGreevy and Codey.
1986 – Sister Rose travels to Vienna to protest Kurt Waldheim’s inauguration as president of Austria following revelations that Waldheim’s World War II army unit committed atrocities in Yugoslavia. Sister Rose and other protesters are roughed up in a confrontation during the inauguration protest. Later, at the airport, Sister Rose is singled out for especially crude “security” measures. The next day The New York Post headline reads, “Strip-Search by Austrians – Jersey Nun Humiliated in Vienna” (July 11).
1988 – Sister Rose becomes Professor Emerita of Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University.
1989 – Sister Rose is named the Executive Director of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI), succeeding the Rev. Isaac Rottenberg.
1993 – Seton Hall University establishes the Sister Rose Thering Endowment for Jewish Studies, dedicated to fostering Christian-Jewish understanding through education and inter-religious cooperation. This is done primarily by providing financial assistance for teachers in public, private and parochial schools to take classes in the University’s Graduate Department of Jewish-Christian Studies.
1994 – Sister Rose visits Warsaw and Auschwitz, Birkenau, Madjanek and other Nazi concentration camps with Jewish leaders from MetroWest of New Jersey. Later, the group joins over 500 other Jewish leaders in Israel. Sister Rose travels to Jordan to meet with King Hussein.
1994 – Israel and the Holy See establish diplomatic relations.
1995 – Sister Rose retires as Executive Director of NCLCI, succeeded by David Blewett, and begins full-time work with the Sister Rose Thering Endowment. She is immediately elected to the NCLCI Board of Directors as a Vice-President.
1995 – Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at peace rally in Tel Aviv.
2000 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first Pope to visit Israel and pray at the Western Wall where he places a prayer for repentance affirming that antisemitism has no place in Christianity.
2002 – Sister Rose makes her 54th and final trip to Israel traveling with the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel.
2003 – Production begins on the documentary film Sister Rose’s Passion.
2004 – Sister Rose’s Passion is honored as the Best Documentary Short at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival.
2005 – Sister Rose’s Passion is nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short.
2006 – Sister Rose Thering dies in Racine, WI (May 6).

ON “ARAB EAST JERUSALEM”
By David Blewett*

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 02:08:00 GMT

At a recent Executive Committee meeting of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI) in Washington, D.C., most of one day was spent discussing the current situation in Israel and, as expected, we had committee members on both sides of the debate. Some thought the peace process had gone too far and was endangering Israel’s security. Others felt that the peace process had not gone far enough and was on the verge of collapse, a situation that would endanger Israel’s security. Some felt that the construction at Har Homa was unnecessary and provocative; others felt that due to the critical housing shortage in Jerusalem the construction is necessary and no more provocative than any other action that demonstrates Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. However, no one questioned the Israeli government’s legal right to build at Har Homa.

Our discussion was enlightening for everyone and we all learned from each other’s insights. We came away feeling that we had participated in something good and useful, a feeling that is often missing in discussions today about the Middle East peace process.

In analyzing our experience we realized that it is necessary to respect all views on how the peace process should be implemented because no one, including North American Christians, has the final word on how peace can best be realized between Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East. It is only through respectful dialogue that all ideas can be explored and understanding developed. But dialogue, if it is to be useful, must be based on historical accuracy, not on historical revisionism.

There are words and phrases being used in discussions about the Middle East today that obstruct dialogue and distort reality. NCLCI asserts that any discussion, if it is to be beneficial, must be based on historic and linguistic accuracy.

For example, the phrase “Arab East Jerusalem” suggests that it is a separate municipal entity from Jerusalem, in the same way as East St. Louis is separate from St. Louis. To help support their argument, those who defend the phrase “Arab East Jerusalem” point out that in 1967, “the Jewish population of East Jerusalem . . . stood at zero in 1967” (National Catholic Reporter, April 25, 1997). That is because in the 1948 War of Independence, when the Jordanian army captured the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the ancient walled city, they expelled all Jews who lived or worked there, they also confiscated homes, desecrated graves and ruined 58 synagogues, turning others into chicken coops and stables. In 1967 Israel reunited Jerusalem and the city began to revive and develop again.

Jerusalem is one city made up of a wonderful rich mosaic of peoples, cultures, traditions, religions and languages. In the Old City there are the four quarters that maintain unique Armenian, Arab, Christian and Jewish traditions. What gives the Old City its vitality is that these are not four isolated ghettos but four areas that overlap and, if it were not for the occasional outside interference, coexist peacefully together.

The more modern city of Jerusalem is even more diverse. There are unique neighborhoods throughout the city. The up-scale artistic neighborhood of Yemin Moshe, the historic Russian Compound with its magnificent Cathedral, the ultra-Orthodox community of Mea She’arim, Mt. Scopus with its hospital and university, the Bukharian Quarter, the American Colony built in the nineteenth century and the eastern part of Jerusalem are only a sample of Jerusalem’s rich diversity. To imply that eastern Jerusalem, because of its distinctive Arab character, is a separate entity from Jerusalem makes no more sense than to imply that the Armenian Quarter, because of its own distinct character, should be an independent city.

The phrase “Arab East Jerusalem” implies that it has always been the exclusive Arab area of Jerusalem. The reality is that prior to 1865 the city’s entire population lived in eastern Jerusalem, inside the Old City walls. After 1865, due to the growing population of Jerusalem, both Jews and Arabs began to develop new areas of the city outside of the walls.

Before 1949 there was a flourishing Jewish community in the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem. That part of the city contains all the historic sites of importance to Judaism including the original city of King David, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The original Hadassah Hospital and the first campus of the Hebrew University were on Mt. Scopus – in eastern Jerusalem.

The only time eastern Jerusalem was totally Arab was a brief period from 1949 to 1967 after the Arab world rejected the 1949 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and launched a war to annihilate the newly reborn State of Israel. In that war, Jordan occupied the eastern part of the city and expelled all Jews. However, during those 18 years no Arab nation recognized Jordanian control over “East Jerusalem.”

NCLCI repudiates any suggestion that would ultimately divide or in any way minimize Israeli sovereignty over its capital city, Jerusalem. Use of the phrase “Arab East Jerusalem” does that by implying that there are two Jerusalems, one Arab and one Jewish, an implication that is to be rejected because it is historically false and because it has a malicious intent, which is to deny the city’s history of wholeness.

Jerusalem, except for a brief period of 19 years, has been one city made up of many diverse neighborhoods and peoples. It is important to the healthy future of the city, of Israel and the Middle East that Jerusalem remain undivided under Jewish sovereignty.

* David Blewett is the National Director of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI)