The Sussex Area Jewish-Christian Dialogue, Sparta, New Jersey
In Sparta, New Jersey, a community with very few Jewish residents, Targum Shlishi partnered with Reverend Daniel Murphy, pastor of Blessed Kateri Parish, to initiate a series of programs to foster Jewish-Christian dialogue. The initiative, which began in 1993 and continues today, had three goals at its inception: to establish educational projects that would help Christians to better understand and respect their religion’s roots in Judaism; to create a model of Jewish-Christian interaction to be shared with other churches and groups; and to create a Holocaust memorial on the church grounds.

These goals have led to the creation of innovative programming that has met with impressive results. “We…fostered harmony and understanding and helped both Christians and Jews deepen their own faith,” said Reverend Murphy. Many participants reported that the activities and ensuing discussions changed the perceptions of both the Holocaust and Judaism for hundreds of the area’s Christian citizens. The initiative has proven so enduring that groups from the parish have repeatedly visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. There are several programs that Blessed Kateri Parish now holds on a regular basis. Each year, the parish hosts an ecumenical Holocaust service in November and invites guest speakers—usually Holocaust survivors. In addition, the local rabbi has addressed the parish community on several occasions. Blessed Kateri has also presented programs on preaching about Jews and Judaism to local clergy in the area. The parish has a model Seder each year at Passover, for which a local synagogue hosts the church’s fifth-grade students. There are two Jewish-Christian forums annually that explore various topics, including prayer, medical ethics, and ritual. The church also erected a wall plaque in its outdoor garden commemorating righteous gentiles who helped individual Jewish victims during the Holocaust. “Death shall be forever destroyed,” words from Isaiah, are inscribed on the plaque.

Most of the programs described above have been aired on local television channels. Targum Shlishi has provided seed funding for the parish to produce a video treatment based on this documentation, with the goal of distributing it to other churches to encourage them to establish similar programs.

“Had our great-grandparents supported programs like this in Berlin, Warsaw,
Rome, and Brussels, perhaps there would have been more Christians who spoke out 60 years ago,” said Aryeh Rubin of Targum Shlishi. www.blessedkateri.org

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