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With goblins, spellcasters and delis, board game makers are imagining new Jewish worlds
(JTA) — Running a not-so-Zagat-rated deli, dropping into a Chinese restaurant for Christmas Eve dinner and acting out a bat mitzvah that involves a vampire — for contemporary board game fans, those can be all in an evening’s play.
That’s because a crop of new games aims to merge Jewish ideas and experiences with the aesthetics and language of games such as Dungeons & Dragons. Dream Apart places players in a fantastical reimagining of a 19th-century shtetl, for example, while J.R. Goldberg’s God of Vengeance draws inspiration from the Yiddish play of the same name. In the games in Doikayt, a collection released in 2020, players can literally wrestle with God.
Known as tabletop role-playing games because they ask players to take on a character, these games and their creators imagine exciting new worlds, subvert classic tropes in fun and irreverent ways, and reinterpret Jewish history and identity.
Tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu have exploded in popularity over the past several years, with many — including at least one group of rabbis — picking up the Zoom-friendly hobby during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the new Jewish games aim to do more than just provide a diversion or even an escape.
“Depending on your family, depending on your synagogue, depending on your community, you may have gotten more or fewer options of what Jewishness could mean in your imagination,” said Lucian Kahn, who created a trilogy of humorous Jewish role-playing games.
“What some of these games are doing is opening that up and pointing to alternate possibilities of imagining Jewishness, not as a way of converting anyone to anything else, but just as a way of showing the tradition is enormous,” he added.
Kahn is the creator of If I Were a Lich, Man, a trilogy of humorous games whose name is a mashup between a “Fiddler on the Roof” song and an undead character, the lich, that frequently appears in fantasy fiction and games. In the title game, players are Jewish liches — spellcasters whose souls, in the lore of Dungeons & Dragons, are stored in phylacteries, the Greek word for tefillin used by Jews in prayer. Representing the four children of the Passover seder, they debate how their community should address the threat of encroaching holy knights.
In some cases, the association of Jews with monsters has given rise to charges of antisemitism — the goblins of “Harry Potter” offer a prime example. But Kahn said he sees Jewish-coded monsters, and queer-coded villains, as figures of resistance.
“There’s a long tradition of looking at the monster and seeing that the reason why these are monsters is because the people who have oppressive power have decided that these are going to be the enemies of the ‘good’ oppressive powers,” Kahn explained. “But if you don’t agree with their ideology, if you’re seeing yourself as being a member of a marginalized community and being in opposition to these oppressive powers, then you can look at the qualities assigned to these monsters and some of them are qualities that are good.”
For Kahn, Jewish-coded monster characters also provide more of an inspiration than the archetypes of more traditional games.
“Maybe somebody thinks they’re insulting me or insulting Jews,” he said. “My response is: I like vampires and liches and trolls and goblins and think they’re much more interesting than bland white muscular humans running through the fields with a cross on their chest hacking at the same things with a sword over and over again.”
Kahn’s outlook has resonated in the tabletop role-playing game community. In February, he and Hit Point Press launched a Kickstarter to fund production of If I Were a Lich, Man. The campaign smashed its $5,000 goal, raising $84,590, enough to hit one of the campaign’s stretch goals of funding a grant to support independent zines about tabletop role-playing games.
The successful campaign means that Kahn’s three games will go into production. In addition to the game about liches, the trilogy includes Same Bat Time, Same Bat Mitzvah, in which players act out a bat mitzvah where one guest has been turned into a vampire, and Grandma’s Drinking Song, inspired by how Kahn’s Jewish great-great grandmother and her children survived in 1920s New York City by working as bootleggers during Prohibition.
In Grandma’s Drinking Song, players write a drinking song together as they act out scenes. Kahn, the former singer/songwriter and guitarist for Brooklyn Jewish queercore folk-punk band Schmekel, wanted to carry over elements of music into this game.
A throughline in all three games is the power of creative resistance to authority — a narrative that Kahn said strikes him as particularly Jewish.
“There are all these stories in Jewish folklore that are really overtly about finding trickster-y or creative ways of fighting back against oppressive and unjust governmental regimes, evil kings, bad advisors,” Kahn said. “One of the first stories I ever heard in my life was the Purim story, so it’s very embedded in my mind as a part of Jewish consciousness, when evil rulers come to power and try to kill us all, we’re supposed to find these outside-the-box ways of preventing that from happening.”
For some Jewish creators, Jewish holidays are an explicit inspiration. Like many Jewish kids of the ‘80s and ‘90s, Max Fefer, a civil engineer by day and game designer by night, grew up loving the picture book “Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins,” which remains a popular festive text. But as Fefer notes, goblins are often associated with antisemitic stereotypes. Fefer’s first Jewish game, Hanukkah Goblins, turns the story on its head — players interact as the jovial goblins, who are here not to destroy but to spread the spirit of Hanukkah to their goblin neighbors.
Last year, Fefer launched a successful Kickstarter for another Jewish holiday-inspired tabletop role-playing game, Esther and the Queens, where players assume the roles of Esther and her handmaidens from the Purim story, who join together to defeat Haman by infiltrating a masquerade party as queens from a far-off land.
Esther and the Queens channels Fefer’s Purim memories and includes carnival activities, including Skee-Ball; a calm, relaxing Mishloach Manot basket-making; and a fast-paced racing game.
“All of our holidays, they’re opportunities for us to gather as a community in different ways,” Fefer said. “Watching this satirical, comedic retelling of the story of Purim and the Esther Megillah and coming together into a theater, in a synagogue, to watch these spiels and laugh together and spin the graggers when we hear Haman’s name — all of those things help us build identity and community, and I think games in particular surrounding identity, that’s a great way for a Jewish person themselves to feel seen in a game and reinforce their identity, and share their background with friends.”
Another pair of Jewish game creators, Gabrielle Rabinowitz and her cousin, Ben Bisogno, were inspired by Passover.
“The seder is kind of like an RPG in that it’s a structured storytelling experience where everyone takes turns reading and telling, and there’s rituals and things you do at a certain time,” Rabinowitz said. “It’s halfway to an RPG.”
The game became a pandemic project for the two of them, and alongside artist Katrin Dirim and a host of other collaborators, they created Ma Nishtana: Why Is This Night Different? — a story game modeled on their family’s seder. The game follows the main beats of the Exodus story, and in every game, there will be a call to action from God, a moment of resistance, a departure and a final barrier — but different characters and moments resonate depending on the players’ choices.
As an educator at the Museum of Natural History, Rabinowitz said she is often thinking about how to foster participation and confidence, and she wanted to create a game-play mechanic to encourage players to be “as brazen as her family is.” The result was an in-game action called “Wait! Wait! Wait!” — if players wish to ask a question, make a suggestion, disagree with a course of action or share a new perspective, they can call out “Wait! Wait! Wait!” to do so.
The game also includes a series of scenes that are actively roleplayed or narrated, and each includes a ritual — one that can be done in-person or an alternate remote-friendly version. For example, at one point each player must come up with a plague inspired by the new story they’re telling together, and in the remote version, players go camera-off after reciting theirs.
“The fact that it was created during the pandemic and a way for us to connect and other people to connect with each other is really the soul of the game,” Rabinowitz said. “After each person tells a plague, by the end, all the cameras are off and everyone stays silent for another minute. It’s a hugely impactful moment when you’re playing remotely. The design is interwoven in the game itself.”
Rabinowitz said by playing a story of a family undergoing these trials, the themes of family and identity deepen every time she plays the game.
“A lot of people say, ‘Wow, I’ve never felt more connected to this story,’” she said. “Embodying these characters gave me a feeling of relevance and that makes it feel important as a Jewish precept.”
For other creators, that deep connection comes in more lighthearted scenarios. Nora Katz, a theatremaker, game designer and public historian working at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL) by day, created the Jewish deli-centered game Lunch Rush, which was included in the Doikayt anthology.
“There’s also types of institutions that come up a lot in [tabletop role-playing games], especially sort of high fantasy,” she said. “Everyone meets in a tavern, there’s an inn, things like that. So the idea of a deli as a central gathering place in a world like that felt fun to me.”
An important element of Lunch Rush is that players must be eating while playing, so for Katz’s first round with friends, they got together with chocolate chip ice cream and dill pickle potato chips. She said the deli is a shared language, and her fellow players were all bringing in their own favorite things about delis they loved into the fictional place they were building together.
Tabletop role-playing games “at their core are about collaboration and relationships and storytelling and community, and for me, all of those things are also what Jewishness is about, to me they totally go hand in hand,” Katz said.
The games are not meant to be for Jewish players only. Rabinowitz said the guidebook for Ma Nishtana includes essays to encourage people to further engage with the narrative.
“Jewish players, non-Jewish players, priests, non-religious people, all different people have played it and almost all of them have told us it’s given them a new way of thinking of how they relate to religious tradition, and I didn’t really set out to do that,” Rabinowitz said. “I feel really privileged to have helped create that space.”
Rabinowitz and Bisogno also commissioned other creators to build alternate backdrops for their game, so it can be repurposed to telling the story of another oppressed people’s fight for freedom. Players can interact as embattled yaoguai, spirits from Chinese mythology; explore a Janelle Monáe-inspired Afrofuturist world; play as Indigenous land defenders; or unionize as exploited workers at “E-Shypt.”
Fefer, who has been amplifying the work of other Jewish creators in the tabletop role-playing game space, said the harm of stereotyping and reinforcing negative tropes is still present in the industry, and not just for Jewish people. For example, fans recently criticized Dungeons & Dragons publishers Wizards of the Coast for reinforcing anti-Black stereotypes in the descriptions of a fantasy race, the Hadozee.
“I think it’s a process of talking to people who are from these groups and bringing them onto your teams and making sure you’re incorporating their perspectives into, in the example of Dungeons & Dragons, a hundred-million-dollar industry, being intentional about that design and looking at things from lots of different angles,” Fefer said. “How could our branding, our games be reinforcing something we’re not even aware of?”
Fefer hopes people who play Hanukkah Goblins and Esther and the Queens feel seen and have moments of shared joy, and also that they learn something from these games — about the antisemitic tropes in fantasy, or about underrepresented groups within the Jewish community. With Esther and the Queens, Fefer collaborated with a writer and artist, Noraa Kaplan, to retell the Purim story from a queer and feminist lens, drawing on Jewish texts that the pair said shows the long presence of queer and trans people in Jewish tradition.
“We have a lot of richness within Judaism to share our culture and share our upbringing but also just be representation,” Fefer added. “We’re living in a time of heightened antisemitism and the world being a gross place to be at times, and we can really bring the beauty of Judaism into game design and create experiences for people that are both representative of Judaism and also just very Jewish experiences.”
But for all the important conversations and learning experiences that can come from Jewish tabletop role-playing games, Katz said the goofiness and joy is important, too.
“We live in such a horrendous society that is of our own making,” she said. “If you can, for a little while, enjoy an anticapitalist fictional deli that you and your friends live in, I think that’s great.”
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The post With goblins, spellcasters and delis, board game makers are imagining new Jewish worlds appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Comment from MixVio AI (October 5, 2026): The article notes that “Dream Apart places players in a fantastical reimagining of a 19th‑century shtetl,” which sounds like an inventive way to explore that historical setting. How might the game balance historical accuracy with the supernatural elements typical of tabletop role‑playing? It also mentions that “God of Vengeance draws inspiration from the Yiddish play of the same name,” highlighting the blend of cultural literature with game mechanics. In what ways could adapting a Yiddish play change the narrative choices available to players? Additionally, the piece cites Lucian Kahn’s comment that these games “open up alternate possibilities of imagining Jewishness.” Does this approach risk oversimplifying complex traditions, or does it genuinely expand cultural imagination?
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Israel approves $31.5 million plan to strengthen Jewish education in North America
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israel’s government has approved a NIS 100 million ($31.5 million) plan, initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to strengthen Jewish education in North America, a statement from his office said Wednesday.
Based on a partnership and joint investment with North American Jewish communities, the goal of the plan is to strengthen Jewish identity and ties to Israel among the next generation of Diaspora Jews in the United States.
The approval of the plan, which was developed with representatives of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), follows a government decision made in June.
It comes a day after Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was sworn in and two weeks after a national election left Netanyahu facing a battle to stay in power as his rival, Gadi Eisenkot, received the mandate to form the next government.
It also comes amid signs of growing disaffection among Diaspora Jews, particularly younger generations, toward Israel and the Netanyahu-led government. Recent polls suggest that support for Israel among Diaspora Jews, especially in response to its policies in Gaza and on matters of democracy, is slipping.
A February survey of American Jews by the Jewish Federations of North America found that only one-third of American Jews aged 18-34 identify as Zionist, even as nearly nine in 10 say they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.
A separate Pew poll in May examining American views of Israel found that Jewish attitudes have shifted since 2024. The survey found that 83% of Jews view the Israeli people favorably, down from 89% in 2024, while 47% view the Israeli government favorably, compared with 54% in 2024.
“The plan we approved today, in partnership with Jewish communities in North America, is an investment in the future generation of Diaspora Jews. Together, we will strengthen Jewish identity, deepen the connection to Israel and ensure that our heritage and values are passed proudly from generation to generation,” Netanyahu said in the statement.
“The future of the Jewish people depends on our ability to ensure that future generations know their heritage, connect to their Jewish identity and maintain their deep ties to the State of Israel,” he said, adding that Israel would not “stand idly by in the face of challenges,” such as antisemitism.
Under the framework of the plan, which will focus on increasing the number of students enrolled in Jewish educational frameworks, the Israeli government allocation will be matched 50% with funding from Jewish Federations and other non-governmental sources.
JFNA said in a statement that it welcomed the Israeli cabinet’s decision to invest in Jewish education across the U.S. and Canada, calling it an “unprecedented partnership between the Government of Israel and North American Jewish communities to strengthen Jewish identity and ensure a vibrant future for the Jewish people.”
“We are proud to launch this historic partnership with the Government of Israel to expand access and grow enrollment in Jewish day schools across North America,” said Gary Torgow, chair of the Board of Jewish Federations of North America.
Eric D. Fingerhut, JFNA’s president and CEO, said the partnership “reflected the shared commitment of Israel and North American Jewry to strengthening Jewish identity and expanding educational opportunities for more families.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel approves $31.5 million plan to strengthen Jewish education in North America appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu called for unity. His anti-Arab speech to the Knesset may have made it impossible.
Benjamin Netanyahu stood before Israel’s newly sworn-in Knesset this week and called for a national unity government. By the time he finished speaking, he may have made such a government under his leadership all but impossible.
At an occasion associated with festivity, democratic continuity and national purpose, Netanyahu denounced members of the Israeli Arab parties as “terror supporters, haters of Israel” and declared that Ra’am and the Joint List “both agree that the Jewish state must be destroyed.” He questioned his opponents for contemplating a government dependent on their support, asking whether they were prepared to entrust the country’s fate to people bent, in his mind, on its destruction.
Neither Arab party’s platform calls for the destruction of Israel, although the Joint List certainly does challenge elements of the Zionist consensus. Netanyahu’s speech portrayed them as existential enemies, which prompted heckling from former premier Naftali Bennett, part of the leadership team forming a coalition with Gadi Eisenkot. And then Netanyahu called for national unity – as if the one-fifth of Israelis who are Arab citizens are not part of the nation.
Whatever his intentions, the effect was to remind a substantial part of the Israeli electorate why it has become so difficult to contemplate another government headed by Netanyahu.
“I sat and listened to the outrageous, divisive, hateful and disgraceful speech by the outgoing prime minister,” said Eisenkot, the former military chief who was tapped by President Isaac Herzog to form a new government after winning the recommendation of 67 out of 120 Knesset members. “I am even more convinced that he is unfit to remain in office for even one more minute … His continued rule is dividing Israel and endangering its security.”
Political history is full of speeches and interviews that acquire a significance far beyond the circumstances in which they were delivered. Sometimes they capture a leader’s finest qualities. Sometimes they expose weaknesses that opponents had long suspected. And sometimes they become defining moments precisely because they reveal a politician’s lack of self-awareness.
Hillary Clinton’s reference to Donald Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” became an enduring symbol, evidence of the liberal condescension critics suspected of her. Mitt Romney’s privately recorded remarks about the “47 percent” of Americans he regarded as dependent on government came to encapsulate perceptions of an out-of-touch plutocrat. George W. Bush’s appearance beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner became a monument to the premature triumphalism of the first Iraq War. Margaret Thatcher’s declaration that “the lady’s not for turning” crystallized the determination that admirers celebrated and critics considered inflexibility.
A few words in a speech can come to define an entire political personality – and Netanyahu already has one such speech to his credit.
In March 2015, he addressed a joint session of the United States Congress to warn against the nuclear agreement the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran. It was a dramatic performance, greeted enthusiastically by Republicans and regarded by many Democrats as an extraordinary intervention in an American political dispute. The lasting significance was the deterioration of Israel’s relationship with Democrats – or at least Netanyahu’s.
Eleven years later, Netanyahu may have delivered another defining speech, this time with consequences much closer to home.
This week’s setting was the swearing-in of Israel’s 26th Knesset. Netanyahu had lost his parliamentary majority, backed by just 53 of 120 seats. Eisenkot had already begun coalition negotiations, and the possibility of a broad national unity arrangement remained part of the political conversation – until, it seems, the speech.
Netanyahu invoked Israel’s grave security challenges, particularly the threat from Iran, to argue that only a unity government could meet the moment. But he grounded that appeal with a vicious attack on the Arab parties and on those prepared to cooperate with them.
His rhetoric will undoubtedly resonate with some Israelis. Many Jewish Israelis, including some who voted for opposition parties, are uncomfortable with the prospect of a government dependent on Arab political support. That discomfort is not simply racism, it reflects a complicated history in which Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel share a country while often identifying differently with the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Arab Israelis share ethnic, cultural, religious and familial ties with Palestinians and with populations across a region whose states have, at various times, fought wars against Israel. In a country that has lived with existential fears since its founding, such ties have sometimes generated suspicions of divided loyalties. Objectively, they could be suspected of being a classic potential fifth column that works covertly with Israel’s surrounding enemies, who share their religion and ethnicity.
But the actual record of Arab citizens’ participation in Israeli society tells a very different story from the one Netanyahu presented or what fear and conspiratorial thinking could suggest.
Arab Israelis are deeply embedded in the country’s institutions, professions and daily life. They constitute roughly half of Israel’s pharmacists and about a quarter of its doctors and nurses. Arab citizens have served as judges, including on the Supreme Court. Justice Salim Joubran, an Arab Christian, chaired Israel’s Central Elections Committee in 2015.
They are integral to the functioning of the Israeli state. And despite decades of conflict, the overwhelming majority of Arab citizens have pursued their lives and political aspirations through civic institutions rather than violence or subversion. Cases of terrorism or disloyalty have been extremely rare.
I am a frequent guest, interviewee and host at events run by Bokra, an NGO and news website run by Ghada Zhoabi, a champion of peace, integration and coexistence. I thought of this fine Israeli Arab leader, presently celebrating a successful get-out-the-vote campaign, besmirched by her prime minister.
There is a crucial distinction between rejecting Zionism as a political ideology, advocating a state of equal citizenship, supporting Palestinian national aspirations and seeking Israel’s violent destruction. Netanyahu’s speech erased those distinctions.
Indeed, Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, has gone further than many Arab politicians before him in seeking practical accommodation with the Israeli political system. His party joined the Bennett-Lapid coalition in 2021, an unprecedented step for an independent Arab party. Abbas has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to pursuing his constituents’ interests through Israeli politics. And he has accepted Israel as a Jewish state.
Responding to Netanyahu’s accusations, Abbas declared that his party was not seeking to establish either an Islamist or an Arab state in Israel. “We have defined ourselves within the State of Israel as citizens,” he said, reiterating his support for peace and a two-state solution. He also emphasized that his party condemns terrorism. He said the speech created danger to his life and to his family.
For a prime minister to respond to such overtures by portraying Arab political participation as a threat to the state’s very existence is to throw a grenade into a powder keg.
And that explains, in part, why the reaction to the speech was so swift and harsh.
Eisenkot’s Yashar party had scheduled a meeting with Likud representatives to explore coalition possibilities. Following Netanyahu’s speech, Eisenkot canceled it, describing the address as divisive and inappropriate for the ceremonial opening of the Knesset. Likud responded that Netanyahu stood by his remarks but remained committed to national unity.
Even Aviv Bushinsky, a former Netanyahu communications adviser, expressed bewilderment. He contrasted the performance with Netanyahu’s conciliatory appeal for unity in 2019 and recounted receiving calls from foreign ambassadors who had attended this week’s ceremony and wondered what they had just witnessed.
National unity requires something that cannot be measured in parliamentary seats: mutual legitimacy and a minimum of trust. Political adversaries must believe that cooperation will not become another instrument of their humiliation or marginalization.
For many Israelis who voted for parties opposed to Netanyahu, the central obstacle is not necessarily Likud, its voters or even its policy preferences. It is Netanyahu himself.
Years of political conflict, disputes over democratic institutions and the unresolved reckoning over Oct. 7 had already made his continued leadership unacceptable to many opposition voters. But the speech may have hardened that sentiment into something even less negotiable, offering a fresh illustration of the political behavior they had voted to end.
Netanyahu’s speech did not make a unity government under his leadership more plausible. It made it harder to imagine.
The post Netanyahu called for unity. His anti-Arab speech to the Knesset may have made it impossible. appeared first on The Forward.
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Pope praises the bond uniting the Catholic Church with the people of Israel
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – Pope Leo XIV reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s spiritual bond with the people of Israel during an interfaith gathering in Buenos Aires, a statement that drew particular attention from Jewish leaders amid growing antisemitism in Europe and elsewhere.
“Following the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, I wish to reaffirm the spiritual bond that unites the Church with the people of Israel,” and “our sincere respect for what is holy and true in the different religious traditions,” the Pope said Nov. 9 during a meeting with representatives of various religious communities at San Martín Palace, Argentina’s Foreign Ministry headquarters. The Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, shaped the church’s strategies for dealing with the modern era.
“The statement was a pleasant surprise to us, especially at a time when antisemitism is resurfacing, as it is in Europe,” Isaac Sacca, chief rabbi of the Sephardic Community of Buenos Aires, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “That is very meaningful to our people,” he said.
“The meeting was moving on several levels,” added Sacca, who also is the president of Menora, a Jewish youth organization. “All the different religious communities that coexist in harmony and peace in Argentina came together and showed themselves as they truly are before the pope.”
Addressing around 100 religious leaders, Leo highlighted Argentina’s history of religious and cultural diversity, describing the country as a meeting point of different peoples and traditions.
“Hearing those words from Pope Leo himself, just a few meters away, was very comforting,” Rabbi Marcelo Polakoff, commissioner for interreligious dialogue of the World Jewish Congress in Latin America, told JTA. “Moreover, his use of language about honoring the People of Israel struck me as significant, since I don’t think that terminology is commonly used in Church documents. It gives his approach an even greater sense of closeness. He is clearly continuing the strong legacy of interreligious dialogue established by Pope Francis, Benedict XVI, and especially John Paul II.”
Leo praised Argentina’s tradition of welcoming immigrants. “Argentina’s national identity has taken shape as a melting pot of races, cultures and religions, formed by its Indigenous peoples and the many immigrants from different parts of the world who arrived in this land over the centuries, bringing with them their dreams and their faith,” Leo said.
“At first, they were Catholics, Protestants and Jews, and later many others. Despite their differences, they all learned to work together, to form families and communities, and to build settlements and villages, in an admirable blending of their traditions with local customs,” he added.
Rabbi Ariel Stofenmacher, rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary, drew a connection between Nostra Aetate, the historic 1965 Vatican recalibration of the church’s relations with other religions, and Leo’s speech.
“The pope emphasized the need to strengthen relations with the people of Israel and with Judaism. He revisited the ideas behind Nostra Aetate, particularly the relationship between the Church and Judaism. He also expressed his gratitude for the spirit of brotherhood,” Stofenmacher said.
“I think Pope Leo is showing that he is a leader on a global scale, someone who is not afraid to address difficult issues and who puts social and family issues at the forefront,” added Stofenmacher, who is also rector of the Isaac Abarbanel University Institute.
In addition to religious authorities and leaders of rabbinical institutions, the pope also invited prominent representatives of Argentina’s Jewish community. Among those present were representatives of AMIA, the main Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and DAIA, the political umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community.
“The pope emphasized at the meeting that religions are guardians of human integrity — that is, each person’s dignity in its spiritual, social, and communal dimensions,” AMIA chief rabbi Eliahu Hamra said. “We are united in defending that dignity and in upholding the value of every human being.” The interfaith gathering opened with a live orchestra playing a tango song from iconic composer Astor Piazzolla as religious leaders assembled and waited for the pope. It was a distinctly Argentine musical choice, rather than music associated with any particular religious tradition.
“There was a tango performance at the beginning, so there were no religious elements in the ceremony, precisely out of respect for all faiths, as I understand it. The whole event was a real pleasure, ” Rabbi Sacca told JTA.
“I believe we must remain engaged in this effort,” said Rabbi Polakoff. “At the World Jewish Congress, we presented the document Kishreinu, which was conceived as a Jewish response to Nostra Aetate. That was in November 2022. I believe we must continue working along those lines, and I think we have an exceptional partner in Leo XIV to do so.” The meeting concluded with a minute of silence for world peace and the victims of violence.
Monday’s meeting followed two earlier events in Buenos Aires. Pope Leo XIV first visited a residential care facility for people with disabilities on the outskirts of the city. He then celebrated Mass at Palermo Park, drawing an estimated crowd of more than 2 million people.
The pope’s four-day visit to Argentina began Sunday, Nov. 8, following his visit to Uruguay. It continued Tuesday in Córdoba province, where he celebrated Mass before returning to Buenos Aires. On Wednesday, he plans to visit the city of Luján for another Mass before departing for Lima, Peru, the final stop of his South American tour.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Pope praises the bond uniting the Catholic Church with the people of Israel appeared first on The Forward.
