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Evangelical churches are turning to a Jewish nonprofit to help them have hard conversations
(JTA) – Jeff Nitz, a social worker and lay leader at his church, sees himself as a trained listener.
But beginning in 2020, his congregation — Mosaic Church in the evangelical Christian hub of Lynchburg, Virginia — started becoming riven by fierce COVID-era fights over masking, distancing and vaccinations.
Used to bridging divides among his fellow parishioners, Nitz was at a loss. “I’m used to doing active listening, but there were times where it felt like I would much rather just avoid this person than having the deeper conversation,” he said.
For help, Nitz turned to a Jewish nonprofit, Resetting the Table, which has spent nearly a decade teaching Jewish groups to have more productive and meaningful conversations about Israel. The group offers a modified version of its program to churches and other groups grappling with polarization, so last year, Nitz’s church held two sessions facilitated by Resetting the Table staffers, focused on how to talk about COVID.
Congregants on opposite ends of each issue presented their cases — and then the other side would repeat back the arguments they heard. By the end, Nitz said, he had come to understand his congregants better — and, he believed, they had come to understand him better, too. “He absolutely heard my heart,” he recalled about an anti-vaxxer congregant who had articulated his own ideas back to him.
It’s a breakthrough that Resetting the Table believes it can help happen more often in churches. Founded in 2014 out of the worry that American Jews’ arguments over Israel were tearing apart their communities, the group expanded its work beyond Jewish communities several years ago, expanding its reach even wider during the pandemic era.
“We saw the U.S. descending into its own intractable conflict,” said Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, Resetting the Table’s co-founder.
Last year, Resetting the Table worked with more than a dozen Christian umbrella groups representing tens of thousands of churches and several million church members affiliated with Mainline Protestant, Catholic, evangelical, African-American, Pentecostal and Orthodox traditions. And in the coming year, just half of the organization’s work will be with Jewish groups. The other half is with non-Jewish houses of worship, companies in the entertainment industry and other organizations — work that Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw’s Hearthland Foundation started funding last year.
According to surveys, the expansion is responding to a significant concern: A study last year found that 28% of U.S. adults named political polarization or extremism as a top issue facing the country.
“There is perhaps more trepidation and anxiety about this work at this stage in Christian communities,” Weintraub said. “But there is also comparable relief and fulfillment once people have done so successfully and seen it makes their communities feel closer to each other.”
Topics more likely to come up in non-Jewish settings include the status of LGBTQ people and women in the church, COVID restrictions and the 2020 election. A series of sessions last spring that were geared toward evangelical leaders, including professors from Liberty University in Lynchburg, covered a laundry list of hot-button political topics, including the role of government, guns, free speech, voting, the death penalty, police, race and abortion.
The group’s sessions in real life, and virtually, begin in large groups. The lead facilitator spells out that the point of the exercise is not to change minds, but to allow conversations to take place, whether or not they shift people’s opinions.
“Some people might want to be having this conversation for the sake of a relationship, right?” Michele Freed, a facilitator, said last year at a session for Or Hadash, an Atlanta-area congregation. “You really care about a person and you just cannot talk about the elephant in the room anymore.”
Those attending split into smaller groups and undergo the exchange Nitz experienced: Listening to someone with a different or opposing opinion, summarizing it, then listening to feedback about that summary. Once the speaker feels the listener has fully summarized their outlook, Freed said, that’s “hitting the bullseye.”
Another smaller-session activity the group offers is called “Life Maps”: Participants compile a list of moments in their lives that shaped their outlook, and then take questions from others. A workshop packet asks participants to “Consider some of the experiences, the interactions, conversations, moments of epiphany – the things you saw or heard that had an impact on your morality or your politics.”
Weintraub said that the Jewish world, “polarized as it is,” is more willing to have those difficult conversations — a readiness she attributes to “the deep tradition of arguments … built into every page of Jewish text.”
A screen capture of a Zoom session of a Multi-Faith Convener Cohort for Faith Leaders in the South. Michele Freed is at the upper left, and Rabbi Melissa Weintraub is second from the upper left, Nov. 5, 2021. (Resetting the Table.)
While recruiting for one of the group’s multifaith cohorts last year, she said, “The rabbis were lining up out the door,” while “Southern Baptists and evangelical leaders were like, ‘How do you know this isn’t going to tear my community apart?’ I think in the Jewish world at this point there’s a recognition that this work is possible and desirable and leads to good outcomes in a different way.”
Some evangelical leaders say they’re coming around to the value of tough conversations. Chelsea Andrews, who participated in the spring sessions for evangelical leaders, said it was the first setting in years where she felt she could engage in dialogue outside her milieu of evangelical Christians without being judged for her conservative values.
“I think that the feeling of belonging is very difficult for evangelical Republicans, like myself, who also are deeply committed to peace-building and reconciliation work,” Andrews said in a testimonial Weintraub shared with JTA. The Resetting the Table sessions, she said, were “the first time in many years that I have felt like what I have to bring to the table is welcome. I don’t feel judged and I don’t feel like an error someone needs to correct.”
Christian groups also approach the dialogue differently once they’ve entered the sessions, said Eyal Rabinovitch, Weintraub’s husband and co-founder, who was the lead facilitator for the 2022 sessions at Mosaic Church, which took place via Zoom. He cited the adage of “two Jews, three opinions,” and said Jews walked into sessions with their views at the ready.
Evangelical Christians, by contrast, he has found, have a “cultural norm of ‘don’t-rock-the-boat’ niceness.” But he feels that that culture is inhibiting the airing of divisions, and that as a result “churches like Mosaic are falling apart.”
“We’re mindful of the norms at play. So oftentimes, at Mosaic, for example, people just go slowly towards differences,” he said. “They don’t want to upset each other. They don’t want to overstep, people don’t really want to get into escalated dynamics and they don’t want to feel like they’re intruding on other people’s spaces.”
Jews’ eagerness to engage and argue was evident in a series of video sessions Resetting the Table allowed JTA to attend last summer at Jewish institutions, on the condition that the participants not be named unless they gave their permission.
A typical Jewish participant was Howard Lalli, a marketing specialist who, in a session last May with Or Hadash, wondered aloud whether being Jewish made him too excited to speak out.
“I know you gave us the option of not weighing in on a question, but I confess that I found myself in the questions about Israel scrambling mentally to come up with a position,” he told the moderator, Freed. “And I wonder if that’s a problem/challenge in our culture: that to appear to be engaged you have to have an opinion — versus asking questions, being curious.”
The group’s work with Jewish institutions has also stretched beyond Israel. In addition to that topic, Or Hadash members discussed funding the police and whether to privatize social services.
The work with churches has also ended up bridging religious divides. Nitz said Resetting the Table made him feel secure enough to ask questions that might otherwise be awkward. At one of the group’s training sessions, he asked a rabbi he met a question that had long intrigued him: why do Jews vote for Democrats, given that, in his opinion, “Republicans tend to be stronger on preserving religious rights, and very pro-Israel.”
The rabbi said they should set up a one-on-one so he could explain at length but offered as a first insight that as descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves, Jews have traditionally sympathized with poor and disadvantaged people, an approach that has historically been associated with Democrats.
Nitz said the exchange was “delightful.”
“I just felt it was just so instructive and open, transparent,” he said. “I would have had a two-dimensional viewpoint when it came to understanding a Jewish voting bloc, and he added so much more nuance as a result of that conversation.”
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The post Evangelical churches are turning to a Jewish nonprofit to help them have hard conversations appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Criticizes Arab-Islamic Summit Statement, Flags Objections After Doha Meeting
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, attends the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Hassan Bargash Al Menhali / UAE Presidential Court/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has criticized the final statement of the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Doha on Monday as insufficient, in the wake of last week’s Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.
In a statement released shortly after the summit, Iran reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” while arguing that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot adequately address the Palestinian issue.
According to the Iranian delegation, “the only real and lasting solution is the establishment of a single democratic state across all of Palestine, through a referendum involving all Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories.”
On Monday, Qatar held a summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the aftermath of last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas, with leaders gathering to express support and discuss regional responses.
The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha marked a significant escalation of Israeli military operations, reflecting Jerusalem’s broader efforts to dismantle the terrorist group amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Expressing solidarity with Qatar, summit leaders condemned Israel’s strike, labeling it “cowardly, illegal, and a threat to collective regional security.”
In the final statement, the heads of state declared that “an assault on a state acting as a neutral mediator in the Gaza crisis is not only a hostile act against Qatar but also a direct blow to international peace-building efforts.”
Alongside the United States and other regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
During the summit, Arab and Muslim leaders called for a review of diplomatic and economic relations with Israel while firmly opposing any attempts to displace Palestinians.
In the final statement, the heads of state also emphasized resisting Israel’s efforts to “impose new realities on the ground,” urged enforcement of International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli leaders over war crime allegations adamantly denied by Jerusalem, and coordinated actions to suspend Israel’s UN membership.
Although Iran participated in the summit and endorsed the declaration, its delegation issued a separate statement shortly afterward clarifying that doing so “must in no way be interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as recognition of the Israeli regime,” reaffirming its rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Iranian leaders regularly declare their intention to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state.
The statement also stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to employ “all necessary means to achieve their inalienable right to self-determination,” emphasizing that backing this cause is “a shared duty of the international community.”
As the heads of Arab and Islamic states convened for a summit on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”
During a diplomatic visit to Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed strong support for Israel’s position, even as Washington previously voiced concerns over the strike in Qatar, a US ally.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.
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“Your Name Was Included”: UC Berkeley Cooperating With Trump Administration, Admits to Disclosing Names
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is cooperating with the Trump administration’s inquiry into campus antisemitism, providing materials containing the names of some 160 people identified in disciplinary reports and other official documents.
As first reported by The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s official campus newspaper, the university’s Office of Legal Affairs notified every person affected by the mass disclosure, writing to them on Sept. 4.
“Last spring, the [US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR]] initiated investigations regarding allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination at UC Berkeley. As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” chief campus counsel David Robinson wrote. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemic Office of General Counsel, your name was included in report as part of the documents provided by OGC [Office of General Counsel] to OCR for its investigations on Aug. 18, 2025.”
He added, “These documents contained information about reports or responses related to antisemitic incidents.”
Anti-Israel activists told the Californian that the university is helping the Trump administration hunt witches.
“I think the message was sent to anybody has who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” one said, claiming that he has been falsely accused. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, infamous for its ties to jihadist terror organizations, also criticized the move, charging that the administration had promised to conceal their identities and thereby obstruct the government’s inquiry.
“Chancellor Rich Lyons should not have given assurances that he wouldn’t be giving our information to the federal government,” the group said. “Beyond that, he should never have bowed down so easily. I would think that a university that prides itself on being this liberal haven would at least stand up to a fascist like Donald Trump.”
UC Berkeley came under scrutiny in 2024 after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
Other incidents, including the university’s employment of a lecturer who tweeted antisemitic images — one of which accused Israel of organ harvesting, a blood libel — the rewarding of academic benefits for participating in anti-Zionist activity, and the banning of Zionist speakers from Berkeley Law, have raised concerns about anti-Jewish hated on campus. In 2017, The Algemeiner ranked UC Berkeley as number five on “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.”
In August, an Israeli professor sued the university, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim its own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint is seeking justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance. After nearly two years, the situation remains unresolved.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel Issues Travel Warning Ahead of Jewish Holidays Amid Rising Attacks, Discrimination Targeting Israelis Abroad
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has issued a travel warning ahead of the upcoming Jewish high holidays and the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, alerting citizens of heightened terrorist threats against Israelis and Jewish communities abroad.
On Sunday, the National Security Council (NSC) urged travelers to stay alert, cautioning that the two-year anniversary of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel could trigger attacks by Iran-backed or Hamas-linked terrorist groups targeting Jews and Israelis abroad.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” the NSC said in a statement.
“Oct. 7 may again serve as a significant date for terrorist organizations,” the statement read.
Israeli officials warned that the threat mainly stems from Iran and its terrorist proxies, which have increasingly targeted Jews and Israelis beyond Israel’s borders.
In recent months, the NSC reported that dozens of plots have been thwarted, even as violent incidents — including physical attacks, antisemitic threats, and online incitement — have continued to rise.
“With the war ongoing and the terror threat growing, we are witnessing an escalation in antisemitic violence and provocations by anti-Israel elements,” the NSC said in its statement.
“This trend may inspire extremists to carry out attacks against Israelis or Jews abroad,” it continued.
According to the NSC, Iran remains the leading source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews worldwide, acting both directly and through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza, Israeli officials have previously warned of Iranian sleeper cells — covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.
In light of this reality, the NSC also warned that social media posts revealing ties to Israeli security services could put individuals at risk of being targeted.
“We advise against posting any content that suggests involvement in the security services or operational activities, including real-time location updates,” the statement read.
This latest updated warning comes amid a growing hostile environment and a shocking surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes targeting Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Across Europe, Israelis are facing a disturbing surge of targeted attacks and hostility, as a wave of antisemitic incidents — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions — spreads amid rising tensions following recent conflicts in the Middle East.
On Saturday, a 29-year-old Israeli and his sister were attacked by three Palestinian men while on vacation in Athens, Greece.
According to local media reports, the two siblings were walking through the city’s center when three unknown individuals carrying Palestinian flags approached them, shouting antisemitic slurs.
The attackers assaulted the Israeli man, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran, scratching him, throwing him to the ground, and striking him with their flagpoles, while his sister attempted to intervene and protect him.
October 7 is a global war against Jews & Israelis.
Pro-Palestinian radicals just attacked an Israeli man in Syntagma Square, Athens. via @N12News https://t.co/IZR2IdNrUI pic.twitter.com/9S2o4IjtO6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) September 14, 2025
Greek authorities arrested all five individuals involved in the incident. According to the Israeli man’s father, his son was placed in a cell with 10 Arabs, where he was reportedly beaten again and feared for his life.
In a separate antisemitic incident earlier this year, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.
After leaving a nightclub, the teens were followed to their hotel, where they were violently assaulted, leaving several with minor injuries.
In another example of rising anti-Israel sentiment and hostility toward Jewish communities, one of Britain’s most prestigious military academies, the Royal College of Defense Studies, announced Sunday that it will bar Israeli students from enrolling next year, citing concerns over the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, two IDF soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival were arrested and interrogated by local authorities following a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), an anti-Israel legal group that pursues legal action against IDF personnel, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.
According to HRF, the soldiers were seen waving the flags of the IDF’s Givati Brigade, which they claimed has been “involved in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and in carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population.”
In France, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.