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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.”


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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Hezbollah Says Lebanon Move on Army Plan Is ‘Opportunity,’ Urges Israel to Commit to Ceasefire

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and members of the cabinet stand as they attend a cabinet session to discuss the army’s plan to disarm Hezbollah, at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, Lebanon, September 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Hezbollah official Mahmoud Qmati told Reuters on Saturday that the group considered Friday’s cabinet session on an army plan to establish a state monopoly on arms “an opportunity to return to wisdom and reason, preventing the country from slipping into the unknown.”

Lebanon’s cabinet on Friday welcomed a plan by the army that would disarm Hezbollah and said the military would begin executing it, without setting a timeframe for implementation and cautioning that the army had limited capabilities.

But it said continued Israeli military operations in Lebanon would hamper the army’s progress. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Lebanese information minister Paul Morcos stopped short of saying the cabinet had formally approved the plan.

Qmati told Reuters that Hezbollah had reached its assessment based on the government’s declaration on Friday that further implementation of a US roadmap on the matter was dependent on Israel’s commitment. He said that without Israel halting strikes and withdrawing its troops from southern Lebanon, Lebanon’s implementation of the plan should remain “suspended until further notice.”

Lebanon’s cabinet last month tasked the army with coming up with a plan that would establish a state monopoly on arms and approved a US roadmap aimed at disarming Hezbollah in exchange for a halt to Israeli military operations in Lebanon.

Qmati said that Hezbollah “unequivocally rejected” those two decisions and expected the Lebanese government to draw up a national defense strategy.

Israel last week signaled it would scale back its military presence in southern Lebanon if the army took action to disarm Hezbollah. Meanwhile, it has continued its strikes, killing four people on Wednesday.

A national divide over Hezbollah’s disarmament has taken center stage in Lebanon since last year’s devastating war with Israel, which upended a power balance long dominated by the Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim group.

Lebanon is under pressure from the US, Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah’s domestic rivals to disarm the group. But Hezbollah has pushed back, saying it would be a serious misstep to even discuss disarmament while Israel continues its air strikes on Lebanon and occupies swathes of territory in the south.

Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem last month raised the specter of civil war, warning the government against trying to confront the group and saying street protests were possible.

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UK Police Arrest Dozens at Latest Protest for Banned Palestine Action

Demonstrators attend the “Lift The Ban” rally organised by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, September 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

British police arrested dozens more people on Saturday under anti-terrorism laws for demonstrating in support of Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian group banned by the government as a terrorist organization.

Britain banned Palestine Action under anti-terrorism legislation in July after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged military planes. The group accuses Britain’s government of complicity in what it says are Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Police have arrested hundreds of Palestine Action supporters in recent weeks under anti-terrorism legislation, including over 500 in just one day last month, many of them over the age of 60.

On Saturday, hundreds of demonstrators gathered near parliament in central London to protest against the ban on Saturday, with many holding up signs that said: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

London’s Metropolitan Police said officers had begun arresting those expressing support for Palestine Action. Police did not say how many arrests were made but a Reuters witness said dozens of people were detained.

Palestine Action’s ban, or proscription, puts the group alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS and makes it a crime to support or belong to the organization, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

“I can be unequivocal, if you show support for Palestine Action – an offense under the Terrorism Act – you will be arrested,” Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said on Friday. “We have the officer numbers, custody capacity and all other resources to process as many people as is required.”

Human rights groups have criticized Britain’s decision to ban the group as disproportionate and say it limits the freedom of expression of peaceful protesters.

The government has accused Palestine Action of causing millions of pounds worth of criminal damage and says the ban does not prevent other pro-Palestinian protests.

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Macron’s Meeting with American Jewry ‘Won’t Happen’ Amid Palestinian Recognition Drive, Surge in Antisemitism

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a press conference in Paris, France, June 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

i24 NewsFrench President Emmanuel Macron attempted to set up a meeting with American Jewish leaders later this month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

i24NEWS has learned that the meeting won’t happen, firstly because Macron was only available for the meeting ahead of the UN General Assembly during Rosh Hashanah, and yet, a person invited to meet with Macron and who has knowledge of the discussions told i24NEWS the sit-down simply wasn’t going to happen, anyway.

“I think the organizations, for the most part, would not have participated,” the person said, adding that AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee would have likely received invitations, among other entities.

“The guy has a 15% popularity rating in France. It’s not our job to help him out,” the person said.

Asked by i24NEWS whether Macron’s push for greater Palestinian state recognition or his lack of action in tackling antisemitism at home led to the stance of organized American Jewry, the person said it’s more of “the climate” which allows one to say ‘Look, the American Jews met with me,’ regardless of the content.”

The person said they are sure, if a meeting would have happened, that everybody in the room would have taken a hard line with Macron, including his “statements on Israel, the failure to respond to antisemitism” and France’s announcement this summer that it will recognize a Palestinian state later this month, and is leading an effort to get more countries to do the same.

But, the person told i24NEWS they are convinced that, in the end, while no final decision actually had to be taken, there was enough pressure that a consensus would have been reached to decline the meeting.

Of the timing of Rosh Hashanah allowing for leadership to not be forced to officially say no to Macron, the person said “G-d saves us every time.”

Another source familiar with the matter noted that it cannot be ruled out that Macron may eventually succeed in arranging a meeting with certain representatives, as the organizations are not a single unified body. However, he is unlikely to be welcomed by the overwhelming majority of groups representing American Jewry.

i24NEWS has also learned that French President Emmanuel Macron explored the possibility of visiting Israel ahead of the convention, but was advised by the Prime Minister’s Office that the timing was inappropriate. The message came as Macron continues to push for recognition of a Palestinian state, a move Israel strongly opposes. Sources further told i24NEWS that Israel is weighing additional retaliatory measures against Macron, including the potential closure of the French consulate in Jerusalem, which primarily serves Palestinians in the West Bank.

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