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Yeshiva University, a pillar of Orthodox Judaism, launches master’s program for Christian students
(JTA) — Emily Talento grew up with Jewish friends and relatives on Long Island, attending Passover seders, bar and bat mitzvahs and Shabbat dinners. When she arrived at Cedarville University, a private Baptist university in Ohio, she found herself explaining Jewish traditions to her many classmates who had never met a Jew before.
Now, Talento is continuing her Bible studies at a religious university. But it’s safe to say that she won’t encounter the same lack of knowledge about Jews this time. That’s because she’s one of eight Christian students embarking on a course of study at Yeshiva University that’s designed just for them.
In the two-year Hebraic Studies Program for Christian Students at the Modern Orthodox flagship, Talento and her cohort will take courses on Jewish history, biblical Hebrew, post-biblical literature and more.
“I’m excited that everything is coming from the Jewish perspective,” Talento said.
The new program is a joint initiative of Y.U. and the Philos Project, an organization that says it “seeks to promote positive Christian engagement in the Near East.” Philos is a partner of Passages — a Birthright-style program that brings young Christians on group tours of Israel — and it also organizes Christians to demonstrate against antisemitism.
The launch of the Christian students’ program is a sign of a growing bond between Orthodox Jews and religious Christians, who have increasingly found common cause on everything from conservative domestic politics to support for Israel. It is also an experiment in whether a school founded more than a century ago to accommodate the observances and sensibilities of Orthodox students in a majority-Christian country can now create an intentional space for Christians to study Judaism as well.
“Within the broader Protestant world, but particularly evangelicals, there’s been, I’d say in the last 50 years, just a really intense interest in the Jewish context of the New Testament, in particular Second Temple Judaism,” said Daniel Hummel, a historian of American religion and the author of “Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations.” (Philos, while founded by an evangelical Christian, identifies itself as ecumenical.)
That interest, Hummel said, has required encounters with Jews. “That’s sort of been the pattern,” he said. “You learn from Jews about their beliefs, and then you sort of take that thinking back to the New Testament texts, which then reshape how you read those texts.”
The program is part of an existing master’s degree program at Y.U.’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. Y.U.’s undergraduate programs are separated by gender, are explicitly geared toward Orthodox Jews and combine traditional Jewish text study with a secular college education. But the university’s graduate programs, including Revel, are open to non-Jews, and Revel describes itself as a “genuinely non-denominational school.”
This year’s “pilot class” of eight Christian graduate students, who come from a mix of evangelical, Pentecostal and Baptist backgrounds, began with Hebrew Bible courses this summer. The students hail from California, Texas, Nebraska, Virginia and Mozambique. Five students are studying remotely, and three plan to be on campus in New York beginning in the fall semester.
Christian students enrolled in the master’s program for Jewish studies at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University, most of whom will study remotely, recently toured the New York campus. (Courtesy Yeshiva University)
“Our real goal is for the Christian students to gain a deeper understanding of the Jewish roots of Christianity,” said Jonathan Dauber, Revel’s director of external programming and Y.U.’s head of the Philos partnership. “It’s also a program that’s meant to foster dialogue and understanding between Jews and Christians because the Jewish students and Christian students are together.”
What sets the new program apart from the rest of the Jewish studies school is that it is a “curated pathway” for Christian students, Dauber said — though aside from the biblical Hebrew classes, the students will take the majority of their courses with other Revel students. Y.U. also hopes to create space outside of the formal classroom where students can interact, such as on a museum visit or via other cultural activities.
Some Christian groups and individuals have appropriated various Jewish rituals for Christian purposes, hosting “Christian seders,” blowing a shofar, or ram’s horn, at prayer or marketing Christian takes on the mezuzah. Those practices have also sparked backlash from both Jewish and Christian clergy. But Hummel felt that the Christian students in the Y.U. program would be unlikely to take on Jewish rituals or seek to missionize to their classmates.
“It’s Yeshiva that’s hosting it, and so the power dynamics are a bit different than if it was Christian space,” Hummel said. “It would be a real uphill battle for a Christian to go into Yeshiva University and expect some type of big success with conversion.”
Institutionally, Yeshiva University is not expecting proselytizing to be an issue either. Ahead of the program’s launch, the university’s rabbinic leadership even issued a ruling that the program was permissible according to Jewish law.
“The Philos students also understand that themselves, that their purpose is to study and to learn about Judaism, that it’s not to try to convince or persuade,” Dauber said. “So that’s really not something that we’re worried about.”
Jews and Christians have studied together in religiously affiliated academic settings in the past. In 2018, Philos ran a leadership program for its Black members at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College, where they met with rabbis and African-American pastors to discuss Black and Jewish relations. That same year, David Nekrutman became the first Orthodox Jew to graduate from Oral Roberts University, an evangelical private university, with a masters degree in Christian studies.
The Y.U. program is different because students will undertake sustained enrollment at an Orthodox school.
“This is, in a lot of ways, an experiment,” said Robert Nicholson, president and founder of the Philos Project. “Can Christians and Orthodox Jews study together? Does it even work?”
He added, “Just the mere fact of forging a partnership with an Orthodox institution, to me, is a way of moving the ball down the field in Jewish-Christian relations.”
Hummel said that the partnership “isn’t just out of nowhere.” Modern Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians also share what Hummel referred to as a “theological framework” around Zionism, which is understood as “a real covenant between God and the Jewish people that entails Jews being able to control their homeland.”
Talento, who came in not knowing the Hebrew alphabet, has enjoyed her classes so far. Learning to read biblical Hebrew is “something I couldn’t even imagine being able to do,” Talento said. Knowing Hebrew, she says, lets her “get more into the mindset of the author than you could reading a translated, English-language” text.
Later, she’ll be taking a class on the history of Judaism from the fall of the Second Temple through the Holocaust, and a class on Paul the Apostle, titled “Paul: Profile of a First-Century Jew.” It will be offered in the fall over Zoom and is open to any master’s degree student.
Talento, who has gone on a Passages trip to Israel, is not sure what she will do when she graduates from the program. She has worked for Passages in the past and has attended pro-Israel conferences held by advocacy organizations such as StandWithUs and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. She is considering pursuing a career in the nonprofit world, working for Philos, or elsewhere in Israel advocacy.
“God only gives me the next step,” she said. “If you would have told me I was doing this a year ago, I would have said, ‘This is so cool — but I don’t even know how I was going to get there.’”
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Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday denounced the mass killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians from the Alawite minority group, in Syria, calling on the newly installed Syrian government to hold the perpetrators “accountable” for the massacres.
“The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days,” Rubio said in a statement. “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
In a series of clashes beginning on Thursday, fighters allied with the new Syrian government carried out mass executions of Alawite Muslim civilians in the coastal towns of Latakia and Tartus. According to Syria’s interior ministry, the pro-government fighters conducted “sweeping operations” in the towns to dismantle the remaining “remnants” of the regime of former President Bashaar al-Assad, targeting primarily adult men.
According to Syrian officials, the fighting started when a group of Alawite fighters loyal to Assad killed their forces in a premeditated attack.
The ensuing mass killing of Alawites, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the Syrian population, highlights growing concerns over the safety of minority groups in the country.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Sharaa decried the massacres, claiming they undermined his efforts to unite the country and vowing to seek retribution for the violence.
“Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” Sharaa told Reuters. “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us.”
In late January, Sharaa became Syria’s transitional president after leading a rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose decades-long Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz denounced the Syrian president as a “terrorist” who “switched his robe for a suit and presented a moderate face.”
“Now he’s taken off the mask and exposed his true face: A jihadist terrorist of the al-Qaeda school who is committing horrifying acts against a civilian population,” Katz said in a statement. “Israel will defend itself against any threat from Syria.”
Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state. The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Syria’s new government has called for Israel to withdraw its forces.
Alawite leaders in Syria have also issued a statement to Israel, calling on the Jewish state to deploy forces in the country to protect its minority civilians.
“Following the fall of Assad’s regime, and after the massacres that took place in Alawite areas against our people, we call on the Israeli government to provide protection, assistance, and support,” the leaders wrote, according to i24 News.
The leaders lamented that “the world is silent about the massacres happening in Syria” and that if the Jewish state offered help, the Alawite Muslims “will be your most loyal and good friends.”
The post Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism
Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced on Monday an “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism,” a move that follows a series of incidents which have fueled allegations that the campus has become a hub of anti-Jewish discrimination.
“With honest reflection, it is clear that while we have made progress in addressing antisemitism, we have more to do in our shared goal of eradicating it in its entirety,” UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said in a statement. “Through this initiative, UCLA will implement recommendations of the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.”
He continued, “These recommendations include: enhancing relevant training and education, improving the complaint system, assuring enforcement of current and new laws and polices, and cooperating with stakeholders.”
“This is an opportunity for UCLA to rise to the challenge of being an exemplary university,” Frenk concluded.
The Initiative to Combat Antisemitism is the second stage of a process begun by UCLA when it created an antisemitism task force in February 2024. Commissioned to study the problem and issue recommendations, the task force last year issued a report which noted, among other things, that two-thirds of Jewish UCLA students believe that antisemitism on the campus “is a problem or a serious problem,” and a higher share of them, 70 percent, attributed the atmosphere of hatred to the university’s decision to allow a “Gaza encampment” protest during the final days of the 2023-2024 spring semester.
That decision proved fateful, as it prompted a lawsuit accusing UCLA of fostering a discriminatory learning environment. Filed by several students, the complaint argued that the encampment was a source of antisemitism from the moment pro-Hamas agitators installed it. Students there chanted “death to the Jews,” the complaint recounted, set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.
Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality,” and in doing so, allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.
In addition to students, university officials have also been targeted by pro-Hamas activists — as The Algemeiner has previously reported.
On Feb. 5 some 50 members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the allied campus group Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine amassed on the property of Jay Sures — a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California (UC) system — and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.” As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.
The behavior crossed the line, Frenk said in an email sent to the entire student body, and he suspended both groups while commissioning the school’s Office of Student Conduct to complete a thorough investigation into the incident. Defying the disciplinary measures, an estimated 150 people — including members of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), among other anti-Israel groups — the next day marched through the campus demanding that SJP’s punishment be repealed while arguing it is they and not Sures who are victims of racism.
“If you look at who actually experienced violence, it’s overwhelming our own students, and that was the fault of our university administration” Michael Chwe, a professor of political science and member of FJP, was quoted by The Daily Bruin as saying. “For them to be claiming that our students are violent is completely backward.”
That same month, a Jewish faculty group at the university issued an open letter calling attention to a slew of indignities to which they have been subjected in recent months. The missive enumerated a litany of falsehoods spread about Jews by a task force created to study anti-Arab bigotry on the campus — including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression,” promoted the interests of conservative groups, and harmed minority students by opposing “racial justice.”
The group added that discrimination at the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.
In Monday’s announcement, Frenk called for reforming UCLA’s culture to ensure that all are accepted, regardless of race, ethnicity, and creed.
“UCLA is at an inflection point,” he said. “Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively. The principles on which UCLA was founded — and which we continue to advance — point us toward a clear course of action: We must persevere in our fight to end hate, however it manifests itself.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah
Illustrative: A menorah knocked to the ground by an antisemitic vandal who attacked a Jewish educational center in eastern Moscow. Photo: SHAMIR.
Police in Guilford, Connecticut have arrested and charged Steven Prinz Jr., 25, and Troy Prinz, 22, for allegedly vandalizing a menorah set up for public display.
The menorah’s owner reported the damage to law enforcement on Jan. 13 and provided surveillance video of the Jan. 5 crime. The suspects hid their faces, one with a gas mask and the other with fabric, and knocked over the menorah before stomping it on the ground, breaking multiple parts. Before discovering the footage, the owner had originally reported that wind had knocked down the menorah.
The two brothers, who were arrested on Wednesday, face charges of second-degree intimidation based on bigotry or bias, second-degree conspiracy to commit intimidation based on bigotry or bias, first-degree criminal mischief, and first-degree conspiracy to commit criminal mischief. Police released both men after they posted $25,000 court-set bonds.
The Guilford Police Department’s Lt. Martina Jakober said in a statement that the investigation “involved significant cooperation between the police and members of our community in order to locate and preserve the essential evidence needed to properly identify these suspects.”
Jakober added that “the men and women of the Guilford Police Department wish to extend our deepest appreciation to all who live and work in the community” and that “our collective efforts, as the police and the community, ultimately resulted in their identification and arrest.”
Rabbi Yossi Yaffe, director for Chabad-Lubavitch of the Shoreline which had set up the menorah, released a statement following the arrests.
“This aberration does not represent the Guilford community. For 25 years, Chabad of the Shoreline’s menorah has illuminated Guilford without incident,” Yaffe stated. “Throughout the years, many residents from different faith communities and from across the political spectrum have expressed their appreciation and pride in having a menorah on the Guilford town green. With G-d’s help, we will continue to share the menorah’s light for many years to come!”
Yaffe announced that the hate crime targeting the menorah had inspired the community to increase its efforts to promote the holiday, with plans to increase displays and distribution of menorahs next Hanukkah.
Jakober said that the police department intends “to reflect on this incident and continuously work to figure out an ever-strengthening partnership with the community.” She added that “together, we can be sure that acts of hate or bias have no place in Guilford.”
Last week, the legal system made further efforts to counter alleged hate crimes in New York and Florida.
In Manhattan on Thursday, prosecutors said that Utah man Luis Ramirez, 23, allegedly proclaimed himself “Hitler reincarnated,” threatened to kill “as many Jews as I killed in [World War II],” and targeted New York City’s Central Synagogue. The judge denied bail for Ramirez and required him to undergo a psychological evaluation.
Prosecutors said that Ramirez had shown signs of paranoia and delusion which included calling himself by the names of “biblical characters.” Court documents stated that Ramirez had been diagnosed as “schizophrenic, suffering from hallucinations, delusions, and not being connected to reality.” A military officer cadet training school had reportedly discharged Ramirez for psychological reasons. Photos from Ramirez’s court appearance show him grinning.
Ramirez faces as much as 15 years’ imprisonment for a terrorism charge. “He is now charged with significant terrorism and hate crime charges and was remanded into custody,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. “Any form of antisemitism is despicable, and I want Manhattan’s Jewish community to know we are remaining extremely vigilant.”
The judge scheduled Ramirez’s next court appearance for March 20.
Meanwhile, in Florida on Wednesday, the Boynton Beach Police Department arrested Adam Elshazly, charging him with allegedly targeting his former employer with violent and antisemitic threats via texts on July 2, 2024. The messages included antisemitic images and threats of violent sexual abuse against the victim’s wife and daughter. The victim told police that he had hired Elshazly 10 years ago for a job and fired him three days later for poor performance, not to hear from him again until receiving the text messages.
Police charged Elshazly with a count of intimidation with prejudice while committing an offense and released him the next day following the posting of a $30,000 bond. A judge scheduled his arraignment for Thursday.
The post Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.