Like many teens and young adults, David Peters made his first visit to Israel as a college student when he participated in a summer training program. He met his now wife during that trip and fell in love with the country. “That trip transformed my life,” he says, “I fell in love and wanted to find any way possible to go back.”
Peters has since returned to Israel four times, including on Passages, a Christian program similar to the Jewish Birthright, that aims to create connections to Israel for Christian youth and teach about Christianity and the history, culture, and religion of the Jewish people. Elysia Martin is director of alumni engagement for Passages. She says the program was created by a Jewish woman and a Christian man to foster understanding about both the biblical land and the modern State of Israel. “They felt there was a need for college students to visit their faith’s birthplace and to learn more about the Jewish community.”
Peters’ experience on Passages helped him confront biases during a formative time in his life. “I think it’s truly needed in our world today. It forces you to critically think. It helps you grow spiritually.”
The connection between Christians and Jews, and between Christians and Israel, has a long history. According to Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament Studies Emerita, and Mary Jane Werthan, Professor of Jewish Studies, Emerita, at Vanderbilt University, “Jesus and his original followers were all Jews. They did not see, and other Jews did not see, belief in Jesus as lord as antithetical to Jewish identity.” In fact, she says the separation between Jews and gentiles evolved over several centuries. “While some official church teaching sought to marginalize and ultimately, expel, Jews from Christian lands, some Christians in those same lands worked to help, or to hide, their Jewish neighbors. Similarly, while some Jews condemned Christianity as a form of idolatry, others saw it as the means of bringing knowledge of the God of Israel to the gentile world.”
Levine says Christian support for Jews differed based on geography and across time. “For some Christians over the past several centuries, support for Jews, seen in terms of kindness and charity, was prompted in large measure in the hope that such benevolence would encourage the Jews to convert to Christianity.” She adds that while some supportive Christians are concerned about social justice and abhor bigotry, others bear the regret of the antisemitic acts of their ancestors.
Rabbi Mark Schiftan, rabbi emeritus of The Temple, says in modern times, this regret is focused on the remains of the Holocaust. “Some mainstream Christians today are not necessarily anti-Zionist, but they are not driven by the belief in a safe and secure homeland for the Jews. They are driven by the need to reassess their culpability, indirectly or directly, about the felled Jews of Europe.”
Martin agrees and adds that young Christians today are simply not being educated enough about the Holocaust and how Israel was created. She recently returned from a trip to Eastern Europe where she visited concentration camps and saw first-hand the remains of that tragic time. “What’s missing from the rhetoric is contextualization of what’s going on [today]. People don’t understand the history of Jews in Israel and what Jewish life was like before Israel.” She adds that it is important for Christians to understand the history of Christian antisemitism and to combat misinformation in places like social media with education.
Levine agrees that educating Christians about Judaism is key to building meaningful relationships and combatting misinformation. She cites Nostra Aetate, a document from Vatican II and published in October 1965, as an example. “Nostra Aetate made an enormous difference in proclaiming that Jews at all times and places cannot be considered particularly responsible for the death of Jesus.” But she says it is not certain this teaching will make its way into the Catholic seminaries or the pulpit. “It is better to have the denominations make official statements condemning antisemitism than to have them remain silent; it is better to have their clergy trained to understand the Jewish contexts of Jesus and Paul, trained to understand how we Jews view our own Scriptures, trained to understand how words that are not intended to promote antisemitism may well do so.”
For some Christians, the terror attacks of Oct. 7 provided a stark reminder of their relationship to the Jews, and to their own core values. Actress Patricia Heaton, who is a practicing Catholic, says she believes true Christianity is a personal relationship with God and so is Judaism. “What distinguishes Judaism and, as a result, Christianity, from every other historical religion is God reached down to the Jewish people to have a real personal relationship with them.”
Heaton, along with Elizabeth Dorros, was so moved by what happened on Oct. 7 that they formed an organization, called O7C, focused on providing support for Israel and the Jews. Heaton says, “O7C is the embodiment of our personal-ness with our faith, and we have that in common. That’s what sets us aside; it’s not just transactional. We realize that in this world, what is important is our relationships.” Dorros, who is Christian, agrees that support of Jews and Israel is a core value for what she calls “Bible-believing Christians.”
The goal of building relationships is also part of the mission of Passages and in the wake of Oct. 7, Martin says there is even greater urgency. “Since Oct. 7, we have had a shift toward the need for allies for the Jewish people and how alone Jewish students are on campuses.” She says the organization is focusing on mobilizing Christians in places where Jews do not feel supported.
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For Jews, there can be some skepticism around Christians who say they are supportive but carry the agenda of conversion. Peters says, “There are Christians who do have that agenda, but for me, that isn’t the case. I grew up in a family who is wholehearted in their support of the Jews.”
In fact, Peters applied for, and participated in, a program with Passages, similar to Shark Tank which led him to his current business, called Ten Boom Coffee Roasters. He is growing his company and partners with a Jewish coffee roaster in Israel to expand his business here in the United States. Peters says his friend and partner, Hanan Elkayam, fought for three days after Oct. 7, and Peters himself visited K’far Aza in January. “I just stood there and envisioned him fighting there, and it just breaks your heart.”
Everyone interviewed for this story spoke of the importance of building relationships as the key to continuing support. Levine agrees and has some additional directives, starting with regular communication with what she calls a “sense of generosity.” “If we hear one of our Christian friends say something that strikes us as antisemitic, our task should be to call in rather than call out or cancel.”
Levine also says it is important to remember that support for Jews does not mean unconditional support for the actions of the state of Israel. “For example, one can support the right of Israel to exist and not support settlement expansion over the 1967 borders.” She cites the number of Christians and Jews who are calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, the delivery of supplies to Gaza, and the release of the hostages. “Still others, especially from Arab-Christian churches and from our Muslim friends here in Nashville, are wondering why they have heard little to nothing from Jews about the deaths of people in their communities from Israeli bombing.”
In addition, Levine says it is important to listen to those with whom we disagree, and to keep an open mind and heart. “Similarly, we do well to learn about how people understand their own history and theology, and we should do so with the sort of grace that we would expect people to show to us.”