A panel at Benedictine College has explored the changing terrain of Jewish-Catholic relations among younger believers, with speakers urging greater theological seriousness, clearer answers to anti-Semitism and a more confident account of what friendship between Catholics and Jews should look like in an age of online radicalisation. The discussion took place on April 22 at an event titled “Shoulder to Shoulder: Strengthening Jewish-Catholic Friendship at a Moment of Crisis”, co-sponsored by the college and the Coalition of Catholics Against Anti-Semitism.
The conversation brought together Catholics of Jewish background and Jewish converts to Catholicism, each speaking from personal experience rather than institutional abstraction. Among them were Yarden Zelivansky, a Jewish convert to Catholicism and an active reserve sergeant in the Israel Defense Forces, Gideon Lazar, an American Jewish convert to the Faith, and Aviva Lund, a Catholic of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. The panel was moderated by Simone Rizkallah, a founding member of the Coalition of Catholics Against Anti-Semitism, together with Peter Wolfgang of the Family Institute of Connecticut Action.
Much of the discussion centred on the challenge posed by Gen Z, especially young men formed more by online polemics than by the language of postwar interreligious goodwill. Lazar argued that many younger Catholics are unconvinced by vague appeals to “brotherhood” or by formulaic invocations of Catholic-Jewish closeness when their actual questions concern doctrine, history and political tension. If serious questions are met only with sentiment, he suggested, many will simply go elsewhere for answers.
That, he warned, is precisely where the danger lies. In the absence of sound teaching, young Catholics can end up consuming material from online anti-Semites who present selective quotations from the Fathers and tradition in order to make the Church appear inherently hostile to Jews. Lazar also criticised the misuse of the phrase “Christ is King”, saying a profound Christian truth has too often been turned into a slogan wielded in a manner contrary to Christ himself.
Zelivansky offered a rather different perspective, speaking as a Jewish convert to Catholicism living in Israel. He said his own experience had been less hostile than outsiders might assume, and suggested that since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, many Israelis have become more concerned with whether one shares in the burdens of national life than with one’s precise theological commitments. In his telling, Christian identity has not generally made daily life especially difficult outside certain flashpoints, particularly Jerusalem.
Speaking virtually after travel delays caused by the continuing conflict in the Middle East, he also reflected on the relationship between faith and politics. A Catholic, he said, ought to allow faith to shape moral judgment, and moral judgment to shape political reflection, rather than letting politics become the lens through which faith itself is interpreted. The point was less partisan than methodological: Christian belief must remain primary.
Lund, for her part, spoke about the more domestic and familial dimensions of Jewish-Catholic identity. As a cradle Catholic with Jewish roots, she described her relationship with her wider Jewish family as largely positive and said that engaging more deeply with Jewish life had enriched rather than diluted her Catholic faith. For her, Jewish-Catholic relations are not first a matter of strategy or diplomacy, but of learning to regard Jews as genuine kin in salvation history and in human fellowship.
What emerged from the panel was a sense that the old language of dialogue may no longer be enough on its own. If younger Catholics are to reject anti-Semitism, they will need more than slogans and goodwill; they will need serious formation, theological confidence and a way of speaking about the Jewish roots of Christianity that is both truthful and unafraid. At Benedictine College, at least, that argument was made not in the abstract but through lives in which Jewish and Catholic identity already meet.
