As the Jewish community celebrates Rosh Hashanah and the start of a new year amid the Israel-Hamas war and rising antisemitism around the world, two New York prelates have released a message of support.
“These should be days of rejoicing as the Jewish community celebrates the beginning of a new year, but we know that there is a somber atmosphere as we mark the one-year anniversary of the evil, heinous terrorist attack against Israel last year on October 7th,” said Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Bishop Robert J. Brennan of Brooklyn in a joint statement issued Oct. 4. “Our hearts continue to break for those whose lives were lost that terrible day, and for the innocent hostages still held in captivity in Gaza.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip stormed into approximately 22 locations in Israel, gunning down more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking over 240 civilians and soldiers hostage, including infants, the elderly and persons with disabilities. A New York Times investigation found at least seven locations along the Hamas attack front where Israeli women and girls had been sexually assaulted and mutilated Oct. 7.
The coordinated attack took place on a Sabbath that marked the final day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which celebrates the gathering of the harvest and the divine protection of the ancient Israelites as they escaped from slavery in Egypt.
Israel declared war on Hamas Oct. 8, placing Gaza under siege and pounding the region with airstrikes, and the year-long conflict has recently been extended into Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Shia militia Hezbollah is based.
Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Brennan noted that the violence has inflicted suffering all around.
“In the year that has followed, we know that many more innocent people have been caught in the grips of war, and we mourn every life lost, of Israelis and Palestinians, of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others,” they said. “As Pope Francis so eloquently reminds us, religion can never be used to legitimize violence – never! As Christians, and together with people of all faiths, we employ that most powerful tool that we have, prayer, to pray for peace in that land called ‘holy.’”
Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Brennan also warned that “the worry of these days is not confined to the Middle East.
“Right here in New York and around the globe, we note with great anxiety the troubling rise in anti-Semitism,” they said.
In a report released Oct. 2, the Anti-Defamation League found that “the number of antisemitic incidents, already at a record high before the attack, skyrocketed” in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, “with most of the antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault in 2023 occurring between October 7 and December 31.”
Social media platforms have seen exponential increases in antisemitic posts, said the ADL, with “a 434 percent increase in violent antisemitic posts” on social media on Oct. 7,2023 alone.
The ADL also pointed to increases in “anti-Israel and anti-Zionist incidents” on college campuses throughout the nation.
“Allow us to say unambiguously to our Jewish friends here in New York and around the world that you are not alone,” said Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Brennan in their statement. “Too often in the past, we Catholics have failed to stand with you against hatred and anti-Semitism. Shame on us for those times!”
In 1965, two decades after the Shoah – the preferred term for the killing of 6 million Jews during the Second World War by the Nazi regime, also known as the Holocaust – St. Paul VI promulgated the Second Vatican Council document “Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Time”), the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. The text was the Catholic Church’s first formal denunciation of “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone,” while affirming the “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews.”
That language marked a seismic shift from centuries of what French historian Jules Isaac had called a “teaching of contempt” toward the Jewish community by numerous Catholic and Christian theologians who over the centuries denounced Jews as accursed, blaming them for rejecting and killing Jesus Christ.
“We join now with religious leaders from all faiths pledging that we will not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form,” said Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Brennan. “May the God of peace and justice bring true and lasting peace to Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, the Holy Land, and the entire Middle East.”
