Jewish & World News

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) and Shalom Hartman Institute (SHI), co-sponsors of the 13-month Christian Leadership Initiative (CLI), welcomed this week a cohort of prominent American Christian leaders to the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel for an opportunity to gain a more profound understanding of Judaism and the Jewish people. The Israel portion of the Christian Leadership Initiative, developed together by SHI and AJC and taught by leading Shalom Hartman faculty, focuses on the central ideas of Jewish ethics and faith, the diverse ideologies and practices of contemporary world Jewry, and the foundations of religious pluralism.

On July 16, 1897, a struggle between the father of political Zionism Theodor Herzl and a group of anti-Zionist rabbis gathered momentum as Herzl published his article "Protest Rabbiner" (Protest Rabbis) in his German newspaper Die Welt. For several months Herzl had been planning the first Zionist Congress, which was originally slated to be held in Munich in August that year. However, Herzl faced a wave of opposition by European rabbis, in a battle that continued through and after the creation of the state of Israel and that is still raging today.