In Israel, some Jews and Christians seek to build trust between their communities

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Ailsa Chang.

And I'm Juana Summers. Relations between the Vatican and Israel were tense during the war in Gaza. The late Pope Francis sharply criticized Israel's response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, and top Israeli leaders didn't attend his funeral earlier this year. Despite these tensions, some Jews and Christians living in Israel are trying to build trust between their communities. NPR's Jerome Sokolovsky reports from a shared holiday celebration in Haifa.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Arabic). UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Speaking Arabic).

JEROME SOKOLOVSKY: The countdown begins... SOKOLOVSKY: And the excitement builds, and finally...

SOKOLOVSKY: ...The giant Christmas tree lights up outside the white stone walls of a church in Haifa.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Singing in Arabic).

SOKOLOVSKY: A song plays in Arabic. You might recognize the tune.

SOKOLOVSKY: Then the crowd in the courtyard turns their gaze to the heavens for the fireworks.

SOKOLOVSKY: These Maronite Catholics are part of the very diverse landscape of this ancient port city, which includes Jews, Muslims and members of the Druze and Bahaʼi faiths.

YOUSEF YACOUB: (Speaking Arabic).

SOKOLOVSKY: Father Yousef Yacoub (ph) offers a welcome in Arabic...

SOKOLOVSKY: ...Then switches to Hebrew to introduce a rabbi who lights a braided candle for peace.

YACOUB: We are sitting here in the Church of St. Louis IX.

SOKOLOVSKY: Father Yousef takes me into the church and says he invited the rabbi to show his parishioners...

YACOUB: That we are praying - both of us - for light and for peace and for happiness for people.

SOKOLOVSKY: Light, peace and happiness in a place with so much conflict and memories of suffering. Here in Haifa in the 19th century, Ottoman rulers limited new churches, so this one was built under French protection. The Maronite priest says Jews who visit the church sometimes bring up how Catholic Spain expelled their ancestors in 1492.

YACOUB: I say to them, but what that has to do with a Christian that lives, for example, in Egypt or in Lebanon? You might even find people that have no idea what happened in Spain. They don't know the history of Spain, so when they speak, you know, about the inquisition.

SOKOLOVSKY: He says Christians here have little connection to the horrors of European history.

NA'AMA DAFNI: That's not exactly true for us, because Jews lived in Europe, as well.

SOKOLOVSKY: Na'ama Dafni is the reform rabbi who lit the candle with a priest, whom she calls by his Arabic title.

DAFNI: The lived experience of my family is the Holocaust, is the anti-Jewish sentiment of the Christian population in Europe. So for Abouna (ph) Yousef Yacoub, that's not part of his story because he was here. But for my family, it is part of my story, although my grandparents helped build this country.

SOKOLOVSKY: The rabbi and priest belong to an interfaith forum at Haifa University. It runs a graduate program in religious dialogue...

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: (Non-English language spoken).

SOKOLOVSKY: ...Where the students like debating. They include an imam with a skull cap, several Druze women wearing white headscarves, some Jews and a priest in a cassock. He's Father Munier Mazzawi (ph) of the Greek Catholic Church. I catch him in the hallway.

What have you learned here that you didn't know before? MUNIER MAZZAWI: (Speaking Hebrew).

SOKOLOVSKY: "First of all, about antisemitism," he says. "I knew very little about it. Also about Islamophobia and the plight of Jews in the Arab world."

Karen Levisohn is Jewish and grew up in the Galilee. It's a part of Israel where Jesus spent much of his life. She says her perspective on Christianity changed when she became a tour guide.

KAREN LEVISOHN: And I was amazed to realize what goes around my house in the Galilee that I did not realize and the beauty that you would see in Christianity that I was not aware. Because what we learn in school is, like, about the crusaders and the Holocaust and things like that.

SOKOLOVSKY: Levisohn is a lecturer in the program and is writing her doctoral thesis on Christian tourism in Israel. She says sensitivities in Israel run high whenever a pope weighs in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

LEVISOHN: The relations between Jews and Christian is so delicate. You don't even need a match. You just need, you know, like, a small thing to strike problem. And if Christians take it into the question of Palestinian, it gets worse.

SOKOLOVSKY: The coed scouts' bagpipe band was another high point of the festival at the Maronite Church.

SOKOLOVSKY: In a land rife with tensions, there's a glimmer of hope when a rabbi lights a candle with a priest who declares, blessed be the peacemakers.

SOKOLOVSKY: Jerome Sokolovsky, NPR News, Haifa, Israel.

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