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Dear Friends of the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies:
Pope Leo XIV recently called for a rereading of the Second Vatican Council's documents. On January 7th, at his Wednesday audience, Pope Leo said that the Council still serves as the "guiding star of the Church’s journey."
As many know, the Council's documents include Nostra Aetate, the historic declaration that positively reframed Catholic-Jewish relations, rejected the deicide charge, condemned antisemitism, and called for dialogue and study with our Jewish neighbors as well as members of other traditions. Though the declaration is only a beginning, it remains the foundation of the work of the CCJS.
Indeed, Pope Leo's call to reread and study this declaration is timely since some are unaware, indifferent, or hostile to the ideas of Nostra Aetate, and so they do not value dialogue with neighbors from other backgrounds.
On March 25th, a CCJS webinar attempts to address this challenge. The program is entitled, "Neglecting Nostra Aetate: Antisemitism on the Catholic Far Right," and features Dr. Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, at Princeton University.
Below, you can also find information about other upcoming programs, including the third session in our CCJS series, Israel and Palestine in the context of Catholic-Jewish Dialogue, which features Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.
Recently, the CCJS received a major gift from longtime friends and supporters of the CCJS, Gail and Paul Whiting. You can read more about their generous gift to the center below.
Finally, for those who could not attend the 2025 Eternal Light Award Dinner last November, a video of Dr. Adele Reinhartz's keynote lecture is available below.
We look forward to seeing you.
Respectfully,
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Matthew Tapie, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies
and Associate Professor of Theology
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Cultivating Conversations on the State of Israel: Understanding Israeli Perspectives
Sunday, March 8, 1:15pm Eastern Time | Zoom Webinar
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| This spring, the CCJS continues its series on Israel and Palestine in the Context of Catholic-Jewish Dialogue. Session three features Yossi Kleinn Halevi and takes place on March 8th. The programs in the series explore theological, historical, and social dimensions of Israel and Palestine in the context of Catholic-Jewish dialogue. | | |
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is co-host, together with Donniel Hartman, of the Hartman Institute’s podcast, For Heaven’s Sake – the number one Jewish podcast in the English-speaking world.
Halevi’s 2013 book, Like Dreamers, won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Book of the Year Award. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, has appeared in a dozen languages. He is currently writing a book about the meaning of Jewish survival.
Halevi has written for leading op-ed pages in North America and is a former contributing editor to the New Republic. He is frequently quoted on Israeli, Middle Eastern and Jewish affairs in leading media around the world and is one of the best-known lecturers on Israeli issues in the North American Jewish community and on North American campuses.
He co-directs the Hartman Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), which teaches emerging young Muslim leaders in North America about Judaism, Jewish identity and Israel. Over 150 Muslim leaders have participated in the unique program.
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Session three of this series is co-sponsored with Congregation Schaarai Zedek, Tampa
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Interreligious Mixer for Students
Thursday, March 12, 7 - 8:00pm Eastern Time | Student Center Boardrooms, Saint Leo University
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Undergraduate and graduate Saint Leo students are invited to an "Interreligious mixer" event that facilitates dialogue between students of different backgrounds.
Students will learn about the CCJS mission and how to get involved in various dialogue initiatives on campus.
The event takes place in the Saint Leo Student Center Boardrooms and is co-sponsored by CCJS and Saint Leo University Ministry. Faculty are also welcome. Refreshments and desserts will be available. Contact Laurie Gens with any questions.
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Neglecting Nostra Aetate: Antisemitism on the Catholic Far Right
Wednesday, March 25, 7 - 8:15 pm Eastern Time | Zoom Webinar
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In recent years, there has been a visible resurgence of antisemitism among self-identified Catholics, especially on the Catholic Far Right. This program asks how such developments are possible after the Second Vatican Council and what they reveal about the neglect, misreading, and rejection of Nostra Aetate and subsequent magisterial teachings, especially their condemnation of antisemitism, their affirmation of the enduring covenant with Israel, and their call for renewed esteem and respect for Jews and Judaism. In a live online talk, Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, will reflect on these developments, the theological and ideological currents that sustain them, and the ways in which they distort Catholic doctrine. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.
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| |  | Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is a leading scholar of constitutional interpretation, civil liberties, and moral and political philosophy, and has served as chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Professor George is author of Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (1993), In Defense of Natural Law (OUP 1999), Conscience and Its Enemies (2016), and The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis (2014), and Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division (2025), among other works. His articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Review of Politics, the Review of Metaphysics, and the American Journal of Jurisprudence. He has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, Professor George holds the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and DLitt from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-three honorary degrees. He is a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Council on Foreign Relations.
This event is free and open to the public but registration is required.
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Antisemitism Without Jews
Thursday, April 16, 7 - 8:00pm ET | In-person only
at the Shanna and Bryan Glazer Jewish Community Center, 522 N. Howard Ave. Tampa
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Why is it that anti-Judaism and antisemitism can thrive in societies with few or no Jews? Drawing on examples from the past and the present, this lecture shows how Jews and Judaism have been imagined not only as the enemies of whatever a society holds dear, but also as the emblem of whatever it most fears or despises—and why this idea can endure without either the presence of Jews or accurate knowledge of Judaism. The program also examines the crucial role Christian theology has played—and can play—both in fueling and in combating this distinctive form of hatred.
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Dr. Benny Bar-Lavi earned a bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. Before his appointment at Saint Leo University, Dr. Bar-Lavi served as the inaugural Scholar-in-Residence in Jewish Studies and Jewish-Christian Relations at Providence College, Rhode Island.
At Providence College, he taught a number of courses, including Jews and Christians in Dialogue: A Shared and Disputed Heritage; Entwined Faiths: Theological and Cultural Interactions Between Judaism and Christianity Across the Ages; Judaism as an Idea in Western Thought; and a course in the local community, Two Nations in Your Womb: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity. Dr. Bar-Lavi is currently working on a book titled Politics Against God: Judaism and Islam in the Political-Theological Discourses of Early Modernity.
This event takes place at the Shanna and Bryan Glazer Jewish Community Center in Tampa. The event is free and open to the public but space is limited.
Registration is required.
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RECENT NEWS AND ACTIVITIES
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Gail and Paul Whiting to Grant Major CCJS Gift
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We are happy to announce that Gail and Paul Whiting will grant a total of $180,000 to the CCJS. This follows a $150,000 gift in 2022.
The Whitings are longtime friends of the CCJS, and well-known for their leadership and generous donations to both the CCJS and the Tampa Catholic community.
We want to thank the Whitings for their incredibly generous gift which continues the expansion of the center's capacity to administer programs and events for hundreds of people on the Saint Leo campus, in the local Tampa community, and beyond.
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Adele Reinhartz receives CCJS Eternal Light Award
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On Sunday, November 9, 2025, members of the Tampa community and Saint Leo students gathered for an evening of reflection on the future of Catholic-Jewish relations on the anniversary of Kristallnacht (German for “night of broken glass”), which most historians identify as the beginning of the Holocaust. The keynote talk was by Dr. Adele Reinhartz, the 21st recipient of the Eternal Light Award and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Ottawa, as well as Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies. You can find a video of Dr. Reinhartz's lecture below.
| | This event attracted over 150 members of the community and students. CCJS would like to thank our Eternal Light Award Dinner table sponsors as well as our Dinner Co-Chairs, Rabbi Joel Simon of Congregation Schaarai Zedek, and Msgr. Robert F. Morris, Vicar General of the Diocese of St. Petersburg. Major sponsorships for the dinner included the Diocese of St. Petersburg and Gail and Paul Whiting. | | |
CCJS Dialogue Fellows Selected
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Each academic year, the CCJS selects a few Saint Leo students to serve as dialogue fellows. The fellowships allow students with an interest in interreligious dialogue to study with faculty in the CCJS. Fellows learn why dialogue is important, and how to build mutual respect and understanding across differences. They meet with faculty and other students for dialogue meetings focused on readings of sacred texts from different religious traditions.
This year, the CCJS dialogue fellows are Mario Castillo and Simon Zylbersztajn.
Dialogue Fellows receive a partial tuition scholarship. Saint Leo graduate or undergraduate students interested in applying should contact laurie.gens@saintleo.edu.
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Mario Castillo
is a freshman computer science major from Honduras.
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Simon Zylbersztajn is a sophomore political science and international studies major from Cancún, Mexico.
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Faculty publications and invited lectures
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Benny Bar-Lavi, “Political Hypocrisy as Judaizing: Anti-Machiavellian Political Theology in Early Modern Spain.” In The Co-Production of Hypocrisy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, edited by Carson Bay, Katharina Heyden, and David Nirenberg. Brepols, 2026.
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Matthew Tapie, "Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Contemporary Canon Law on Baptism of Infants of Non-Catholic Parents." Bambini rapiti, bambini contesi. Battesimi forzati e fratellanza umana. Con un appello al Pontefice, a cura di Elisa Bianchi ed Elèna Mortara. Guerini, 2025.
- On June 3-4, CCJS Director, Matthew Tapie will present along with Dr. Adam Afterman of Tel Aviv University on "Medieval sources on the Holy Spirit in Judaism and Christianity," for a special Catholic-Jewish dialogue on the Holy Spirit at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome.
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SUPPORT THE WORK OF THE CCJS
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For 28 years, the CCJS has worked to build bridges of mutual understanding and respect between Catholics and Jews, and all people of good will.
Your gift helps us advance scholarship in Catholic-Jewish studies and relations, and provides interreligious education to thousands of students, leaders, and members of the community.
| Dr. Benny Bar-Lavi, the Maureen and Douglas Cohn Visiting Chair in Jewish Thought, in dialogue with an attendee of the CCJS Visit a Synagogue and Church program, co-hosted by Rabbi Danielle Upbin and Rabbi David Weizman of Congregation Beth Shalom, Clearwater, FL. | | |
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