Dear Members and Friends
 
The Christian season of Lent began this past week, and we marked it in a unique way in the CCJ office. On Monday in a team meeting we studied Deuteronomy 8 together, a passage which tells the story of Israel’s period of testing in the wilderness and which is quoted in Matthew and Luke’s story of Jesus’ own testing in the wilderness. This being CCJ, in the same meeting we also planned our in-house exchange of gifts for the Jewish festival of Purim next month -- a practice called Mishloach Manot (deriving from Esther 9:22).

This week I visited CCJ West of Scotland in Glasgow for the first time. I reflected briefly on Deuteronomy 8 with a group gathered for the AGM, because it seems to me that the desert is a ‘fruitful’ place in which to consider Jewish-Christian relations. The desert is a place of remembering God’s deliverance (as in Ps 78:1-7) but also a place of hardship and strained relationship. For Christians, the Lenten desert is a place in which to think through what is most basic to Christian faith. It is a place of renewing and remembering as well as stripping away. I hope that any Christian reading this might feel, as I do, that engagement with Jews, Judaism, and the Hebrew Bible is renewed when what is unessential is stripped away in Lent. In that sense, Lent for Christians can renew Jewish-Christian dialogue, wherever we are. Please look below for a Lenten reflection written for us by Rev Dr Jonathan Dean, and look out for other writers to follow in upcoming weeks.

In Glasgow, I was moved and honoured to spend time with Sr Isabel Smyth and Steve Innes in particular, and to meet other Jewish and Christian leaders in the Glasgow interfaith scene. In particular, I was impressed to hear about the antisemitism dialogue that has recently concluded in Glasgow, resourced in part by CCJ. Overall I was reminded that our strength as CCJ is the people who build the community relationships which are critical to dialogue.

Whether you are marking the first Sunday in Lent this weekend, or perhaps preparing a Mishloach Manot, I hope you feel renewed in your important work.

All the best,

Nathan Eddy
Deputy Director

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For Christians, Lent involves a double journey. The Gospel stories of Jesus’s experiences in the desert, and of the ways in which he arrived at a clearer understanding of himself and his purpose, seem to me to point to a journey inwards, and then a journey outwards. On the way in, we must come to terms with both our gifts and our flaws – the things which we can offer to the world and others, as well the mixed motivations out of which we may offer them, and all within us that keeps us from entering into fullness of life as those made in God’s image.
 
The journey outward is crucial also, though, and ought to stop Lent from becoming solely an exercise in self-examination or introspection, however valuable those are. Having discerned something more clearly about who I am, and of what God might require of me, with all my particularities, unique qualities and essential gifts, I’m summoned to a life of witness, action, engagement with the world’s life, and faithfulness to the insights I’ve gained.

In my own faith, it has been the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures who best remind me of this, and of what faithfulness looks like, and of what its costs and pitfalls might be, amid hopelessness, the loss of our communal identity, and the decline of confidence among God’s people. It’s a costly, but a beautiful, thing.
 
And in my life, it’s often been through the witness of my Jewish friends that I’ve rekindled this sense of my own call to faithfulness: to an engaged, as well as a reflective, life. As we share together in prayer and reflection, in work for justice, in education, and in ensuring that we hand on a world shaped by kindness and mercy, I’m reminded of a central Lenten tenet: that, in Janet Morley’s words, we must “abandon the false innocence of failing to choose at all”.
 
The Revd Dr Jonathan Dean
Director of Learning for Ministry, the Methodist Church

CCJ's Refugee Video Campaign
 

Inspired by CCJ’s Refugee Training Workshop last Thursday, workshop participants partook in CCJ’s video campaign to encourage others to join them in uniting and welcoming those seeking refuge today. You can watch the video campaign here: https://bit.ly/2PqjAGg
 

This week CCJ staff visited the Jewish Museum, London to see the exhibition Charlotte Salomon: Life? Or Theatre? German artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) created her self-portrait Life? Or Theatre? while hiding in the South of France to escape Nazi persecution. The work spans over 700 gouaches detailing her life history, with her artistic study and difficult family relations set against a backdrop of rising Nazism. Throughout the work the emotions of the artist are apparent and the final gouaches illustrate her increasing desperation to finish the work. Salomon entrusted her work to a friend and it was kept hidden until after the war when it was given to her father and stepmother. Salomon was murdered in Auschwitz aged 26. She was five months pregnant. The two images above represent just two of the many facets to Salomon’s work: she was a painter still discovering her own identity, yet at the same time she documented for posterity a powerful testimony to the rise of those forces which saw her identity as a threat to their destructive ideology.

We would like to thank all at the Jewish Museum, London for their warm welcome to our team. If you have not been able to visit before, we do encourage you to visit their excellent galleries on Jewish history and Jewish life today.

Image credits: Charlotte Salomon, Leben? oder Theater? Ein Singspiel (Life? or Theatre? A Play with Music), 1941–42, gouache on paper. Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, © Charlotte Salomon Foundation, Charlotte Salomon ®

Applications open for 2020 Yad Vashem Seminar
 

Applications are now open for CCJ’s annual seminar at the International School of Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The seminar—which will take place Monday 12 to Thursday 22 October 2020—is open to ordained Christian clergy and lay church leaders. Now in its 14^th year, the seminar is a unique opportunity for church leaders to learn about the Holocaust, pre-war Jewish European life, and post-Holocaust theology from the world’s leading experts. In doing so, participants will become part of our active network of over 250 "alumni" across the UK, committed to passing on Holocaust learning in their churches and communities, championing Christian-Jewish relations, and challenging antisemitism.
 
For more information on the programme and how to apply, please contact Senior Programme Manager, Rob Thompson, at rob.thompson@ccj.org.uk
 

From 16 – 20 March The Wiener Holocaust Library in London will host the travelling exhibition James Parkes and the age of intolerance. This exhibition—which CCJ has been proud to help bring to a number of cathedrals in the UK—reflects on the life and legacy of the Revd James Parkes, a key personality in the founding of CCJ and one of the leading thinkers, writers, and campaigners in twentieth century Jewish-Christian relations. You can find out more about the exhibition here. On Thursday 19 March 18.30-20.00 our Senior Programme Manager Rob Thompson will join a panel to discuss the work of James Parkes. Alongside Rob will be speakers Prof Tony Kushner, Marcus Sieff Professor in Jewish/non-Jewish relations at the University of Southampton, and Dr Barbara Warnock, Senior Curator and Head of Education at The Wiener Holocaust Library. Please do join us to reflect on Parkes’ extraordinary legacy and the repercussions of his work in contemporary issues as well. You can sign up for this free event here.