Building Bridges Around the World

October 31, 2007

FROM SOUTH AFRICA: In 2001, the United Nations Conference on Racism and Xenophobia was held in Durban, South Africa. Hijacked in its entirety by the anti-Israel element, the South African Jewish community watched in despair as the local media, the streets of Durban, and the conference halls became a vortex of anti-Semitism in its most graphic form. Commentators at the time described it as the worst outpouring of anti-Semitism since the Holocaust. Against this backdrop, Bridges for Peace, supported by other Christian organizations, initiated a media campaign in all the major newspapers that addressed the false accusations leveled at Israel. In her hour of need, the local Jewish community discovered friends! In 2006, the Jerusalem Prize was awarded to Chris Eden and Johan Greeff, national directors of Bridges for Peace and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem respectively. In making the award, the national president of the SA Zionist Federation noted that the unwavering support of Christians was a vital source of encouragement to South African Jewry.

FROM CANADA: John Howson, Canadian National Director, recounts: “After volunteering in Israel in 1994, I went to visit Ike Chamish, the Honorary Ambassador for Tourism in Winnipeg. He explained to me that he and his wife were going to Israel. She had been told to say goodbye to her grandchildren because she was dying. First, I explained that God is a healer (Exodus 15:26), then I asked if I might pray for her. I did pray for her. In about a month, they returned, and he called with the news that something miraculous had happened. She was getting better, and he looked forward to living with her for several more years. This began an odyssey of friendship with the local Jewish community. He took me everywhere and introduced me to key leaders. He explained to them what Bridges for Peace was doing. I participated in the Holocaust Memorial services each year. I sent money to help them rebuild their cemeteries and schools when they were vandalized. I tried to participate in each and every event they sponsored. Eventually, they recognized me as a friend. Today, we get invited to homes, funerals, high-level meetings in Toronto and Ottawa, Passover seders, Holocaust memorials, and weddings.”

FROM THE UNITED STATES: Charles Jacobs of The David Project, a US center for Jewish leadership, says: “I love Bridges for Peace. You know, getting Jews to see that they ought to work with Christians and accept and value their support has not always been an easy sell. After all, we don’t have a great history together. It was the Bridges people I knew who convinced people very close to me—people who survived the Shoah [Holocaust] and who grew up with Christians in Europe who hated and harmed them—that American Christians are in important ways, not like European Christians. We at The David Project have worked with Bridges for Peace almost since we started five years ago. We provide Bridges for Peace with Israel advocacy training and our films. They bring us wonderful allies: Christians in churches and on college campuses. This summer, we had several Bridges students join our Jewish students in five-day Campus Fellows Israel advocacy seminars. It works! We have formed alliances and friendships…and we didn’t duck any of the hard questions about Jewish–Christian relations and Christian motivation for supporting Israel. In fact, I made it a special point to raise these issues and work through them. And it worked better than we could have hoped. I would bring Bridges people to any Jewish group and be confident they’d be persuasive and they’d be appreciated.”

FROM THE UK: On the morning after a Jewish cemetery was vandalized in Wales, National Director of the United Kingdom Pam Thomas mobilized concerned Christians, and they were soon on the scene offering their support, friendship, and hard labor to clean and repair the cemetery.

These are a few examples of the work Bridges for Peace is doing around the world. There isn’t enough space in this publication to list all the amazing things that are happening. But Jewish–Christian relationships haven’t always been good. For the past 1,700 years, they have been strained, adversarial, or antagonistic. Much pain has been experienced by the Jewish people because of the attitudes and actions of those who call themselves Christians (in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant denominations). Today, many Christians worldwide are becoming increasingly aware of this tragic history and are reaching out with love instead of judgment. At Bridges for Peace, we are praising God that He has given us the privilege to partner with Him in this new day of building bridges between Jews and Christians.

By Rebecca J. Brimmer,
International President and CEO

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