ADL Mission Brings Southern California Catholic Educator to Israel on a Trip of a Lifetime

  • July 15, 2013

ADL Receives Thank You from Participant

A group of Catholic school educators from 10 states across the country, including Sandra Columbus of Our Lady of the Assumption School in Claremont, CA, recently travelled to Israel on an Anti-Defamation League mission that aims to provide an advance course of study on anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Catholic-Jewish relations.  Columbus, the delegate from ADL’s Pacific Southwest Region, had previously attended Bearing Witness™ in Los Angeles in 2008, which focused on methods of teaching about anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the history of Catholic-Jewish relations.

Columbus and the other 20 participants in the nationally acclaimed ADL Bearing Witness Advanced™ program were in Israel from June 25-July 4, where they visited Christian and Jewish holy sites and met with Holocaust survivors, members of the Israeli government, Arab Israelis, Israeli journalists, Catholic dignitaries, Jewish community leaders, interfaith experts and scholars.

“Going to Israel, you really get to experience the culture and the humanity of the country.  You don’t always get that from the news,” said Columbus.

The LA-area educator and the other participants will take these meaningful experiences back into their classrooms.

The group journeyed across Israel, with stops in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Nazareth, the Golan Heights and Haifa. They toured the old city of Jerusalem, and numerous Christian churches and holy sites, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Church of the Annunciation, St. Joseph’s Church and Mount of Beatitudes.

The group also visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust and heard from representatives of the Israeli government, Israeli Defense Forces, the Arab-Jewish Community Center, the Apostolic Delegation, the JOINT Distribution Fund, the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, Shalom Hartman Institute, the Interfaith Encounter Association and Bar Ilan University.

Since its inception in 1996, ADL Bearing Witness: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Contemporary Issues has trained more than 1,700 Catholic school educators across the U.S. about the historical relationship between the Jewish and Catholic communities and the impact of that relationship on Catholic teaching, catechesis and liturgy.

The Los Angeles office of ADL has presented a regional Bearing Witness program since 2003, training more than 300 Southern California teachers about anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the history of Catholic-Jewish relations.  Bearing Witness Advanced was initiated in 2005 to allow Bearing Witness graduates to extend their learning and travel to Israel. The program is endorsed by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

For information about the 2014 Los Angeles Bearing Witness program, please visit www.adl.org/laholocaustinstitute.