Faculty at Notre Dame High School in Riverside Participates in Bearing Fruit Program

  • August 12, 2016

The entire faculty at Notre Dame High School in Riverside recently participated in ADL’s Bearing Fruit program.  Over 40 educators from the Catholic high school engaged in the day-long training on anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the history of Jewish-Catholic relations on August 4. The program, Bearing Fruit: Exploring the Roots of Catholic-Jewish Relations from the Past to the Present (which grew out of a previous program known as Bearing Witness™), was held in the city of Riverside.

Father Alexei Smith speaks about “The Catholic Church, Jews, and Judaism.”

Father Alexei Smith speaks about “The Catholic Church, Jews, and Judaism.”

The program is part of ADL’s Holocaust Education Institute, which will begin again this school year in late October with a full-day program at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and includes other sessions for teachers throughout the school year.

Lectures and discussions were led by Father Alexei Smith, a renowned leader in interreligious dialogue, Rabbi Elliot Dorff of American Jewish University in Los Angeles, and ADL Associate Director Matthew Friedman.  The presenters provided training on how to bring the lessons of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and modern-day prejudice to Catholic school communities.

Nationally, ADL’s Bearing Witness™ program has reached more than 1,600 Catholic school teachers across the country, including over 300 in the Los Angeles area. Bearing Fruit is made possible largely by the generosity of the supporters of the Holocaust Education Institute and the Freshman Family Foundation.

Comments made by participants in the August 4 program include:

  • “I learned so much about the Catholic Church that I as a Catholic didn’t know.  I also enjoyed learning more about the Jewish religion.”
  • “The speakers were very knowledgeable on the subject area and they brought a lot of information to me that I was not aware of.”
  • “Very informative dialogue!”

Please visit the website of the Riverside Press-Enterprise to read their article about the program:

Riverside Catholic teachers mix tolerance with Holocaust history

 

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Riverside Press Enterprise