Christian-Jewish Relations in America and the Israeli Palestinian Conflict

American churches and synagogues cannot significantly affect the future of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. But how we discuss the conflict, especially since October 7, 2023, can either severely strain Jewish-Christian relations, or plant seeds for a better future. Christian critique of Israel’s conduct of the war, including that of Pope Francis whose letter from October 7, 2024 included a citation of John 8:44 (a verse that accuses Jews of being “from [their] father, the devil,” and historically provoked and justified Church hostility to Jews) has, at times, veered into antisemitism. Coarsening discourse about Israel-Palestine threatens the future of Christian-Jewish relations in America.

The Life of a Rabbi After October 7th

After October 7, many liberal American Jews felt ostracized, besieged, and betrayed by longtime friends who denied or minimized the evils which had occurred on that day in Southern Israel. College campuses bred intimidation and hate rather than reasoned discourse. American rabbis pastored their congregants, many of whom felt scared and alone, while at the same time, we nurtured and navigated our communities’ relationships with the State of Israel. Israel is, for me and for the vast majority of American Jews, not only a critical refuge as the one and only country in the world where Jews can flee persecution. It is also a homeland where the story of the Jewish people began. It is the land where the Jewish people’s covenantal obligations are meant to be fulfilled; it is the place where Jews have yearned and prayed to return for thousands of years. Israel as a haven of belonging is a crucial aspect of modern Jewish identity and religious practice for most (though not all) American Jews.

I traveled to Israel in November 2023. Upon return, I reported about my experiences, not to convince people of the rightness of a particular political perspective, but to help American Jews feel more seen and understood in a time when so many felt invisible and misunderstood. I spoke and attended numerous rallies to bring the hostages home, one of whom, Keith Siegel, is the son of a member of my congregation. Thankfully, Keith was released from Hamas captivity in February 2025. Tragically, his mother, Gladys Siegel (z”l) died in December of 2024 before Keith was able to see her.

I taught classes about how Jewish texts address issues such as redeeming hostages and the moral challenges of asymmetrical warfare. While struggling to hold together my synagogue community with a diversity of strong, divergent political opinions, I also combated a one-sided Durham city council resolution, an early version of which didn’t even mention Hamas in reflections on October 7.

Church #1: A Church Next Door

It was in this context that I received an email from the pastor of a Presbyterian church across the street from our synagogue that farms a plot of land and donates the crops to combat hunger. The pastor wrote to tell me that their church would be releasing a statement about their “community’s desire for an end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas,” adding “we see you, we love you, and we desire your safety and thriving, alongside the safety and thriving of all the people of Israel and Palestine”. While I appreciated her email, I was angered and disappointed by the statement. It expressed deep sympathy for the plight of Palestinians in Gaza—a sentiment I shared and continue to share—but accused Israel of genocide while ignoring Jewish suffering and Hamas crimes. It failed to call for the immediate and unconditional release of hostages, when the church was located literally across the street from a synagogue, one of whose members’ children was, at that moment, a hostage in a Hamas tunnel. It affirmed Palestinian indigenousness while ignoring Jewish historical and religious connections to the land of Israel. The statement condemned Israeli settler colonialism and occupation but failed to affirm the legitimacy of Israel’s right to exist within the Green line as declared by the United Nations in 1947.

I expressed my concerns, but the church leadership refused to meet with me because a local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, endorsed their statement and they felt it unnecessary to hear an additional Jewish perspective, even if it came from their literal across-the-street neighbors. I pass their plot of land daily; when I see their church’s members working the field or praying or studying, instead of love and fellowship, I feel anger and betrayal. The fact that I feel those things fills me with sadness.

Church #2: Kitchen Table Learning

In contrast, I received a thoughtful email from pastors of a different church, Reverend Mindy Douglas and Reverend Esther Hethcox of First Presbyterian Church in Durham, NC. They invited me to discuss a statement their church was considering. It called for the return of the hostages, condemned Hamas, and refrained from genocide accusations. Reverends Douglas and Hethcox are precious friends. I thanked them for reaching out and considering how their church’s public comments could affect members of my synagogue. I offered for us to talk over coffee around my kitchen table. When I asked why their church chose to issue a statement about Gaza, Mindy explained that some people in the church had been to Israel but also that “part of our story is there. When we read the stories of the Bible, that is the place where our stories are taking place.”

I found that answer genuine, honest, and something Jewish and Christian leaders should reflect upon together. What does it mean when a Christian church weighs in (particularly) on Israel because it sees what happens there as part of its own story?

Untangling Jewish and Christian Stories

Reverends Douglas and Hethcox are sensitive to the treachery that centuries of Supersessionism— seeing the Jewish story as being supplanted by the Christian one— has wrought upon the Jewish people. True Christian-Jewish reconciliation cannot take place by ignoring European Christianity’s oppressive history of appropriating Jewish self-understanding. Centuries of Christian Supersessionism did not disappear with Nostra Aetate in 1965; the work of ending its harmful influence must extend beyond statements and theology to one of the most difficult and divisive topics in modern religious life: the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

American churches that descend from European Christianity inherit a responsibility to reflect on how anti-Israel rhetoric can fuel hate, especially when paired with Supersessionist theology. What is happening between Israelis and Palestinians is not, primarily, a Christian story, even though it is taking place in a religiously significant place for Christians. When choosing to participate in conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, American Christians do not owe blind, uncritical support to any Israeli government, and my point of concern is not meant to silence legitimate criticism of Israel’s current government. But as inheritors of a tradition that appropriated the Jewish story for two thousand years, I would argue that Christians have an ethical obligation to support the right of the majority of the Jewish people who are Zionists to tell their own Jewish and Zionist story and, at the very least, when speaking about modern Israel, to avoid repeating the sins of the past by again placing themselves at the center of the Jewish story.

Church #3: Seeing Israel Together

In June 2022, Beth El Synagogue and Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church (TAPC), led by Reverend Dr. Katie Crowe, embarked on an interfaith trip to Israel and the West Bank. It included visits to Jewish and Christian holy places and a meeting near Bethlehem with Roots, a grassroots movement of understanding, nonviolence, and transformation among Israelis and Palestinians. Our trip formed the basis for more knowledgeable and nuanced understandings about the meaning of Israel for our communities at home.

On the Sabbath after October 7th, Reverend Crowe and members of TAPC attended our services along with Mindy and Esther and other local Christian and Muslim faith leaders. Imam Abdullah Antepli offered the Prayer for Peace from our dais. The presence of our interfaith partners bore witness to our community during a time of searing pain. Later, TAPC and Beth El co-hosted speakers from Roots to model how respectful dialogue about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians could take place, and to challenge local religious and political leaders: if Israelis and Palestinians who are directly affected by the conflict can speak respectfully with each other, shouldn’t we, who are thousands of miles away, be able to do so?

Looking Ahead

What best practices can be followed to preserve and deepen Jewish-Christian relationships?

Reach Out!

I pray and hope and fervently wish for peace but this is not the last time violence will occur between Palestinians and Israelis. When it does, faith leaders should reach out to one another. Good communication can help Christian pastors find out if and how the local Jewish community is being affected by the violence overseas. Is someone a hostage? Is there a family member who was injured in an attack? Communication can also help Jews and Christians affect real and positive change. Rabbis and others who visit Israel are often aware of non-profit organizations doing effective and meaningful work on the ground. Local churches and synagogues can partner to support those organizations.

Prioritize the Local

Rabbis and pastors should be wary of damaging Jewish-Christian relations in America for the sake of issuing statements about the war in Israel. If a church feels called to speak, it should engage in internal reflection and consult a diverse range of Jewish voices— not only the “anti-Zionist” ones— before making public statements about such a complex topic. Christian communities cannot claim to be engaged in serious interfaith dialogue by cherry-picking those Jewish voices who agree with their point of view. The burden of true commitment to the work of interfaith dialogue involves proactively seeking out diverse Jewish voices and listening deeply with an open intent on honoring the modern complexity, pain, and hope of ancient people, groups, and stories. Take the time to get to know many Jewish neighbors; ask about their perspectives and experiences and learn how the issues are affecting them. This will aid in the formulation of a uniquely local, distinctively Christian response that builds community rather than erodes it.

Learn Together

Too often our learning takes place in silos. When a church or synagogue hosts a speaker or offers a class about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, invite local Jews, Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians to learn together with your community. Doing so will give local people most affected by the conflict the gift of feeling seen, heard and known, rather than being objectified as the topic of a conversation that involves them but in which too often, they are not invited to speak. Christians can play a key role in convening Jewish and Muslim communities in ways that neither be able to do for themselves.

Lead with humility and curiosity

Israel-Palestine is a complex, painful conflict that vexes the most capable scholars and religious leaders in the world. All of us must remember that none of us have the answers. Focus on listening to different perspectives and finding compassion in your heart for all who suffer.

One final story

As Reverend Crowe and I walked through the streets of Israel, time and again Jewish and Arab shopkeepers pedaled their wares and asked us about ourselves. When we explained we were a rabbi and a pastor with a synagogue and a church, traveling to see the Holy Land together, people were astonished. They had rarely, if ever, encountered such a partnership. A plurality of Israeli Jews descend from Arab-Muslim countries where they had limited cultural and religious interaction with Christians. Ashkenazi Jews lived in fear of Christian neighbors for much of their history. Jews from Christian countries who live in Israel have had few interactions with the local minority Christian communities, most of which are not Catholic or Protestant. Jewish-Christian relations in Israel are frozen in time. Israeli Jews and Palestinian Christians relate to one another (if at all) through the suspicious screens of a terrible history, or the fog of the political conflict. Jewish-Christian relations in Europe and elsewhere in the world are better, but not by much.

America offers Jews and Christians an unparalleled opportunity for healing old wounds, for growing in ways unimaginable to our ancestors. Many (though not all) American Christians are willing to set aside seeing Jews as incomplete, in-need of conversion, and noxious beliefs that Jews are going to hell or responsible for the death of Christ. Many (though not all) American Jews know the difficult history of Jewish-Christian relations but realize the fundamental goodness of their Christian neighbors and seek to embrace the opportunity to build something new and different. But when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how we speak about it may put that hopeful future at risk. If we can speak with honesty and humility and curiosity, helping each other feel more known and understood and caring for one another’s safety, only then will God be glorified, by building community across difference and, in doing so, building a better future for us all.

Daniel Greyber is rabbi of Beth El Synagogue in Durham, NC, a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and an Adjunct Faculty Member at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of Faith Unravels: A Rabbi’s Struggle with Grief and God and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Hebrew Literature (DHL) degree with a specialization in Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS).