IJCR Upcoming Events
Reconstructing Hadassah: Centering American Women’s Roles in a Jewish Homeland
From our colleagues in the History Department: The Annual Gerrity Lecture
Thursday, September 25, 2025, 2 – 3:30pm
Campion Student Center, President's Lounge
A lecture by Sharon Musher on her work on the activism of Haddassah Kaplan, as featured in her new book, Promised Lands: Hadassah Kaplan and the Legacy of American Jewish Women in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (NYU, 2025).
Pope Francis: Successes and Challenges in Interfaith Dialogue
Remembering His Visit to Hawk Hill in September 2015
Thursday, October 16, 2025, 5:00-6:30 P.M.
Campion Student Center: Doyle Banquet Hall South (campus map)
Throughout his pontificate (2013-2025), Pope Francis prioritized dialogue as urgent for intergroup solidarity, even after centuries of alienation or during ongoing war. Experienced in dialogue with Jews when Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as pope he visited the Great Synagogue of Rome, Auschwitz, and Israel and Palestine. While he also was very committed to deeper relations with Islam, this program will concentrate on Catholic-Jewish relations.
This program, featuring two veterans of interfaith dialogue, will consider Pope Francis’s important theological statements, tensions raised by his preaching, and challenges he faced in addressing conflicts in the Middle East. It will also recall his visit to SJU ten years ago to bless the sculpture “Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time.”
Rabbi Noam Marans is Director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, heading that agency’s global interfaith outreach and advocacy.
Dr. Elena Procario-Foley is the Br. John G. Driscoll Professor of Catholic-Jewish Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Iona University in New Rochelle.
Facing the Future as Friends: Catholics, Jews, and Muslims
Trilateral Relationships Sixty Years after Nostra Aetate
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2025, 9 A.M. TO 1:00 P.M. (lunch to follow)
Campion Student Center: Doyle Banquet Hall South (campus map)
Registration Required
Registrants will receive detailed free parking information near the program date.
Organized in collaboration with the Peace Islands Institute, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia, the City of Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, and the City of Philadelphia Office of Muslim Engagement. Sponsors include the American Jewish Committee, the Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, the Jewish Community Relations Council, Majlis Ash-Shura, and the National Council of Synagogues.
On October 28, 1965, the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church issued an authoritative declaration on its relationship with other religions. Entitled Nostra Aetate, Latin for “In Our Time,” it called for interreligious dialogue, devoting special attention to Jews and Muslims. To mark its sixtieth anniversary, we will reflect together on the new possibilities for interreligious friendships that declaration enabled, consider the religious topics we need to keep exploring, and discuss how to continue building the interreligious solidarity that is desperately needed in today’s divided and violent world.
Keynote Speaker: Cardinal Wilton Gregory
His Eminence Cardinal Wilton Gregory is Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, having served as its seventh Archbishop from 2019–2025. He is co-chair of the dialogue between the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Synagogues. Cardinal Gregory will be introduced by Philadelphia's Archbishop Nelson Pérez.
Panel: The Past and Future Impact of Nostra Aetate on Catholic relations with Jews and Muslims
Rev. Russell K. McDougall is the Executive Director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
Rabba Rori Picker Neiss serves as the Senior Vice President for Community Relations at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA).
Dr. Zeki Saritoprak is a Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and Director of the Bediuzzaman Said Nursi Chair in Islamic Studies at John Carroll University.
Facilitated Process: Interfaith Friendships in Times of Crisis
Rabbi Or Rose is the founding Director of the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership and also of the Center for Global Judaism at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.
Dr. Homayra Ziad is Dean of the Divinity Program and Director of the Hassan Institute for Interfaith Encounter at the American Islamic College, Chicago.
Seeing the Unseeable: Jewish and Orthodox Christian Visions of God, Image, and Incarnation
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025, 5:00 - 6:30 P.M.
Teletorium in Mandeville Hall (campus map)
Can God be pictured? For centuries, both Jews and Orthodox Christians have wrestled with how to honor the mystery of a God who cannot be seen—and yet, in some ways, chooses to be seen. While their answers have often seemed to diverge sharply, a closer look reveals unexpected areas of resonance, especially in how both traditions navigate the tension between divine transcendence and the use of material signs. This talk explores the deep theological questions behind sacred images, the role of the human as image-bearer, and why what may appear as irreconcilable differences can sometimes conceal shared intuitions. Along the way, we’ll uncover how ancient insights continue to speak powerfully to modern debates about representation, reverence, and the presence of the divine in our world.
The Very Rev Dr Geoffrey Ready is the director of Orthodox Christian Studies at Trinity College within the University of Toronto, where he teaches liturgy, Biblical studies, and pastoral theology. His research interests focus on the enacted narrative of God and Israel in the Orthodox liturgy. Under the auspices of the Orthodox Theological Association in America, Fr Geoffrey chairs Orthodox Christians in Dialogue with Jews, a working group of theologians and dialogue partners studying and making recommendations to tackle elements of anti-Judaism in Orthodox preaching, teaching, and worship.