Joint statement from Catholic Religious Australia and the ECAJ.

Catholic Reli­gious Aus­tralia (CRA) and the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ) today released a new resource to assist Catholic schools, com­mu­ni­ties and agen­cies to hold bet­ter informed dis­cus­sions about anti­semitism.

Titled “Address­ing Anti­se­mit­ic Bul­ly­ing: A Resource for Catholic Lead­er­ship and For­ma­tion”, its cen­tre­piece is a videoed con­ver­sa­tion between a Catholic edu­ca­tor and lead­ing mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty shar­ing their con­sid­er­able knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of deal­ing with anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The video is accom­pa­nied by dis­cus­sion guides that can be tai­lored to suit a staff meet­ing, pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment day or con­fer­ence work­shop. The mate­ri­als are all avail­able online and, while pitched to CRA’s Catholic net­works, are freely avail­able to oth­ers as well.

The resource is being released at a crit­i­cal time in Aus­tralia, which has seen a dra­mat­ic rise in anti­semitism since Octo­ber 7. How­ev­er, aris­ing from a project car­ried out pri­or to Octo­ber 7, it should be not­ed that the resource does not engage with volatile polit­i­cal issues but, rather, views anti­semitism through a gen­er­al lens of respect for human dig­ni­ty and the prac­ti­cal con­text of anti-bul­ly­ing poli­cies.

CRA Pres­i­dent, Ger­ard Brady CFC, stat­ed: “To their cred­it, Catholic school prin­ci­pals are typ­i­cal­ly high­ly moti­vat­ed to embed val­ues of respect and inclu­sion, and anti-bul­ly­ing poli­cies are already in place. What our Jew­ish col­leagues help us to under­stand is that not all bul­ly­ing is the same – there are speci­fici­ties about anti­se­mit­ic bul­ly­ing that are not always well under­stood.”

Peter Wertheim AM, co-CEO of the ECAJ, explains, “Anti­semitism has spe­cif­ic indi­ca­tors – as do oth­er kinds of bul­ly­ing such as Islam­o­pho­bia and prej­u­dice against First Nations peo­ples. With­out a deep­er under­stand­ing, anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents can be lost in and over­looked by gener­ic anti-bul­ly­ing poli­cies. Our hope is that this resource will strength­en both edu­ca­tion and inci­dent response.”

CRA and the ECAJ are pleased to offer this resource as a joint response in the 60th anniver­sary year of the pro­mul­ga­tion of Nos­tra Aetate, the Vat­i­can II doc­u­ment that made a ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tion to inter­faith and Jew­ish rela­tions.

To access “Address­ing Anti­se­mit­ic Bul­ly­ing: A Resource for Catholic Lead­er­ship and For­ma­tion”, go to: https://www.catholicreligious.org.au/addressing-antisemitic-bullying