ADL backs calls to end anti-Semitic liturgy

The Anti-Defamation League endorsed a call by 12 Orthodox Church priests to excise anti-Semitic passages from its liturgy.”We call on Orthodox Christian leaders to begin the process now to remove anti-Semitic passages from its liturgy,” Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, said in a June 6 news release. “This effort is long overdue. Untold numbers of Jews have suffered throughout the centuries, and today, in some countries where these churches are prominent, Jews are confronted by growing anti-Semitism because of the failure to address this.”The group of 12 priests from disparate Orthodox communities met in Israel in April. The Orthodox Church has not joined the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant churches in revising anti-Semitic liturgy. Some liturgy still refers to Jews as “Christ killers,” and the Easter service calls for revenge against the Jews.The 10-page document produced at the April meeting calls for “the renunciation of replacement theology and the removal of anti-Semitic passages from Church liturgy – particularly Easter services – and endorses the eternal connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel,” according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.”It is time,” the document said, “that we called anti-Semitism a grave sin against God and man.”