Catholic Students Learn About Passover

April 6, 2009

Author: Jeff Gottlieb

Source: The Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs6-2009apr06,0,5830365.story

It wasn't so much that about 85 high school kids were in a synagogue for a Passover Seder; it was that there was hardly a Jew in sight.

But that was the idea for this gathering, to teach Catholic high school students about the holiday that commemorates Moses' leading the Jews out of Egypt and slavery.

"Your faith wouldn't have existed if we weren't rescued from Egypt," Rabbi Isaac Jeret told the students who gathered at Congregation Ner Tamid in Rancho Palos Verdes last week.

This marked the third year that Catholic students went to the synagogue to learn about Passover, what Jeret called "for the Jewish people, our master story." He said the event "is one of the most important things we do in this synagogue each year. . . . We explore how different and similar our faiths are."

The Rt. Rev. Alexei Smith, in charge of ecumenical affairs for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who sat next to Jeret, said the archdiocese has engaged in many programs with Jews recently. "All are an effort to grow an appreciation of each other," he said.

Elsewhere, Catholic students also are attending Seders. This year, for example, all 1,200 students at Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance attended Seders in the gym.

"We were looking to our elder sisters and brothers in faith," Smith said.