• Introduction
  • Point 1
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Combat Religious, Racial, and All Other Forms of Antisemitism – Biblically, Liturgically, and Catechetically.
  • Point 2
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Promote Interreligious Dialogue with Jews
  • Point 3
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Develop Theological Understandings of Judaism that Affirm Its Distinctive Integrity
  • Point 4
    A Call to Christians and Christian Communities to Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem
  • Point 5
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Acknowledge the Efforts of Many Christian Communities in the Late 20th Century to Reform Their Attitudes Toward Jews
  • Point 6
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Acknowledge the Efforts of Many Christian Communities in the Late 20th Century to Reform Their Attitudes Toward Jews
  • Point 7 and 8
    A Call to Jews and Jewish Communities to Differentiate between Fair-Minded Criticism of Israel and Antisemitism and to Offer Encouragement to the State of Israel as It Works to Fulfill the Ideals Stated in Its Founding Documents, a Task Israel Shares with Many Nations of the World
  • Point 9
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 10
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 11
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.
  • Point 12
    A Call To Both Christian and Jewish Communities and Others... to commit ourselves to the following goals and invite Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with all people of faith and goodwill, always to respect the other and to accept each other’s differences and dignity.

In the Hebrew Bible

Psalm 96: 4-5 (a part of the Sabbath evening liturgy):

'… Great is the Divinity (as He/She/It has made Itself known to Israel by the tetragrammaton Yud Hey Vav Hey) and so very much praised; awesome/held in awe above/by any-and-all-other as-it-were divinities (powers real or imagined to which the other peoples ascribe divinity). For all the gods of the (other) nations are mere idols/false gods, while YHVH – the vast heavens – all the universe entire – He/It (has) made.'

And in the preceding Psalm  95:7 (likewise preceding the meditative chant of Psalm 96 in the Friday evening liturgy of Kabbalat Shabbat, Receiving the Sabbath): 

'… He is our God and as for us – we are the people/the nation He tends-to/cares-for/shepherds.'

Yet we also meet the stunning formulation of Amos 9:7

'Isn't it so that justas the Children of Ethiopia you are to Me Oh Children of Israel?! – thus says the-Divine-Who-Has-Made-Itself/Himself-Known-to-Israel-by-the-Almost-Unpronounceable-Tetragrammaton~Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Likewise isn't it so that like Israel I raised-up from the Land of Egypt, so too have I raised-up the Philistines from Kaftor and the Arameans from Kir?!'

A truly thunderous, earth shattering revelation! Amos applies to others the very language that everywhere else in the Hebrew Bible is reserved for the Divinity's special relationship with Israel. The Divinity knows equally special relationships with the other peoples, with the other nations – even with enemies of Israel! As with Israel, the other nations have come to know – through the best of their collective experiences, through the events of their collective life in history  – they have also come to know the Divine. Each encounter, each people's coming to know the Divine according to its particular journey is special, unique – but, apparently, not any one by itself, is superior; none has the one and only best 'God aw(e)ful truth.'

[ Twelve Berlin Points Forum ... ]