NCCA has sent Rosh Hashanah greetings to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Jewish community across Australia.

We echo the greetings overnight from the World Council of Churches (WCC) with a letter of greeting for the Jewish New Year / Rosh Hashanah 2020: “May this be a time of blessing, joy and peace for you. Certainly, this last year has brought a time of extraordinary challenges for us all.”

NCCA joins with the WCC in asking for prayers that the nations of the world will work effectively together to establish both medical solutions for our current public health crisis and also wiser patterns of coexistence to enable all people to share the bounties of God’s world in mutual dependence, justice and respect.

“The Israel-Palestine conflict naturally features often in our discussions, and we are all conscious of the complexities of the issues involved,” writes the WCC’s Interim General Secretary. “As a global fellowship of churches, the WCC seeks to stand in faithful solidarity with the Christians of the Middle East and to make their concerns and perspectives widely known.”

As with the NCCA in our National Dialogue and other inter-faith forums in Australia, the WCC emphasises the desire to listen carefully to our Jewish partners. 

“We also believe it is important that as part of our dialogue we together raise our eyes above the specific challenges of Jewish-Christian relations to consider how, as Jews and Christians, we can work together in solidarity for the good of the wider world” writes the Interim General Secretary. 

We draw your attention to a new joint publication of the WCC and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue: Serving a Wounded World in Interreligious Solidarity: A Christian Call to Reflection and Action During COVID-19 and Beyond.

The publication expresses the WCC family’s commitment to working together across all religious differences for the healing of a wounded world.  

NCCA hopes that in the coming year we will be able to work together with Jewish friends and colleagues in many ways towards the fulfilment of the vision of the new document.

World Council of Churches (WCC)

Interim General Secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca sent joyful greetings to Jewish friends and colleagues across the world on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah and the forthcoming High Holy Days.

“May this be a time of blessing, joy and peace for you,” writes Sauca. “Certainly, this last year has brought a time of extraordinary challenges for us all.”

Read WCC offers Rosh Hashanah greetings to Jewish communities across the globe