Celia Deutsch is a Sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame de Sion, also known as the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, a Roman Catholic religious order with a particular commitment to interfaith understanding. A longtime and energetic presence in Christian-Jewish dialogue, she is Research Scholar in the Religion Department at Barnard College/Columbia University, where she taught from 1987 to 2012. She has been a member of the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations and of the U.S. Bishops Advisory Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations. Between 2017 and 2023, Dr. Deutsch lectured for Holy Trinity College (Harare, Zimbabwe).

A New Testament scholar, she writes in the fields of early Judaism and early Christianity, as well as on Jewish-Christian relations. Among her many publications, she most recently co-edited Toward the Future: Essays on Catholic-Jewish Relations in Memory of Rabbi Leon Klenicki. Dr. Deutsch is now preparing a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew for the Wisdom Commentary Series. She currently serves on the Theology Committee of the International Council of Christians and Jews, as well as on the Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Commission of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Deutsch is a member of Our Lady of Refuge Parish in Brooklyn, NY, where she is coordinator of interfaith relations, and is co-coordinator of the Interfaith Coalition of Brooklyn, a group of five communities – Jewish, Christian and Muslim.

Victoria J. Barnett is one of the world’s preeminent scholars of religion and the Holocaust, as well as a leading expert on the German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. She is the general editor of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (English edition), author of Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust (Greenwood, 2000) and For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (Oxford University Press, 1992), and editor of "After Ten Years": Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Our Times (Fortress, 2017). She is also editor/translator of Wolfgang Gerlach’s And the Witnesses were Silent: the Confessing Church and the Jews (University of Nebraska Press, 2000) and the new revised edition of Eberhard Bethge’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Fortress Press, 2000).

Dr. Barnett served as Director of Programs on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from 2004-2018. A graduate of Indiana University, Union Theological Seminary (New York) and George Mason University, her dissertation was a historical case study of the National Conference of Christians and Jews from 1933–1948. She is currently the Frank Talbott, Jr. Endowed Visiting Professor at the University of Virgina. 

Burton L. Visotzky is the Nathan and Janet Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, where he also serves as the Louis Stein Director of the Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies and director of the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue.

Professor Visotzky is the author of ten books, editor of seven other volumes, and has authored over 125 articles and reviews. His book, Aphrodite and the Rabbis: How the Jews Adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism as We Know It, was published in 2016. He co-edited the three-volume, 1,000-page compendium, Judaism: I. History, II. Literature, III. Culture and Modernity, published in 2020-21 by Kohlhammer, as part of their distinguished series: The Religions of Humanity.

He has served on the United States Holocaust Museum’s Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust (2011-19), and was a founding member of the Roundtable of Religious and Faith Based Organization Leaders, advising then World Bank President Jim Yong Kim (2015). Professor Visotzky currently serves on the Steering Committee of “The Plan of Action for Religious Leaders … to Prevent Incitement to Atrocity Crimes,” for the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Genocide Prevention. Prof. Visotzky also serves on the United Nations Inter-Agency Task-Force’s Multi-Faith Advisory Council.  He has been named to “The Forward 50” and repeatedly to the Newsweek/Daily Beast list of “The 50 Most Influential Jews in America.”

Philip A. Cunningham is Professor of Theology and Director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations of Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Interested in biblical studies, religious education, and theologies of Christian-Jewish relations, he is the author of numerous books and articles on these subjects, including the forthcoming Maxims for Mutuality: Principles for Catholic Theology, Education, and Preaching about Jews and Judaism (Paulist Press, 2022), Seeking Shalom: The Journey to Right Relationship between Catholics and Jews (2015), and co-edtor of two volumes that are the result of international research projects that he helped organize: Enabling Dialogue about the Land: A Resource Book for Jews and Christians (2020) and Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today: New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships (2011). He has served as President of the International Council of Christians and Jews (2014-2017) and in 2021 was named as and Honorary President. He has also served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations from 2000-2019. 

Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies, and Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science; she is also Affiliated Professor, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge UK.  For many years she served as the reviews editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 

She is the author of many books and articles on New Testament studies and frequently their implications for relations between Jews and Christians today. Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus; The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (co-authored with Douglas Knight); The New Testament, Methods and Meanings (co-authored with Warren Carter), and the thirteen-volume edited Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Writing.  Her most recent volume is Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. She has also just written, with noted children’s book author Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, Who Counts? 100 Sheep, Ten Coins, and Two Sons (a volume on the parables of Luke 15, designed for children).  Dr. Levine is also the co-editor, with Marc Z. Brettler, of the Jewish Annotated New Testament, now in a second edition.   

Abraham Skorka served for almost twenty years as the rector of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano Marshall T. Meyer in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The seminary prepares rabbis, cantors, and educators from throughout Latin America in the Masorti or Conservative Jewish tradition. He also taught Talmud and Rabbinic Literature there and was dean of its Rabbinical School. In addition, he has served for decades as a rabbi for the Benei Tikva Congregation in Buenos Aires. He is the author of numerous articles in newspapers (La Nación, L´Osservatore Romano) and author or editor of specialized journals and books on rabbinical topics, including "Thousands of Years per Week: Reflections on the Weekly Reading of the Torah" (1997);  "Introduction to Hebrew Law" (2001);  "Towards a Tomorrow without Faith?" (2006); and has coedited the volume Topics of Hebrew Law (2012) [titles translated from the original Spanish]. 

Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer, a disciple of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi Skorka has been deeply committed to interreligious dialogue throuhgout his entire career. In the 1990s, he found a new Catholic partner with whom to share this commitment when he was introduced to an auxiliary bishop named Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Throughout the years, as Bishop Bergoglio became archbishop and then cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, he and Rabbi Skorka collaborated on many projects, including a series of television programs of informal dialogues together and a book of their conversations, On Heaven and Earth. Since Cardinal Bergoglio's election as Pope Francis, Rabbi Skorka has sometimes been his travel companion — notably during the papal pilgrimage to Israel in May 2014 — seeking to model the possibilities, importance, and blessings of Christian-Jewish dialogue.  

Alice L. Eckardt is Professor Emerita, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, where she taught in the Religion Studies Department for many years.  She is a member of the Board, Executive Committee, and Program Committee of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding (IJCU) at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA.  She was a Senior Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and a Visiting Scholar and Visiting Professor there for several years.  She was a very active member of the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations from 1974 to 2015.

The author of many books and articles, she is particularly known for the now classic work co-authored with her husband, the late A. Roy Eckardt, Long Night's Journey into Day: Life and Faith after the Holocaust (1982; rev. 1988). The book was among the first to call for a radical rethinking of the Christian faith in the light of the Holocaust.

Most recently, she contributed "A Protestant Perspective" to both volumes of Franklin Sherman, ed., Bridges: Documents of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue. She also authored, "Has the Holocaust Been a Turning Point in Christian Theology About Judaism?," Steven T. Katz and Steven Bayme, eds., Continuity and Change; and "Founding Father of Jewish-Christian Relations: The Rev. James Parkes (1896-1981)," Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 3/1.

Ed Parish Sanders, a New Testament scholar, was for many years the Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion at Duke University and Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University. His research has been extremely influential in the study of the world of Late Second Temple Judaism and in the understanding of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus within that world. His work has also provided important new insights into the origins of both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism that has many implications for the relationships between Jews and Christians today and their own self-understandings.

E.P. Sanders received his Th.D. from Union Theological Seminary in New York and from there went on to author, co-author, or edit 13 books and numerous articles. In 1977, he published a book that revolutionized Pauline studies by situating the Apostle to the Gentiles within a more accurate description of the beliefs and practices of Late Second Temple Judaism. Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion rapidly became a classic work, which launched what has become known as the "New Perspective" on Paul.

His other influential works include: Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (1983), Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (1990), Judaism: Practice and Belief (1992), The Historical Figure of Jesus (1993), and most recently, Paul: The Apostle's Life, Letters, and Thought (2016).

Irving Greenberg is a Modern Orthodox rabbi, scholar and author. He is known as a strong promoter of greater understanding between Judaism and Christianity.

Rabbi Greenberg was ordained at Yeshiva Beis Yosef. He earned a PhD. from Harvard University and served as the Jewish chaplain of Brandeis University, the rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center, an associate professor of history at Yeshiva University, and as a founder, chairman, and professor in the department of Jewish studies of the City College of the City University of New York. He has also served as the President of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

Rabbi Greenberg's thought involves a dynamic reading of current Jewish history through use of traditional Jewish categories of thought. He has written extensively about covenantal theology, the Holocaust and the historical and religious significance of the State of Israel. The author of numerous publications, his most recent books are: Covenantal Pluralism (1997); Living in the Image of God: Jewish Teachings to Perfect the World (1998); and For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity (2004).

Leon Klenicki joined the Anti-Defamation League as director of Jewish-Catholic relations in 1973 and in 1984 became its director of interfaith affairs, a position he held until 2001. In these capacities he was an important voice of American Judaism over four decades of improving Catholic-Jewish relations after the Second Vatican Council. Rabbi Klenicki was the author and co-author of hundreds of books and papers dealing with the theological and practical aspects of improving relations between Christians and Jews. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI named him a Papal Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.

A native of Argentina, Rabbi Klenicki studied philosophy and classics at the University of Buenos Aires.  In 1959, he won a scholarship to study at the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, where he completed his rabbinical studies.  He received a B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati as well as a Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters and a rabbinical diploma at HUC-JIR in 1967.

CCJR is honored to bestow its Shevet Achim posthumously to his widow, Myra Cohen Klenicki, on the occasion of the publication of Toward the Future: Essays on Catholic-Jewish Relations in Memory of Rabbi Leon Klenicki (Stimulus Books/Paulist Press).

John T. Pawlikowski, a priest of the Servite Order, serves as Professor of Social Ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where he also directs the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program in the school's Cardinal Joseph Bernardin Center.  He served for six years as President of the International Council of Christians & Jews.  He was also appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and reappointed for three successive terms by Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. He currently serves on the Governor's Commission for Holocaust and Genocide in his home state of Illinois. 

He is the author/editor of more than fifteen books including The Challenge of the Holocaust for Christian Theology, Christ in the Light of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue, Jesus and the Theology of Israel, Biblical and Theological Reflections on The Challenge of Peace, Justice in the Marketplace: CTU’s Pastoral Commentary on the Bishops’ letter on the Economy, The Ecological Challenge: Ethical, Liturgical, and Spiritual Responses, Reinterpreting Revelation and Tradition: Jews and Christians in Conversation, Good and Evil after Auschwitz, and Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust.

A. James Rudin is Senior Interreligious Advisor for the American Jewish Committee. He had previously served since 1968 as the AJC's interreligious affairs director.

He is past Chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations. He has participated in meetings with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, in World Council of Churches conferences in Geneva, and is founder of the National Interreligious Task Force on Black-Jewish relations. A prolific writer, he writes weekly commentary for the Religion News Service and his articles have appeared in "Christianity Today," "The Christian Century," and "Eternity" magazines. He appears frequently on radio and television as an expert on Interreligious affairs.

His recent books include: Cushing, Spellman, O'Connor: The Surprising Story of How Three American Cardinals Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations (2011); Christians & Jews, Faith to Faith: Tragic History, Promising Present, Fragile Future (2010); and The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us (2006).

Franklin Sherman is Founding Director of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding of Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania. He began his teaching career at the School of Religion of the University of Iowa, teaching subsequently at Mansfield College, Oxford, England, and for 23 years at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where he served for ten years as Dean. He has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago as well as academic institutions in Switzerland, Israel, Zimbabwe, and Japan. His undergraduate degree is from Muhlenberg College and his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He is an ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and served for many years as chair of its Consultative Panel on Lutheran-Jewish Relations.

Dr. Sherman is author of The Promise of Heschel, a study of the Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel, as well as numerous essays and reviews in the field of Christian-Jewish relations. He edited and provided historical introductions and annotations for the volume of Luther‛s Works: American Edition that contains Luther‛s writings on the Jews and Judaism (Vol. 47). His current project is preparing an expected two-volume collection of the most significant statements on Christian-Jewish relations issued by Christian, Jewish, and interfaith bodies around the world since World War II. The first volume was published by Paulist Press in 2011, entitled Bridges: Documents of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue: The Road to Reconciliation (1945-1985).

Judith Hershcopf Banki is director for special programs at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding in New York City.

A pioneer and veteran of Christian-Jewish relations, her work began before the Second Vatican Council when as an aide to Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum at the American Jewish Committee she coordinated pivotal studies in the presentation of Jews and other minorities in Catholic school textbooks. These studies were submitted to the Vatican and contributed to the development of its landmark declaration, Nostra Aetate. In the following decades, she has been a constant advocate for interreligious understanding in an enormous variety of programs and initiatives.

Her published and co-edited publications include: A Prophet of Our Time: An Anthology of the Writings of Rabbi Marc H. Tannenbaum (2002); Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust: Christian and Jewish Perspectives (2001); The Image of Jews in Christian Teaching (1986); Anti-Israel Influence in American Churches: A Background Report (1979); and Christian Responses to the Yom Kippur War: Implications for Christian-Jewish Relations (1974)

Eugene J. Fisher served for thirty years as the specialist in Catholic-Jewish relations at the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  He is currently the Distinguished Professor of Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Florida.

He has published or edited some 20 books and over 250 articles in the field of Jewish-Christian relations, including: The Jewish Roots of Christian Liturgy, ed. (Paulist, 1990); Interwoven Destinies: Jews and Christians through the Ages, ed. (Paulist/Stimulus, 1992); Faith Without Prejudice: Rebuilding Christian Attitudes Toward Judaism (Crossroad, 1993); Visions of the Other: Jewish and Christian Theologians Assess the Dialogue, ed. (Paulist/Stimulus, 1994); A Prophet of Our Time: An Anthology of the Writings of Rabbi Marc H. Tannenbaum, ed. with Judith H. Banki (Fordham University Press, 2002). He also co-edited with Leon Klenicki The Saint for Shalom: How Pope John Paul II Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations (Crossroad, 2011) and edited Memoria Futuri: Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; Texts and Addresses of Cardinal William H. Keeler (Paulist/Stimulus, 2012).