The challah was blessed, the Manischewitz wine was poured, the candles were lighted. It could have been any Shabbat dinner in Los Angeles, were it not for the fact that it took place midweek and the room was full of Catholic schoolteachers.
The 34 teachers were participants in Bearing Witness, a seminar designed for educators in Catholic schools learning to teach about anti-Semitism and the history of the relationship between Jews and Catholics. Created in 1996 by the Anti-Defamation League, the seminars are now conducted across the United States.
The ADL's Los Angeles office is in its seventh year of running an annual Bearing Witness program.
The itinerary of the three-day course can include a discussion about the Holocaust, a synagogue tour or a lecture about Judaism in the period between the Old and New testaments.
Tuesday's schedule ended with a Shabbat-like dinner at the ADL building, where many ate their first knish.
"I've been taking notes furiously, and I keep saying, 'Oh, I didn't realize that,' " said Katherine Dzida as she dug into her Kosher meal of baked chicken and vegetables. "My understanding has been so enriched, and I can share that with my students."
Dzida, 24, teaches sixth and seventh grades at a parish in Dana Point and looked forward to contributing some of her newfound knowledge to an upcoming class unit on intolerance and the Holocaust.
"In terms of Catholicism and Judaism, I'm not sure some of my students realize how deeply they're intertwined," she said.
At another table, Cynthia Madsen, 63, was discussing how moved she had been by the previous day's discussion, when the daughter of a Holocaust survivor spoke to the group.
The woman's tale of her mother's perseverance in the face of horror brought tears to the high-school teacher's eyes.
"It went through your heart like an arrow," Madsen said. "I've been asking myself, 'What would I have done?' And now, what am I doing with Darfur and the genocide in Africa? You begin to internalize it. It goes deep."
Madsen attributed her emotional reaction to the program's requirement of total immersion. "It's intense," she said. "There are no distractions from the outside world. You're in total concentration on one thing -- the good and the bad."
The history between Jews and Catholics is sensitive terrain, one in which Jews say anti-Semitism was practiced and endorsed by Catholic leaders for centuries.
