VIENNA – From Sunday, 25th January to Thursday, 29th January 2015, the Executive Board of the International Council of Christians and Jews met in Vienna. The Board’s winter meeting coincided with the commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and focussed this year on an in-depth discussion of the state of Antisemitism and Islamophobia across Europe today.

The International Council of Christians and Jews joins in mourning the death, on 31st January 2015, of Richard von Weizsäcker, former President of Germany and since many years one of the ICCJ’s Honorary Presidents.

In the wake of the series of attacks this week in Paris, the ICCJ wishes to share and associate itself with the following statement from the Amitié judéo-chrétienne de France (AJCF), our member organization in France. We assure our friends and colleagues there that we are very much united with them in this time of shock and sorrow and applaud all efforts to bring people together in unity in the aftermath of such violence. Although the focus of the ICCJ is on relations between Jews and Christians, its vision also includes promoting respect, understanding, and mutual enrichment among the three Abrahamic traditions and indeed among all religious communities. The deaths that have occurred motivate us to work even harder in achieving this vision.

Dear members of the ICCJ family, as the year of 2014 on the common calendar draws to a close, Jews and Christians around the world are preparing to celebrate two religious holy days, Hanukkah and the Feast of the Nativity or Christmas.

Welcome to this year's last update on JCRelations.net: Decemeber contributions in English, German, French and Russian are online.

ICCJ’s German member organization, Deutscher Koordinierungsrat (DKR), held its 8th Rabbi Brandt Lecture this year in Munich on the 10th of November.