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Comments (0)Pope Benedict XVI and Israeli President Shimon Peres discussed prospects for the new round of Middle East peace negotiations.
During a private audience Thursday at the pope’s summer residence outside Rome, Peres and the pope expressed the hope that the talks in Washington would help reach an agreement “that is respectful of the legitimate aspirations of the two peoples and capable of bringing lasting peace to the Holy Land and to the entire region,” a Vatican statement said.
The statement said the leaders also reaffirmed “condemnation of all forms of violence and the necessity of guaranteeing better conditions of life to all the peoples of the area.”
It was the fourth meeting between the pontiff and Peres since Benedict became pope in 2005. Their talks also touched on interreligious relations, as well as bilateral relations between Israel and the Holy See, and relations between Israel’s state authorities and local Christian communities.
The Vatican statement said the two leaders hoped that long-stalled negotiations on an agreement between the Vatican and Israel on taxation and other financial matters regarding the Catholic Church in Israel would be concluded soon.
French Teacher Suspended Over Shoah Lessons
A French high school teacher was suspended for spending too much class time on the Holocaust.
History teacher Catherine Pederzoli, 58, was suspended for four months after inspectors reported that she spent too much time teaching the Holocaust and organizing school trips to former concentration camps in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The district’s general inspection report for the Henri-Loritz public high school in the northeastern French town of Nancy said Pederzoli “lacked obligations for reserve, neutrality, and secularism,” and “exploited students” by “brainwashing.” Her focus on the subject of the Holocaust and planning trips to concentration camps took time away from teaching other subjects, according to the report.
Pederzoli’s lawyer, Christine Tadic, filed a complaint Tuesday to block the school district’s decision, and told the French media her client is the victim of anti-Semitism.
“Isn’t the fault this teacher committed is that she is Jewish?” Tadic told the French news agency AFP.
District authorities requested an inspection into Pederzoli’s teaching practices following a protest by her students, who demanded that the number of people allowed to participate in school trips to concentration camps not be reduced as planned by school authorities, according to French reports.
The inspectors criticized Pederzoli in their report for using the word “Shoah” 14 times, “whereas the term that is both neutral and judicially sound, ‘genocide,’ was only mentioned twice, as if in passing.” AFP obtained the report.
The school district for the towns of Nancy and Metz based their decision to suspend the teacher on the report, but claimed in a statement Tuesday that the suspension “had no relation to the subject of teaching history and the memory of the Shoah, to which national education is very attached.”
The district requested the inspection into Pederzoli’s teaching practice “following a certain number of dysfunctions” with the way school trips to concentration camps were organized, said the statement.
Pederzoli will continue receiving her monthly salary while on suspension.
Sharansky Opens Budapest’s Israeli Cultural Institute
Jewish Agency for Israel Chairman Natan Sharansky was in Budapest for the inauguration of the Israeli Cultural Institute.
Organizers say the institute, which staged several inaugural events this week, is the first of its kind.
Located at the edge of the former main Jewish Quarter in downtown Budapest, the institute will host and organize concerts, exhibitions, film screenings and club activities for Jews and non-Jews.
A cafe will feature Israeli-style snacks, a bookstore, an information center and an education center featuring Hebrew lessons and other classes.
Institute director Gabor Balazs said the idea was to present to a broad public the diversity of Israel’s “mosaic-like” culture.
The institute has been set up as a Hungarian-based foundation, formed via cooperation among the Jewish Agency and Hungarian and Israeli individuals. Sharansky told the media that the institute would demonstrate the Jewish Agency’s aim to “support and strengthen,” rather than direct, local Jewish communities.
As many as 100,000 Jews live in Hungary, nearly all of them in Budapest. Only a small minority is Jewishly affiliated, but there is an array of Jewish religious, cultural and social institutions. Budapest also is a popular hub for Israeli visitors, including tourists, students and businesspeople.