December 31, 2025
This piece originally appeared in The Times of Israel.
When the Jewish people needed Archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan most – in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack against Israel – he showed up like none other. It was reassuring but not a surprise. He has always been at our side, and we are forever grateful.
I was in Italy on that fateful day, so that I could be in Rome immediately following the Jewish holidays for the opening of an October 9-11 conference co-sponsored by AJC, “New Documents from the Pontificate of Pope Pius XII and Their Meaning for Jewish-Christian Relations.”
Two days after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Shoah, scholars were debating new archival revelations about what the Vatican did and did not do during that low point for the Jewish people and humanity. And gratefully, we were now in a much better time, sixty years after Nostra Aetate, which transformed Catholic-Jewish relations for the better.
As soon as it was clear that we were facing an unprecedented tragedy and threat to Israel, we reached out to our friends. I knew that Cardinal Dolan and his team were in Rome for a monthlong Vatican synod. They assured me that they were with us.
In a video message released as the sun rose in Rome on October 8, Cardinal Dolan set the gold standard for friend-in-chief:
"My heart goes out to the assaulted people of Israel, and to our Jewish community we cherish as friends and neighbors back hom in New York, realizing with tears that their Sabbath yesterday was anything but peaceful."
"A secure and safe home, surely intended by God for all his children, wherever they may be. To have that home attacked is a sacrilegel to defend that home is righteous."
Later that week in Rome, when he and I met for the first time post-October 7, Cardinal Dolan’s first words were, “I’m sorry,” what a mensch wisely says when all other words fail. He told me he wanted to go to the local synagogue on Shabbat in solidarity with the people of Israel. I encouraged him. And there he was, standing in front of the Great Synagogue of Rome on the following Shabbat, steps from the October 16, 1943, Nazi deportation of Jews and an October 9, 1982, terrorist attack that killed a two-year old and injured dozens, with words of comfort from our shared Psalms.
When Cardinal Dolan returned to New York, he showed up in New York synagogues, met with hostage families and survivors, facilitated a major Archdiocese contribution to the rebuilding of a home destroyed by Hamas, and visited the chilling New York showing of the Nova Music Festival exhibition, which chronicled the murder and abduction of hundreds and the heroic rescues of many.
In April 2024, we were together in Israel as he expressed his solidarity – meeting with President Isaac Herzog, families of the abducted, including Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin before their son Hersh was murdered in captivity later that year, and October 7 survivors who had previously met with him in New York.
As antisemitism exploded in the US and even in historically comfortable New York, Cardinal Dolan always spoke out and showed up. He let us know that we would not be countering antisemitism alone. The scourge was not just a Jewish problem. It was everyone’s problem.
I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to advance Catholic-Jewish relations at Cardinal Dolan’s side in New York and Washington, Rome and Jerusalem, and Oberammergau, Germany, where we viewed and addressed lingering antisemitic tropes in its once infamous Passion Play, and later celebrated together the changes to that play. On a deeply personal note, I will never forget his outreach to me as I sat shivah for my father, Rabbi Arnold B. Marans, of blessed memory.
Part of the unwritten job description of Archbishop of New York is responsibility for advancement of Catholic-Jewish relations within the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. Everyone pays attention to what a pope says and does about Catholic-Jewish relations, but in New York the post-Nostra Aetate positive transformation of the relationship is lived out in real time every day.
Cardinal Dolan recently began the passing of the torch to Archbishop-designate Ronald Hicks during a celebratory St. Patrick’s Cathedral Mass. He made sure to share with the Archbishop-designate and everyone else that Catholic-Jewish relations are very important in New York. When we met more privately after the Mass, the future Archbishop of New York expressed his own personal commitment to the same.
Thank you, Cardinal Dolan, recipient of AJC’s Isaiah Award for Exemplary Interreligious Leadership, for being the champion of that sacred cause and a dear friend of the Jewish people.
