The Ten Points of Seelisberg

 Issued by the International Council of Christians and Jews

 August 5, 1947

  1. Remember that One God speaks to us all through the Old and the New Testaments.

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  2. Remember that Jesus was born of a Jewish mother of the seed of David and the people of Israel, and that His everlasting love and forgiveness embraces His own people and the whole world.

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  3. Remember that the first disciples, the apostles and the first martyrs were Jews.

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  4. Remember that the fundamental commandment of Christianity, to love God and one's neighbour, proclaimed already in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, is binding upon both Christians and Jews in all human relationship, without any exception.

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  5. Avoid distorting or misrepresenting biblical or post-biblical Judaism with the object of extolling Christianity.

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  6. Avoid using the word Jews in the exclusive sense of the enemies of Jesus and the words The Enemies of Jesus to designate the whole Jewish people.

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  7. Avoid presenting the Passion in such a way as to bring the odium of the killing of Jesus upon all Jews or upon Jews alone. It was only a section of the Jews in Jerusalem who demanded the death of Jesus, and the Christian message has always been that it was the sins of mankind which were exemplified by those Jews and the sins in which all men share that brought Christ to the Cross.

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  8. Avoid referring to the scriptural curses, or the cry of a raging mob: His Blood be Upon Us and Our Children, without remembering that this cry should not count against the infinitely more weighty words of our Lord: Father Forgive Them, for They Know not What They Do.

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  9. Avoid promoting the superstitious notion that the Jewish people are reprobate, accursed, reserved for a destiny of suffering.

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  10. Avoid speaking of the Jews as if the first members of the Church had not been Jews.