I learned a new term yesterday to describe someone who is Jewish but perhaps not the most observant practitioner of their faith. They’re “Jew-ish.”

It was an amusing but also insightful line repeated a few times Wednesday as Catholics from John Paul II Pastoral Centre spent part of the day with leaders from Vancouver’s Jewish community.

We shared a blessing, broke bread, and encountered one another at Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre, before moving over to the pastoral centre for dessert, coffee, and discussion on common issues and hopes. The giant statue of St. John Paul II looked over us, and I like to think of him gazing down affectionately as Catholics and what he called our “elder brothers in the faith of Abraham” got to know each other and explored common concerns.

“Jew-ishness” was a highlight of our conversation. The Jewish community faces many of the challenges Catholics in the Archdiocese of Vancouver do. Intensifying secularization threatens to crowd religion out of society. Pressures are mounting on the faithful to compromise moral and ethical values. Marriage outside of the faith results in reduced or abandoned religious practice. Even a factor like skyrocketing housing prices leads to demographic pressures resulting in fewer marriages and children, forcing younger generations to move away from the families and communities that nurtured them.

These are shared issues Catholics and Jews can look at with common concern. We may not agree on what to do about them, but we can recognize areas of mutual interest and opportunities for discussion when we see them, whether it’s education, health care, government funding, or pressures on family life.

Some are obvious. We were joined at our gathering by the CEO of a Jewish nursing home where euthanasia was surreptitiously carried out without the home’s permission. Archbishop Miller condemned the killing as an assault on freedom of conscience and religion.

On issues like this we can stand together, recognizing that while we don’t necessarily have the same stance on every ethical or moral question, we are united on the necessity of religious freedom and expression. A society that silences religious voices is much poorer for it.

Secularization pressures can touch on some surprising areas. As Rabbi Jonathan Infeld of Congregation Beth Israel pointed out, the next provincial election is scheduled for a Saturday. This poses a conflict for observant Jews between their Sabbath obligations and going to the polling place to cast a ballot.

As the rabbi said, it’s not enough to tell Jews they can just vote in advance polls. A secular society that should embrace religious and non-religious faiths is unfairly disadvantaging one faith tradition, forcing its adherents to jump through an additional hoop to exercise their right to vote.

Another area of mutual concern is the federal census. Because of a rewording of the 2016 census question, Canada’s Jewish population dropped to 143,000 from 309,000. The census considers Judaism an ethnicity rather than a religion but failed to list Jewish as an ethnic option. In addition, the census didn’t ask about Canadians’ religion, which means the most current Canadian numbers on religious faith are from 2011.  

This is the way secularization expands. First it excludes religious viewpoints, and before long, faith communities aren’t just ignored, they find their values considered unwelcome.

We have much to learn from our elder brothers in the faith. Hopefully we can offer something in return, because we have much in common, beyond a shared faith in the God of Abraham. We too have a flock who practise their faith with varying degrees of fervour. We too have cultural members.

What we agreed on is the need for more sharing. We need to hear each other’s stories. We need to support each other in finding ways to pass our faith on to our children and future generations, as well as to the society around us that becomes so much poorer when it seeks to eliminate its Judeo-Christian heritage.