On December 24, 1942, the Jewish boxing champion Barney Ross and Reverend Fred Gehring—a Catholic priest from Brooklyn, NY—organized an ecumenical midnight mass for Christian marines in the midst of the battle of Guadalcanal. Ross, whose European-born father had wanted him to be a talmudic scholar, had retired from boxing before the war began. Having enlisted in the Marines, he struck up a close friendship with Gehring, who was in his unit. Ron Grossman tells the story:

The Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has declared that he won’t attend the annual conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which begins this Sunday, because of the “platform [it] provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.” While Sanders has no qualms about libeling AIPAC—until recently a regular stop for political candidates of both parties—he has never attended one of its gatherings. Last year, however, he was the speaker for the annual conference of the Islamic Society of North America, where, writes Asra Normani, no small amount of bigotry was given a platform: