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In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League’s global survey of anti-Semitic attitudes across 102 countries turned up some startling statistics. It found that 1.1 billion adults had anti-Semitic views — but also, strikingly, that 77% of respondents who hated Jews had never met a Jew before. In fact, the survey found an inverse relationship between the number of Jews living in a country and the amount of Jew-hatred there: the fewer Jews, the more anti-Semites.

Enter “Rent-a-Jew.”

In Germany, where anti-Semitic hate crimes are sharply on the rise, a cheekily-named program fights hate through education by introducing Germans and Jews for real-life conversation. “Rent-a-Jew lets people talk to Jews instead of talking about them,” says the initiative’s founder. “It shows that we are not abstract concepts but real humans.” To read more about this program from our partners at the Jewish Agency for Israel, click here.

Photo courtesy of the Jewish Agency for Israel.