by Justin Goldstein · Friday, October 3rd, 2008
cross posted at pardesyehuda.blogspot.com
I just stumbled upon this lovely piece of news from a local Virginia newspaper (thanks to the wonders of Google):
Synagogue Lends Space to Mosque
By Julia O’Donoghue
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) has found a new home for its weekly prayer services in Reston in an unusual place, a Jewish synagogue.
The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation has agreed to rent its multi-purpose room to the Sterling mosque, which has operated a Reston “branch” for several years, in the early afternoon on Fridays.
“Many people [in the congregation] don’t know yet because I just wrote the newsletter article about it,” said synagogue president Hana Newcomb. She accepted an award from ADAMS on behalf of her congregation for its efforts in promoting interfaith dialogues and peace Sept. 27.
“The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation has opened its doors to our prayers,” said Rizwan Jaka, an ADAMS board member, during the ceremony.
The mosque also honored United Christian Parish, which has hosted its Friday prayer services in Reston for the past seven years. The parish sold one of its facilities and no longer has the extra space to share with ADAMS, said parish board moderator Kay Rodgers.
“We don’t have the space anymore but United Christian Parish is totally committed and dedicated to the interfaith experience we have,” said Rodgers.
Wow. Just wow. This is a beautiful and amazing show of interfaith relations and co-existence. The shul is a Reform congregation of near 500 families, the ADAMS Center serves 5000 families in seven communities in the DC area. What an amazing opportunity not only to embark on some very real and concrete interfaith work, but to also set an example of using the synagogue in the 21st century for applications that have a unique place in our era–this gives a whole new meaning to beit k’nesset (house of gathering).
Plus, in my minimal experience with Muslim-Jewish dialogue it is difficult to get down to discuss the intricacies and structure of our respective traditions because politics (i.e. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) loom so large. This seems like an incredible opportunity to engage in joint worship and study in ways that have probably not happened much between our communities in, at the very least, the last half-century.
According to Jewish law, we can pray in mosques (not the case with churches, according to tradition) and as far as I understand, Muslims can eat kosher meat (while kosher Jews cannot indulge in halal meat). The Rambam’s brother, David, would practice dhkir, an Islamic meditation on the Oneness of God with Muslims. If we could only put politics aside, we could connect deeply on a religious and spiritual level. The opportunities that have arisen between the All Dulles Area Muslim Society and the North Virginia Hebrew Congregation are endless and provide a great opportunity for the Jewish and Muslim communities of America (and perhaps beyond).
May 5769 continue to bring such blessings.
by Shalom Rav · Monday, September 29th, 2008
This year there’s a wonderful Jewish-Muslim harmonic convergence: Rosh Hashanah and Eid (the final fast of Ramadan) fall on the same day. Though I read this morning in the NY Times that it’s causing a “monotheistic traffic jam” on the streets of the Old City, I still choose take this dual observance as a sign of additional holiness in our world. May we all be worthy of this double-blessing and do what we can to live up to it…
In honor of this day, I suggest giving to any number of worthy grassroots interfaith initiatives. Here are just a few of my favorites that you might want to consider supporting:
Interfaith Youth Core, Interfaith Encounter, Mirembe Kawomera Interfaith Coffee Coop, Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk, Daughters of Abraham.
Please feel free to post links to any others you might know of…
Shanah Tovah/Eid Mubarak!
by Reb Yudel · Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
The king of the world’s most repressive theocracy is holding an interfaith conference, and everyone from Jesse Jackson to the Kabbalah Center’s Yehudah Berg is in attendance. Given that Jews and non-Muslim scriptures are banned from Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah is hosting the event in Madrid.
Over on Mixed Multitudes, Ari Alexander, co-founder and co-Executive Director of Children of Abraham, an international organization dedicated to the promotion of dialogue between Jewish and Muslim teenagers around the world, is blogging from Madrid via his Blackberry. Well worth reading.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, June 15th, 2008
WaPo reports on a new effort created jointly by the Union for Reform Judaism and the Islamic Society of North America, respectively the USA’s largest Jewish and Muslim organizations. 11 groups nationwide were picked to try this new curriculum, begun last December (WAPo’s local angle is that one of the 11 groups picked is led by Rabbi Steve Weisman of Bowie, Maryland’s Temple Solel and Khalil Shadeed (no title mentioned), a leader of the Islamic Society of Southern Prince George’s County, MD).
The six session group appears to be something of a break from the usual dialogues in that it is not seeking to avoid the difficult topics. Too often, Jewish-Muslim dialogues attempt to keep the peace by focusing away from differences and difficulties. The result being that, while individuals may get to know one another better, or even get to know one another’s religions better, no real progress is made in the area which need to be discussed in order for the members of each faith to really understand the motivations behind one another’s religious differences, political differences and views of those conflicts.
Still, while they are attempting to discuss more difficult topics, there are still some problems to work out about format:
At the meeting last month when Zionism came up, almost no one spoke. Sarah Crim, a 58-year-old editor and writer, said later that the six sessions offered too little time to go into detail and challenge people but enough to listen, learn and create relationships that could produce joint social justice work, her real passion.
“Sure, there are things people said here that bother me, but I try to keep my eye on the ball. If you’re trying to find a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis and hope you’re going to come up with something from six sessions of dialogue, you’re not going to do that,” she said.
Still, any effort is a good effort in this arena. Good luck to them!
by Aryeh Cohen · Friday, June 13th, 2008
I spent the first week of June lodging on Jesus Lane at Westcott House in Cambridge, England. (For those for whom the point might be too subtle, there is also a Jesus College, a Christ’s College, a Corpus Christi College, an Emmanuel College and a Trinity College.) 
I was, along with about twenty other scholars, the guest of the Cambridge Interfaith Program of the Faculty of Divinity. CIP is the gracious host and home of the Scriptural Reasoning-University conference. Scriptural Reasoning is the brainchild of Peter Ochs and Dan Hardy (obm), along with Bob Gibbs, Steve Kepnes, David Ford and other fine folk. SR is an offspring of Textual Reasoning (which, back in the days when communication consisted of hammer, chisel and bitnet was called the “Post-modern Jewish Philosophy Bitnetwork”). TR, also founded by Ochs, Kepnes and Gibbs was started in the early 90s (back when everybody was deconstructing some binary or another) by Jewish philosophers frustrated by the canon and canonical thinking in the field of Jewish philosophy, and by text scholars (Talmudists, Midrashists, Kabbalists, etc.) frustrated by the perceived straitjacket of the historical-critical method which mostly still defined the field. I was one of the latter folks, along with Shaul Magid, Elliot Wolfson, Charlotte Fonrobert and others. We met once a year at the American Academy of Religion conference, drank beer, studied texts and crossed disciplinary boundaries.
The main move, to my mind, was disrespecting the territorial claims of academic fields. 
When we studied a Talmudic text, for example, the Talmudist(s) in the room had no greater privilege to define the discourse (beyond, perhaps, defining actual words in the old fashioned dictionary sense) than the philosophers did.
At a certain point some Christian theologians wanted to join the party, followed by some Moslem scholars. Still the main move remained the same. No one was allowed to claim privilege of interpretation over “their” text. This simple move demands an enormous amount of faith, since everybody’s cherished reading of their texts, grounded in centuries of tradition, is up for grabs when someone is invited into the conversation who “doesn’t know the rules.” When it works, the process (which is the point) is amazing. Texts that are usually separated by walls of tradition, and sometimes by actual walls and borders, reverberate with each other. Moslems suggest readings of Rashi’s understanding of the Hagar story and Jews argue about John 4. Razi’s commentary on Sura 4 is used to illuminate Jacob’s relationship with Leah.
SR defies both tradition, which demands its territorial integrity, and academe, which demands that conferences and research be about product. SR is about what happens in the room, around the table, with the texts.
Nicholas Adams, a long time participant in the Cambridge group, describes one of the characteristics of Scriptural Reasoning as follows.
One of the features of scriptural reasoning that make it interesting is the constant surprises that it holds, even for experienced participants.…
Scriptural Reasoning practises a different relation of the past and future, and a different model of causality. To be open to surprises is to deny that the past causes the future in a strong sense. To describe something as a surprise is precisely to deny a narrow conception of causality. In some ways surprises are descriptions of events that give the future priority over the past. … With respect to a politically sensitive practice like scriptural reasoning, where the histories of the three traditions have each other’s blood on their hands, and bones underfoot, this is a significant matter. If there are surprises then the past is allowed to be the past, but it cannot wholly cause the future. … Friendship is made possible not only by repairing the past, if that is even possible, but by being open to the future. (Nicholas Adams, “Making Deep Reasonings Public,” in The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning 47-49)
We seven or eight or nine men and women, from the US and Canada and England and Pakistan and Turkey, are sitting around this table studying these sacred texts in their original languages and in translation, and we are creating the future.
Ultimately this is a bet midrash whose short term goal is to find a certain comfort in the company of texts that are supposedly not one’s own, in the company of scholars who are supposedly Other. The long term goal is the radical transformation of the role of religion in the world, as a broad highway of hope and peace rather than a cudgel of cruelty and divisiveness.
One of the more exciting aspects of SR in Cambridge is its outreach in civic engagement. Towards the end of the week that I was there, a group of thirty or so Londoners (non-academic Jews, Christians and Moslems) made the trek to Cambridge for a two day intensive on how to do Scriptural Reasoning. They were then going back to London to start SR groups-many of which are already up and running throughout London. Scriptural Reasoning is one of the modes of interfaith work employed at St. Ethelberga’s, an amazing home of peace and reconciliation.
SR now has a website, and a dream for SR groups to be started in one thousand North American cities. Join the party.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Saturday, May 17th, 2008
Week Four, Day Six
Yesod of netzach
Week Four, Day Seven
Malchut of Netzach
Last week a group of rabbis - including two from Israel met in Qatar when that country opened its first scholarly center for interfaith interfaith dialogue as part of a broader push for interfaith relations throughout that region.
Ynet reports
Efforts at interfaith dialogue got one of their biggest boosts when Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah met with Pope Benedict XVI last November at the Vatican.
In March, the Saudi king then made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians and Jews  the first such proposal from a nation with no diplomatic ties to Israel and a ban on non-Muslim religious services and symbols.
But someone tell the right not to let it affect their opinion of Islam as inherently a religion of all bad things.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
Just a warning: I doubt I’ll actually succeed at this. Even just actually getting every night counted isn’t the easiest task, so actually having something to say, is going to be tough. But I’m going to give it a try, especially since there’s no requirement that I actually succeed at doing it every night… like tonight, I’m going to make up for starting late, with days 1, 2 & 3, since I couldn’t very well blog the first day on chag, and the second day was a little complicated with late sunset and all that. So, we’ll start tonight, and hopefully continue.
So: Omer night #1
Week Chesed, day chesed
Since the first day of Omer occurs on the day of a seder, I thought I write about Geraldine Brooks’ new book People of the Book. This is a wonderful book about the history - fictional in detail, although well researched in broad outlines, as she says in the afterword, ” While some of the facts are true to the haggadah’s known history, most of the plot and all of the characters are imaginary.”- of the famous Sarajevo Haggadah.
Towards todays’ omer topic chesed of chesed, the book gazes at the interrelationships - complicated, painful, loving and hating between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and also between parents and children, in all their difficulty and complexity, and acknowledging that sometimes there are no happy endings. Setting aside the fine writing, the well-drawn characters and the plot (who among us could not love a story -a mystery- about a book?) the doubling of the story makes for fine reading, and the ending is hopeful, mirroring the real history of the book, which of course includes the survival of a people, and the bravery of a Muslim librarian in saving the book of a people not his own- well, depending on how you look at it- and perhaps of a Catholic priest who saved it from destruction as well.
Day 2: Gevurah of Chesed
More »
by AYK · Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
Last week the Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life released its “US Religious Landscape Survey.”  It’s quite awesome, as it maps out the myriad religious communities in the United States — by region, by income, education, marriage and reproductive patterns, age, gender, ethnicity, and, well, just about everything short of sock color.  So, if you want to know how Jews measure up next to other Americans, I recommend checking it out.  For those of you who prefer bullet points:
1. Â 28% of Americans now identify with a faith tradition that they were not born into.
2. Â 16.1% of Americans do not identify with any faith tradition (Easily the group with the largest growth).Â
3. Â The percentage of Jews converting out of Judaism exceeds the percentage of people becoming Jews by choice.
This isn’t about bean-counting, but it does tell an important part of the story for American Jews — Jews may be different, but Jews are not exceptional. Â At least no more exceptional than any of the other religious communities in America. Â
by chillul Who? · Thursday, February 21st, 2008
I had an acquaintance in college, a man whose parents had moved to America from Bangladesh, an observant Muslim with whom I would spend late nights discussing religion and watching the mountain fog coalesce. We lost touch after he moved off-campus and later graduated, but I still remember one comment he made to me after I did my best to explain to him what a “machloket” is and how the halachic system accomodates (or otherwise deals with) disagreements in matters of law.
He was impressed, and complained about the Muslim student group on campus, saying the form of Islam espoused there was too strict and particularistic. Muslims from Bangladesh, he said, don’t practice the religion the same way as Muslims from Arabia, and the Arab students in charge were intolerant of that diversity. He and other non-Arab Muslims were told that their clothing was “un-Islamic” and their observances were faulty. He objected, saying, “I’m not Arab. I shouldn’t have to follow Arab cultural norms to be a good Muslim.”
Apparently, policy clashes between conservative and liberal Muslim students, and between Muslim students with different traditions, are common on college campuses. Sound familiar? But unlike in the Jewish community where Hillels have a set policy of pluralism dictated from on high by philanthropists and “Jewish professionals”, according to this article by the New York Times’ gloriously-named Neil MacFarquhar each franchise Muslim Students Association chapter (there are more than 200 in the US) sets its own rules as to what food/clothes/events/philosophies are acceptable. Depending on where you go to school, your local MSA may alternately scandalize traditional parents or Imams, and shun students who aren’t “Muslim enough”.
The reporter, who apparently attended last weekend’s MSA West Conference in San Jose, got some good anecdotes, including community reaction to the sexes mingling at a barbecue, a potential member driven away because he wore a Budweiser t-shirt, liberal Yale vs. Wahhabist UC-Irvine, and the kinds of sermons given by Imams who visit college campuses.
I’m wondering what can we learn from this article, and what those of us still in school can learn from our Muslim fellow students. And what can we teach them? Keeping in mind the extensive similarities and deep differences between Judaism & Islam and between the Jewish community & the Muslim community, there’s got to be some productive knowledge to be gleaned. What do you think it could be?
by Aliza · Monday, February 11th, 2008
You know things have gotten weird when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) writes an opinion column in The Forward. With a
similar message to Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s letter to the editor last week, Durbin criticized a weak Forward editorial, which managed to simultaneously support and criticize the baseless inflammatory emails about Barack Obama’s supposed secret Muslim life that have been circulating among the Jewish community. Durbin sets the record straight on the truth with certainty, something the Forward editorial board was sadly unwilling to do with its wishy-washy “Is Barack Obama a Muslim? Almost certainly not.”
The editorial board released a clarification last week, claiming that it meant to criticize the defamatory emails all along. But many reading the editorial would not get that impression–would you?
If you still have any doubts, Mobius’s recent blog post reminds us of the true Barack Obama’s speech to the Sojourners conference last summer.
by Chorus of Apes · Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
The Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Muslim Public Affairs Council have extended the deadline to apply for their New Ground Project. This is an amazing project to bring LA based Jews and Muslims together to build connections, community, and understanding. This project is unique because it is actually an equal and joint partnership between local Jewish and Muslim organizations.
Angelenos who are interested in working and learning together should apply. Applications are due Feb 8th.
by Kung Fu Jew · Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
(X-posted from Judaism Without Borders.)
I just got off the phone with a leftist student group who wanted to partner on the Israel-Palestine project I’m coordinating. They were ready to sponsor events on their campus, publicize it widely, etc. They’ve enthusiastically done it before. But when I told her that they couldn’t be seen associating with us, my poor heart ached as I heard the disappointment in her voice. She managed to not sound upset, but considering I’ve never met this person before, I feel like I’ve just betrayed a friend.
Reputation means everything. Breira was a 70s era Jewish peace group which aired to America the occupation opponents in Israel and even accompanied them to meet with Palestinian leadership…and quickly was accused of being non-Jewish posers or self-haters, and imploded. New Jewish Agenda of the 80s was another Jewish dove group which failed to cope with membership in the Jewish community when when “member” was defined by the arch-conservatives, and it collapsed from within. For both of those groups, their former leadership now quietly sits on the boards of present dove orgs, albeit after learning a costly lesson.
The lesson is simple as it is unfair. As much as we Jewish peace and coexistence activists want to partner with Arabs and peace-seeking goyyim, the cases where we can do so without being accused of treason are sparse. This is the reason in the early days of Brit Tzedek, the organization made the decision that to do it’s work inside the Jewish community, it had to play nice with the OJC, to pick its allies with care. Other organizations also make the same sacrifices on a regular basis. Those that weren’t careful, died. Or even worse, gained the title of the “irrelevant left.”
Reputation is all that we have sometimes in this work. It’s sad that to know that if I say “Such and such activist is kipah-wearing” or “served in the IDF” or “goes to shul” or “works in the OJC” suddenly gives that person a credibility boost. That credibility is built on stereotypes as flimsy and repugnant as any other. Yet we use them and even buy into them in order to open doors.
More »
by Kung Fu Jew · Sunday, January 6th, 2008
Yalla Journal is back after a two great issues! If you are thirty and under, they want your short stories, poems, photographs, personal narratives, visual art, music, songs, and short essays about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Yalla is intended to create dialogue, and as such doesn’t stop short of accepting pieces from the extreme right and extreme left, only that pieces do not call for violence. Such a raw yet interfaith journal doesn’t exist anywhere else — and frequently runs short on Jewish submissions, so spread the world and submit something.
A year ago, I wrote this piece below for Yalla and read it at the Havurah Institute for shits and grins, useful here as an example. Read the full journal online here.
Dear Judaism
Yalla Journal ‘06
Dear Judaism,
I know it’s not been that long since we saw each other last, since I donned my tzitzit and said my morning benedictions in the after-shower cool of my shuttered bedroom. And when I walked outside today, it hadsn’t been long since I blinked at the sunlight and said shehekhiyanu for the first warm day of spring, “Blessed are You, O Divine One, who keeps us alive and brought us to this season.†It’s hardly been a long time since I stood on the subway platform and watched the myriads of ethnicities hustle and bustle in New York City, often fervently, on their ways to work—a sea of uniqueness all coined in the image of your Original Source.
But matters deserve this letter anyway, something it’s taken me a long time to muster. So as my friend, I think we need to talk, I think you need to realize some things.
Dear Judaism, I went to the Holy Land to learn a little more about you, about myself, about our people, but I didn’t like what I found. Not two weeks into my stay, I took a tour of the West Bank and I didn’t like it one bit. The next four months are a blur to me, a whirlwind of turbulent reeducation—security guards at grocery stores, checkpoints at roads, walls between houses, graffiti saying kill the Arabs, graffiti saying kill the Jews, towers with flags, flags everywhere.
Dear Judaism, you lied to me. You told me that I could be good and right and just. But in Israel, in Palestine, I couldn’t. There was no escape, no innocence.
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by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
This doesn’t actually appear to be new news, but Arieh Lebowitz of the JLC sent it along, and it is rather interesting. The Jewish Chronicle (which describes itself as ” The world’s oldest and most influential Jewish newspaper, the London-based Jewish Chronicle…”) ran a story last summer about the Rabbinical Council of the Provinces encouraging its members to consider joining a union - apparently an interfaith clergy union.
Some of the benefits?
Some regional rabbis, he said, “have been taken aback by some of the things that have happened to rabbis in London, including losing their jobsâ€.
But he stressed that the appeal of a union lay mainly in the “wide range of services it can provide, which include looking at contracts of employment, updates on employment law, as well as benefits such as cheaper insurance.
“There is also the facility of accredited representatives who, in the case of a dispute, will be there to assist and advise. Some rabbis will be trained as accredited representatives, which will mean not only helping colleagues but also members of other faiths. So a rabbi may help a priest or imam, and vice versa.â€
…Unite could help with training, for example in health-and-safety issues, as well as give guidance on terms of employment. Looking forward to welcoming more rabbis, he said: “It was quite clear [from the conference] that many had problems with their synagogues at different times, which could have been more easily resolved had we been there. We could stop a lot of the bickering and bullying.â€
Apparently, “‘A number of rabbis already belong to Unite,’ said Rabbi Daniel Levy, of the United Hebrew Congregation, Leeds, and RCP chairman. ‘And a considerable number have expressed interest in joining.’â€
I think that this is a fabulous idea. Now I know most of you are thinking, “What? Doesn’t my rabbi already belong to that.. whatever it is? Union thingy?” More »
by Chorus of Apes · Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
Which now has… America’s Highest Intermarriage Rate. Expect an army of Jewish educators and philanthropists to descend on Maine like a pack of vultures ready to save acculturated Jews from themselves.
by Chorus of Apes · Thursday, December 6th, 2007
The NYTimes has posted an article about The December Dilemma facing interfaith families.
The best quote from the article (referring to a shellacked bagel one father places at the top of his christmas tree):
In the late ’80s it finally fell apart, and I had to shellac another one
While I am certainly a proponent of multi-faith families, the Times article points to some of the unforeseen emotional difficulties of negotiating a mixed practice household. I actually think much of the trouble would be eliminated if the members of the household actually had robust religious lives, rather than dumping all their ethnic and religious identity into one month of the year.
Perhaps the most notable thing about the article, however, is their inclusion of a gay couple with a young son. I recall a few year ago when the Times’ decision to print gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies led to headlines in other papers.
That first Times couple? Jewish.
Sometimes I feel like the Times covers more Jewish news than the The Forward.
by sarah · Thursday, October 4th, 2007
As many of you know, I used to work at Camp Tawonga for years as their outreach director (gasp! kiruv!) - consider this a piece of emeritus outreach. This is a lovely, challenging and exciting evening every year where you can meet people from far flung places straddling borders of conflict…with stories of everyday life and passion for change.
“Camp Stories”
from Oseh Shalom ~ Sanea al-Salam: Peacemakers Weekend
An evening of inspiring stories about conflict, about change - told together by Palestinian and Jewish youth and adults - women and men — Christians, Muslims, and Jews - from 33 towns “back home” in Israel and Palestine, and from America.
Hear compelling stories from the mouths of courageous Arabs and Jews, refusing to be enemies, crossing emotional and physical boundaries, listening, understanding and building relationships while discovering that “an enemy is one whose story we have not heard.”
Tuesday, October 9, 2007, 7:30 sharp - 9:30 PM
St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1111 Gough Street at Geary in San Francisco
Visual and educational displays - Middle Eastern refreshments
About Camp Tawonga, the 2007 Peacemakers weekend , and the growing family of 14 North American camp programs for the Middle East public peace process
by Josh Frankel · Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
Once in a (half) lifetime opportunity! 
Midwest Jews! Help bring Chicago’s Muslim and Jewish communities together as we host our fellow descendants of Abraham for an evening of what both traditions do best: eating, prayer and schmoozing. Our Muslim brothers and sisters are currently in the month of Ramadan. They fast from dawn to sunset every day for a month (and you thought Yom Kippur was rough) and then break the fast each day with a meal called Iftar. This year, their fast coincides with Sukkot, thus this sweet opportunity to feed some hungry muslims and do something meaningful and positive with our fellow Semites.
Who: Muslims and Jews
What: Iftar in the Sukkah
Where: Anshe Sholom Synagogue, 540 W. Melrose, Chicago Illinois
When: 5:30 – 7:30, October 1, 2007
How much: $5-10 suggested donation to the JCUA for making this kind of stuff possible.
RSVP to Irene at Irene {at} jcua(.)org or hit her up 312-663-0960 with questions. The skies don’t align like this for another 30 years folks.
Thanks to Ari Hart, for sharing this.
