…it is not Islam per sebut the very restraints on print and the idolization of language, among other factors, that are responsible for the benighted state of intellectual achievement in that orbit.
Peretz has mastered the art of turning a seemingly highly culturally-aware observation into a complete non-fact uninformed by, well, anything (and certainly lacking any understanding of basic cultural relativism). Perhaps he’s forgotten that the Islamic world gave us, you know, the foundations of algebra and chemistry. Those are kind of important.
The rest of the article is similar. Peretz says lots of things I agree with, lots I don’t, and still manages to come off sounding like a pretentious Western intellectual supremacist.
Update: videos are now embedded in the post. Enjoy!
As I mentioned in my brief first-day J Street conference round up post, I secured interviews with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative (best known for the Ground Zero Mosque, which is neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque), and Mona Eltahawy, the Egyptian journalist and activist who rocked the socks off the J Street conference. Those videos are now online; the YouTube playlist is here. There are three videos – Mona Eltahawy on social media in the Jasmine Revolution and its potential in the future of the Arab and Muslim world, my question for Imam Rauf on the religious justification for his work, and footage of a few other press-folk asking him questions. Check them out!
Mona did a superb job of addressing the straw man argument made by most of the prominent critics of the social-media-as-organizing-tool theory (Malcolm Gladwell, Evgeny Morozov, etc.). That is, she made a strong case for how Twitter and Facebook were essential in helping garner support for a mass meeting and demonstration of a kind that was quite rare under Mubarak. Notably, she doesn’t claim that it was Twitter or Facebook that toppled the regime. No, that distinction belongs to the brave Egyptians who risked their lives to claim their basic human rights of freedom of speech and assembly. But if you look closely, most of us arguing for social media’s importance in democratic movements aren’t saying that it’s the Internet itself that overthrows regimes, just that it’s a tool for those who desire to do so. The key to any organized resistance movement, especially one that aspires to nonviolence, is organization. Today, the Internet is often one of the last places where free exchange of ideas can take place. Its fast pace and adaptability mean that dedicated users can often stay one step ahead of those trying to shut down the flow of information. This is what makes it important and in some ways game-changing.
Imam Rauf, who’s been one of my personal heroes for a long time, spoke beautifully about the religious underpinnings of his peace work. I hadn’t planned to ask him about this – the question came about as a result of a topic of discussion on the panel on Jewish-Muslim community relations on which he’d just spoken. One Jewish community leader explained a program called “Iftar in the Sukkah,” in which local Muslims and Jews gathered at an Orthodox shul to share the evening break-fast meal during Ramadan, which for the past few years has overlapped with Sukkot. The image of Muslims and Jews taking part in this ritual together was, for me, amazing, and reminded me of the phrase “ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha” – “spread over us your sukkah of peace.” This is pretty much one of my favorite liturgical lines ever, and I felt that I just had to ask Imam Rauf about it. So I mentioned that connection, and asked him what scriptural or Islamic theological justification he found for his work. His answer, that it’s rooted in the very word “Islam,” coming from “Salaam,” was completely in line with his messages of peace and mutual understanding.
I continue to be inspired by the work that both of these courageous activists do every day. Mona Eltahawy speaks truth to power, and Imam Rauf (and the Park 51 project overall) has handled himself with incredible grace in the face of one of the worst smear campaigns I’ve ever seen, and more generally in a climate of increasing American Islamophobia. May they both continue their work and dedication, and may their efforts be rewarded.
First of all, let’s just set aside for a moment the ridiculousness of mentioning Islamic extremists in every other breath – really, I have to say (I never thought I’d defend Beck in any way whatsoever) that really, his comments weren’t about Reform Jews being terrorists. While his comments were completely inane, his point was that Reform Jews are primarily a political organization rather than a religious one. How many ways this is a stupid comment leaves me gasping, but it’s not what most people seem to have taken it as – i.e. a claim that Reform Jews are terrorists.
However, the level of stupidity remains pretty high: More »
I will not twist Mr. Beck’s brilliance to say anything besides what he said:
“Reformed rabbis are generally political in nature. It’s almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way, to where it is just — radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics. When you look at the reform Judaism, it is more about politics. I’m not saying that they’re the same on … and they’re going to take it at that, but — stand in line.”
I will not take it “that way”…I will take it at face value. My religious experience is all about politics. Nothing to do with God, Israel (people and land) or Torah. Nope, nothing what-so-ever. More »
My rabbi made a bold move during his d’var Torah on the first day of Rosh Hashanah services this year. After a brief word on Park 51 earlier in the service, in which he condemned the bigoted opposition in the strongest terms I could have imagined, I wasn’t expecting too much more fire and brimstone, especially on Israel-Palestine. And he looked sort of nervous to me – who wouldn’t, facing such a large crowd (this is Rosh Hashanah, mind you, so we’re talking every Jew in town) that was by and large far more conservative than you. Yet he called for an end to the Gaza blockade and asked congregants to write a letter to Netanyahu’s office urging him to fully engage in the peace talks and bring home results. Strong stuff.
Nine years after the attacks of 9/11, I want to stop and think about framing. How we frame conflicts, both in our mind and externally, has a lot to do with more concrete things like foreign policy, or the nature of the domestic discourse on an issue. 9/11 was an attack on the core of Americanism, and not only because of the physical spectacle of the WTC being leveled by a bunch of reclusive angry dudes. It represents the clash of two worldviews – an American constitutionalist perspective in which personal freedom is of the highest importance, and a religious fundamentalist one (which religion it is is completely irrelevant) in which those who think wrong, believe wrong, act wrong, are to be punished by those who know better. It’s disgusting no matter who it comes from.
In that bin Laden most likely knew what the U.S.’ response to 9/11 would be (“We have raced to Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently to Yemen and Somalia; we have created a swollen national security apparatus; and we are so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy’s intentions that we inflate the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan into a national debate and watch, helpless, while a minister in Florida outrages even our friends in the Islamic world by threatening to burn copies of the Koran,” says Ted Koppel), he made a masterful calculation in goading us into it. But I can’t help but think that he also gave us the greatest opportunity ever to definitively rise above the war-on-terror paradigm. It’s not too late to change course and stop trampling on the mangled remains of the constitutional freedoms (see above links, courtesy of Koppel) bin Laden sought to demonstrate the inferiority of, an effort for which we’ve done far more than he ever could have. This would take a reframing at the national level, something Obama did a bit of in his Cairo speech, but, more importantly, it would also take people of conscience standing up to bigotry at every level. Park 51 is the starkest example we’ve seen so far that this society has yet to move past the paralyzing ethos of American vs. un-American. Or, in simpler terms, a lot of people in this country are still racist.
And so, G()d’s children are still drowning. And until we end the war on terror abroad and the war on Islam at home, and until we, as my rabbi urged, truly walk in the other’s shoes and know their pain as we do our own, the water rises higher. May the memories of the 3000 innocents who died on 9/11, and the thousands more who have died since in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and more, not be forgotten.
This weekend, Pope Benedict XVI voiced concern over the use of those creepy full body scanners at airports. He’s against them, saying “the primary asset to be safeguarded and treasured is the person, in his or her integrity.” The Pope continued:
Respect for the principles he enunciated “might seem particularly complex and difficult in the present context”, he told his audience, which included airport managers, airline executives, security workers, pilots, cabin and ground staff.
They had to contend with problems arising “from the economic crisis, which is bringing about problematic effects in the civil aviation sector, and the threat of international terrorism, which is targeting airports and aircraft”. But, he warned: “It is essential never to lose sight of respect for the primacy of the person.”
The pope’s words will delight civil liberties campaigners opposed to a device that strips passengers virtually naked.
He’s only a few weeks behind various Islamic authorities, who have come out against the scanners. Fiqh Council of North America issued a fatwah statement as passing through the scanners would violate Islamic rules of modesty.
And the Jews? There seems to be (shocking, I know), differing opinions. The Rabbinical Center of Europe (an umbrella organisation for Orthodox communities) has declared the scanners to be immodest, but allowed. Part of their issue is that men should review images of men, women those of women. They were assured that images are reviewed by computer software, and humans are only involved if something is found. But this isn’t accurate. We know from many reports that the images aren’t written over or erased, that security staff are looking at images. So will rabbis in Europe reconsider? What about in North America?
NewGround, a joint venture between the Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Muslim Public Affairs Council is accepting applications for their new fellowship cohorts in LA and the Bay area. This is not dialogue that ignores or minimizes differences so that we can all get along, but an opportunity to explore your relationship to your own identity and tradition while building bridges across communities.
Recently, the Rabbinic Assembly, the organisation that represents Conservative rabbis, issued a statement, signed by 300 members, asking that Nazi rhetoric not be used in political discussions. The JTA reported they included examples such as “Southern Baptist Convention leader, the Rev. Dr. Richard Land, calling health care reform proposals ‘what the Nazis did’ and U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) referring to the current health care system as a ‘holocaust in America’.”
Bernie Faber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, wrote an opinion piece for the Toronto Sun decrying the use of Hitler/Nazi comparisons in politics as well, including examples of its use in the US and Canada.
And we all know the principle behind Godwin’s law: “As an [Internet] discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” Overuse of Nazi/Holocaust comparisons lessens the impact of valid comparisons.
But apparently the message wasn’t heard by B’nai Brith Canada. Their mission is, in part, to fight antisemitism, racism, and bigotry. Except, it seems, when it comes to evoking the Holocaust as justification for slamming Muslims. On November 9th, Kristallnacht, they ran a full-page ad in the National Post, one of Canada’s two national newspapers, equating radical Islam with the Nazi movement that led to the Holocaust. Unsurprisingly, it upset many people, including Holocaust survivors and groups that work to create bridges between Jews and Muslims.
Bnai Brith has said that despite the outcries, the ad was a success as it alerted people to the real threats of Islam, Iran, and a “future holocaust.” The ad can be seen in full online here. In case you don’t want to look at the ugliness (not just its message, it’s also hard on the eyes), it was summarized by the JTA:
Headlined “The Unholy Alliance,” the ad … noted the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the widespread pogroms in Germany on the night on Nov. 8-9, 1938. It showed a photograph of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem meeting with Adolf Hitler, and noted the “common objectives of Nazism and radical Islam: Killing Canadian men and women on the battlefield, incitement of children through schools and media, annihilation of world Jewry, and subjugation of every one else, [and] world domination.”
And, yes, that’s right, this was all done in hopes of soliciting donations. Bnai Brith claims that negative reactions to the ad were greatly outnumbered by positive reactions, so they feel it was worthwhile.
I agree with Now Toronto columnist Susan G. Cole’s outrage, so let’s leave it with that:
It features a photo of Adoph Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, as if it was only Islamic leaders who were complicit while the Nazis herded Jews into the gas chambers. History tells us the Catholic Pope sat back quietly, knowing exactly what was going on. And didn’t every single western democracy refuse to take Jews into their countries when it was obvious they were in grave danger? So why single out the Mufti?
The ad is misleading, inflammatory and, worse, reflects terribly on the Jewish community. So let it be known that there are many Jewish people, including myself, horrified by the ad.
With all the unrest in Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad needs to escape for a while. What better place to go than Israel! Will Birthright Israel help him get there?
There are Jewish organisations, including the JCCs of North America and HUC, offering scholarships to American rabbinical students who wish to become military chaplains. The US Army’s chaplain recruitment webpage states,
“Army Chaplains are expected to observe the distinctive doctrines of their faith while also honoring the right of others to observe their own faith. The Army is a pluralistic environment. “
Honouring the right of others to observe their own faith. That seems key to me. Both for the individuals in the armed forces, and the citizens on the countries they invade. If chaplains from different faiths are expected to work side by side, and serve that “pluralistic environment” of different faith soldiers, how can the following be permitted?
U.S. Soldiers have been encouraged to spread the message of their Christian faith among Afghanistan’s predominantly Muslim population, video footage obtained by Al Jazeera appears to show.Military chaplains stationed in the U.S. air base at Bagram were also filmed with Bibles printed in the country’s main Pashto and Dari languages.
In one recorded sermon, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, the chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling Soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him”.
“The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.
“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.” [read more.]
Unacceptable. The army’s mandate is not to convert, not to be missionaries, not to proselytise. If a military chaplain of a different faith were to encourage soldiers to act on a similar mission (say, convert everyone to Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism), this would be a giant story, with the majority of Americans angrily protesting. But converting to Christianity? No one makes a stir.
Okay, okay, not “no one.” “Some of the Soldiers” were reprimanded, and the army confiscated some of the Bibles that had been printed in Pashto and Dari (Afghanistan’s main languages). We know that this is bad for US diplomacy, it’s unconstitutional, and the Army doesn’t allow it… So why isn’t it being fully investigated? Why aren’t all of the soldiers being reprimanded? How come this was allowed to happen in Iraq as well? And why does hasn’t that chaplain been reprimanded?
“You call the mosque ‘the cross-less church’?”
“Sometimes…”
“What do you call a synagogue?”
“Synagogue. I don’t want to offend anybody.”
Not just one of my favourite shows on television, Little Mosque on The Prairie is a sitcom about the fictional town of Mercy, Saskatchewan and its residents, including the small but vibrant Muslim community. Since the pilot episode, it’s been clear that there are Jewish parallels. There was a great episode where the imam goes homes to Toronto and is interrogated by his parents about what he’s doing with his life, why he hasn’t married yet, and why he has to be so Muslim. Watching the episode with a bunch of MOT during Sukkos, we all felt they could have been Jewish.
If you’re in Canada, it airs on CBC. If you’re in the US or elsewhere, there are websites that let you watch online. And stay tuned: Fox bought the rights to the show and will be remaking it (something about how Americans wouldn’t watch a show set in Saskatchewan; even though it shows in the original version in Dubai, Finland, Turkey, Israel, France, and Switzerland).
What follows is from a joint press release by the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, “under the aegis of JCUA’s Jewish Muslim Community Building Initiative.” The JMCBI was created in late 2001 in response to increasing hate crimes against Muslims subsequent to the September 11th attacks. It has since grown into a project with a long-term, consistent focus on improving Muslim-Jewish understanding and respect.
(and you thought New York and Boston were the only places folks reacted to the violence in and around Aza by getting together to speak out for *peace*)
Joint Statement: Chicago Muslims and Jews Speak with One Voice on
Peace and Justice
We are representatives of Chicago’s Jewish and Muslim communities who have come together with shared values grounded in our respective faith traditions, in light of the recent events in the Middle East and the tragic loss of innocent life, to reaffirm our friendship and our mutual commitment to the preciousness of human life.
The Jewish and Muslim communities have lived peacefully side by side in Chicago for many years. Our respective communities have worked together in partnership to fight injustice, racism, poverty, and indifference.
From this position of solidarity and renewed friendship:
• We condemn anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
• We affirm the preciousness of human life and the safety and security of the people in Gaza and Israel. The life of a Palestinian child and the life of an Israeli child are equally precious.
• We condemn wanton violence, human suffering, and targeting of innocent civilians.
• We pray for a Middle East where Israelis and Palestinians are safe from all forms of violence.
• We pray for continued friendship, and the growth and development in our understanding of one another.
• We pray for an end to the conditions that produce hopelessness.
• We commit to communicating and listening to each other throughout these difficult times.
• We commit to respecting each other even when we disagree.
• We commit to our ongoing relationship, not contingent upon agreement.
• We commit to supporting each other and protecting each other from hate and aggression.
• We embrace the message of hope, peace, and justice for all our communities.
We urge that as our respective communities gather for demonstrations, that the language and symbolism in our signs and chants, while protected by our precious right of freedom speech, do not cross lines and demonize the “other” or incorporate elements of anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.
We believe that these times must serve as a reminder for all of us, individually and institutionally, to redouble our efforts to build bridges with people of all faiths, races, and classes. Only then, will we stand—in all our diversity of opinions—as a united front against hatred, injustice and brutality, locally and abroad. Finally, we pray that our respective communities will be inspired to exemplify the Prophetic values of justice, compassion and courage in working together to bring a lasting peace to our community here and to our sacred region of the world.
Land of chessed, land of blasphemy. What a free society will do to your children…
If you will it, it is no dream. How a young American writer penned a scandalous, riveting underground novel that single-handedly inspired the invention of Muslim punk rock.
Hanan Arzay, 15, is a daughter of Muslim immigrants from Morocco who lives in East Islip, N.Y. In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, pedestrians threw eggs and coffee cups at the van that transported her to a Muslim school, she said, and one person threw a wine bottle, shattering the van’s window.
At school, her Koran teacher threw chalk at her for requesting literal translations of the holy book, Ms. Arzay said. After she was expelled from two Muslim schools, her uncle gave her “The Taqwacores.”
“This book is my lifeline,” Ms. Arzay said. “It saved my faith.”
Something about this story makes me think “Lower East Side yiddish culture, circa 1920″, and while I’m not into the idea of a band called “Vote Hezbollah”, it’s interesting to see similar processes of culture, immigration, religion, and rebellion across time.
During our final night in Iran, I was interviewed at length by two reporters from a Tehran newspaper. I mentioned to them that during my High Holiday sermon to my congregation, I noted that Americans (and especially American Jews) chronically misunderstand Iran. I told the reporters that ironically enough, I learned on this trip that I really hadn’t understood Iran nearly as well I as I had thought myself. More »
Reps from eighty countries met this past Wednesday at the UN to discuss religious tolerance at a conference sponsored by Saudi Arabia. I’m sure many will invariably claim there is no small measure of hypocrisy when a Wahabi Islamic regime that outlaws all other forms of religion convenes a conference on religious tolerance. For their part, however, many of the speakers from Islamic countries decried the hypocrisy of Western nations preaching individual freedom of religion while promoting social and economic policies that bias against non-Western faiths.
I often wonder if our respective cries of hypocrisy really only mask our inability to break free of our own inbred biases. It’s just so complicated. As a Westerner, I make no apologies in my advocacy for individual civil and human rights – but I will also admit that I will too often stand in judgment of other cultures before trying to understand their cultural viewpoints and their profound frustrations with the prejudices of the West.
That’s why, though I’m sure many in the will be cynical about such a conference, I am heartened that it happened at all and I truly hope it will lead to yet more dialogue. And I am particularly heartened that Israeli President Shimon Peres, a participant in the conference, commented afterward Israeli President Shimon Peres that the event was “unprecedented,” adding that it would have been impossible just a decade ago:
“What we are witnessing today is a new beginning,” Peres said at a press conference. “What was today demonstrated was the will. We now have to work for the way.”
If you’re interested in further reading, check out these articles in Yahoo News and The Daily Star
From The Independent, also in JTA and Reuters, Britain’s first Muslim minister Shahid Malik has said that many Muslims feel like “the Jews of Europe”:
“I think most people would agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe,” he said. “I don’t mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost – and still is in some parts – to target Jews, many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way.
“Somehow there’s a message out there that it’s OK to target people as long as it’s Muslims. And you don’t have to worry about the facts, and people will turn a blind eye.”
MP Malik speaks to a big truth – a plus ca change truth. Let’s play with this for a sec:
No, Muslims are not having their rights to property or occupation taken away (even if their rights to wear hijabs are under constant threat), even if people do eye them suspiciously. The animosity towards the Islamic bloc countries is rooted also in a fear of East vs. West geopolitical conflict — something the Jews never could claim to have. Further, terrorist acts on a grand scale are also missing from the early 1900s history of Jews and Europe. One might more accurately say that Muslims might be the new Russians. Or the new Communists.
All that being said, does it matter if Islam actually can declare war on the West — or if we just think it has? Jews were accused of running the world, manipulating finances, and so on, which were exaggerations and lies. The “Islam against the West” line is also a bit hazy in the facts area, yes? Islamophobia is a tiny hop, skip and jump away from anti-Semitism, in its pervasive nature, it’s reliance on cultural myths, and appropriation of populist fears. It is a disease of the logic, backed up by credibility and “research.” The target people is different and the trappings are green-tinted not blue, but the portrayal and useage of it is the same.
This statement is more than interesting to Jewschool because it happens to have “Jews” in the article. And this issue is more important than an exercise in backing up or debunking the similarities between Jews and Muslims in Europe. MP Malik’s statement is a hot poker in the butt of the Jewish people asking us if we (and our societies) have not fallen into the same mental traps as our predecessors’ oppressors. And what, other than decrying or debunking the comparison, we’re going to do to prevent the accusation from going any further.
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!
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.
Except, it seems, when it comes to evoking the Holocaust as justification for slamming Muslims. On November 9th, Kristallnacht, they ran a full-page ad in the 
There was a great episode where the imam goes homes to Toronto and is interrogated by his parents about what he’s doing with his life, why he hasn’t married yet, and why he has to be so Muslim. Watching the episode with a bunch of MOT during Sukkos, we all felt they could have been Jewish.
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