Over 300 people have taken the time to post comments, and I am sorry to report that much of the conversation is disheartening. There is so much ignorance, anger and fear out there!

I urge you to follow this issue and try to steer the conversation in helpful directions. We have a long way to go…

Last week, I had the privilege of attending a wonderful conference, “Educating Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Leaders for Service in a Multi-Religious World: The American Seminary Context.” The college was hosted by  Andover Newton Theological School, Boston Theological Institute, and Hebrew College. To read an overview of the conference written by Joshua Stanton, editor of the  Journal of Inter-religious Dialogue,  click

The conference was extraordinarily rich: two and a half days filled with panels and programs from breakast till late in the evening. A wide range of speakers presented on a rich variety of topics, all related to the question of training the next generation of religious leaders. Certain themes recurred. Here is a brief list of the ones I noted:

1)Radical pluralism—Professor Diana Eck, founder of the Harvard Pluralism Project, was honored with an award at the conference and was quoted often, sometimes merely to note the title of her 2001 book, “A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation

Curriculum Infusion– Many speakers agreed that adding extra courses, as if multifaith was an added on bonus/elective, was not the best way to transform seminary education. Rather, we need to think about how the formation of our clergy in all its aspects might reflect an awareness of the multifaith world they will confront.

I will be speaking on a panel on educational opportunities “beyond the classroom.” Although we have several major initiatives outside the classroom, including student  internships with multifaith organizations,  I have chosen to present  our co-curricular guest speaker series, “Praying with Your Feet: Conversations with Faith Based Activists.”

. Multifaith education is about imparting information and teaching skills , but it is also about formation and inspiration. One of the values we want to impart to our rabbis  is the willingness to dream big,  to expand their imaginations as they envision how their rabbinates might make a difference in the world.

How do people translate their faith into action?

2008-2009

*Sheikh Ghassan Manasra — director of Anwar il-Salaam, a Muslim peace and dialogue centre based in Nazareth, Israel  

*Richard Taylor  –  Raised in the Quaker faith, joined the Catholic Church in 1982 at the age of 49. Coordinator of Development for St. Vincent de Paul’s Peace Ministry in Philadelphia.  Author,  A Peace Ministry in Practice, and Why I am Still a Catholic . Read about his visit here.

*Krystin Komarnicki –Editor,  Prism Magazine, published by Evangelicals for Social Action, Philadelphia. Read about her visit here.

*Samir Selmanovic — founder of Faith House Manhattan and author, It’s Really all about God. Read about his visit here.

*Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb —  founder of Shomer Shalom, a network of Jewish individuals committed to the Torah of Nonviolence. ordained in the Jewish Renewal movement in 1981. Author,  She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism.(Currently Lynn is helping to launch the Community of Living Traditions — an interfaith intentional community dedicated to nonviolence at Stony Point Center(Presbyterian Church USA)Read about her visit here.

2009-2010

* Professor Mohja Kahf —   Poet, Novelist and Professor of Comparative Literature,  University of Arkansas, author, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. Activist on gender issues in Islam.

*Professor Theodore Friend  — former president of Swarthmore College, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a member of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church.  Newest book-in-progress, Toward an Open Islam: Woman, Man, and God in Five Muslim Cultures. Read about his visit here.

*Rabbi Sheila Weinberg — co-founder and Director of Outreach at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. author, Surprisingly Happy: an Atypical Religious Memoir(2010) Active in Rabbis for Human Rights among other justice and peace initiatives.

*Reverend Susan Teegan Case — Founding Director, Arts and Spirituality Center, Philadelphia, a not-for-profit organization comprised of artists and spiritual leaders working with multi-faith constituencies who see the interplay of artistic and spiritual expression as an avenue for social and personal healing,

Several years ago, the dean of the school called our Department of Multifaith Studies seeking a professor who could teach homiletics to her seminary students, Koreans newly arrived in this country. Her goal was for them to learn how to deliver sermons in the style that their American congregants would find congenial.

Fortunately, Rabbi Goldie Milgram was able to fit this assignment into her already busy schedule.  Goldie and the Won students preparing for ordination have both been thrilled to connect and  learn from one another.

Not only is Goldie helping them with public speaking skills tailored to a religious setting, she recently invited this year’s class to her home for a Shabbat dinner.

In between the Jewish rituals, the students were able to practice offering impromptu blessings before and after a  meal, invocations and toasts.

Thanks to Goldie for continuing this interfaith adventure, and thanks to Hubbatzin Barry Bub for taking pictures.

My experience in American Jewish communities, dating back to the seventies, confirms Cohen’s claims.  It was rare to find a serious encounter with religious sources going hand-in-hand with left-liberal Jewish activism. The latter was the province of Reform or secular Jews who grounded their thinking less in Talmud than in Kant. The former was pursued almost entirely by Orthodox Jews who were usually conservative or not involved in the political sphere.

According to Cohen—and I happily agree—that situation is changing. Cohen offers a number of examples of Jews who are engaged in “taking back the texts.” He then asks, Why? One reason he notes is of particular interest to readers of this blog. Cohen writes that the move to ground one’s social activism in traditional Jewish text is, among other things, “a way to participate in a multiethnic and interfaith discussion from a grounded Jewish space and in a textured Jewish vocabulary.”

Fascinating! I think Cohen is right.  Much social justice work in this country takes place in coalitions of faith based activists. Religiously inspired Catholics and Protestants have led many of the great social change movements in America, most dramatically the civil rights movement of the 1960′s. When Jews join with Christians to work on issues from homelessness to undocumented immigrants to the environment, they are encouraged and inspired  to bring to the table their own spiritual idioms. They do not want to share the Christian language, but they are moved by Christian faith.  In seeking the language of Talmud, it seems these Jews are looking less  for guidance on issues than a sense of the religious depths from which they hope to act as they  “heal the world.”

Here we see an example of one of the ways interfaith encounter enriches our lives.

Are these videos needed? According to a  Gallup Center for Muslim Studies report released in February,  indeed they are. More than 4 in 10 Americans (43%) admit to feeling at least “a little” prejudice toward Muslims — more than twice the number who say the same about Christians (18%), Jews (15%) and Buddhists (14%).

These two examples are not the same in their method, although both address some of the key prejudices Americans typically hold about Muslims.

The first was created by the Center for American Progress.

The second was by Kareem Salama, a “Muslim cowboy.”

Please check them out and let us know here what you like and why.

In this article, Ira Rivkin raises an interesting question. The New York Times wants us to see the story of the friendship of two Princeton undergrads–a Palestinian and a Jew–as a big deal, worthy of a news item. But, Rivkin points out, doesn’t that just perpetuate the stereotype of emnity the story purports to challenge? What is the role of the “feel good” story in tracking Muslim-Jewish relations? What do you think?

Hilgeman’s  piece tells a powerful story of  how caring human encounter can transcend the divisions of faith traditions.  She was hired to serve the Jewish residents; she wore a kippah and led Hebrew services; differences of class and race set her apart from the non Jewish staff. Both learned something new from this experience.  On her side, she writes, “I have advocated for building interfaith relationships because I believe in its political importance, but until that evening, I still had some doubts about the limits of such connectedness on a spiritual level.”  As for the non Jewish staff members, Hilgeman quotes a nurse saying, “We are all one. I wasn’t sure about this before, but now I know.”

Many of us have had similar experiences, often in the wake of tremendous upheavals that compel us to forge connections we might not have imagined.  How do we keep that energy fresh and vital in calmer times? What are its limits?

Many disagreed, and a fair account of the controversy (fair, according to the Harvard Muslim chaplain’s blog)  appeared in the New York Times.

I just obtained my copy of the 2010 edition of The Best Spiritual Writing. It carries a reprint of an article by Leon Wieseltier, a Jewish writer for The New Republic, that offers some wise ruminations on this issue. The essay uses the Harvard dispute as a jumping off point to explore  the wider question:  the challenges of the  cacophony created by a commitment to open civil spaces.  In earlier discussions of this debate, I did not find sufficient attention to the questions that Weiseltier raises: What are the pleasures, as well as the problems, of religious diversity? How can we relate positively  to the  “ravishments” of other traditions?

You can read Weiseltier’s piece here.

For Michaelson, Jewish nondualism is not better or worse than other nondual traditions, and he freely uses examples from other traditions: Zen, TibetanBuddhism, Vedanta. He does not make the mistake, however, of blending them  together as if to make them all say precisely the same thing. In fact, he does a nice job of showing how the Jewish tradition of nondualism is both similar and different from other traditions, and indeed, points outs some of the tensions between different Jewish versions of nondualism.  He also does a wonderful job of setting the Jewish tradition within the larger picture of Jewish religious thought, including its contemporary manifestations.

Of the many stories Michaelson tells, one of my favorites comes from the Sufi tradition:

There was once a prisoner who yearned for freedom. One day, the prophet Muhammad appeared to thim, gave him a set of keys to his cell, saying, “Allah has set you free.” The prisoner took the keys, mounted them on the wall, and prayed to them five times a day.

The book grapples with the question of what it means to share fundamental beliefs with other traditions and yet love ones own path. Even for nondualists,  particular communities and practices can be the triggers(Michaelson’s word) that “bring us closer to what matters most.”  He loves the Jewish path and the powerful ways it leads him in his spiritual life.  He says, “I don’t want to fetishize the trigger, but I do want to pull it.”

That said, our 21st century reality is that those pulling the trigger most passionately, at least in the Abrahamic  traditions often (although by no means always) are the ones most inclined to support pulling triggers of another kind as well. Michaelson grapples with this situation and with the increasingly complex identities, dual and even more,  that we find among seekers. Why is it so  important that insist on  our particularities, especially in light of their shadow side of ethnocentricity? Has the value of maintaining those boundaries run its course, and would not people who see ultimate reality as nondualist be among the first to advocate less divisions and more synergy?

I especially appreciated Michaelson’s pragmatist streak because it corresponds with my own. He believes, as I do, that  “by their fruits you shall know them.” And this is where I run into trouble with nondualism. He writes, “When the spiritual work is being done, the good heart emerges on its own,”  and “the contemplative practice of seeing clearly…leads effortlessly to more justice and more peace.”

That is, indeed, the final test of any religious system. In this case, I am more drawn to traditions within Judaism that speak to the power of the evil impulse; I read claims like those above with a jaundiced eye.  But I would be more than happy to be proved wrong. I do believe  Michaelson’s testimony that meditation and other practices of nondualist Judaism have led him to live, as he puts it “gently and justly.” This is a moving and powerful  personal testimony, as well as an excellent introduction to an important dimension of contemporary Jewish thought.