Like my colleague Nancy, who blogged about the experience below, I came away impressed and inspired, also noting many of the recurring themes that Nancy listed in her last post.

One of them- including Evangelical Christians in inter-religious dialogue- resonates deeply with me. A course that I am currently co-teaching with Professor Emmanuel Itapson at Palmer Theological Seminary (PTS) is doing exactly that.

“Jewish-Christian Encounter Through Text”- a course offered jointly by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) and PTS brings together 8 Rabbinical students from RRC and 8 seminarians from PTS to study in interfaith pairs. For a semester, the students engage deeply with one another, with Biblical text as a foundation for their explorations and conversations.

What happens when you bring these seemingly disparate groups of emerging religious leaders together?
A lot.

They seek commonality. They tell stories. They bring their vulnerabilities. They navigate issues of accessibility and ownership of the text. They are offered a new lens through which to view their sacred text. They are forced to articulate their beliefs and explain aspects of their traditions to their partners, helping them to clarify their relationships to their tradition, their sacred literature and to God. As the semester progresses and trust develops, they share their challenges. They question their partners. They practice humility. They come to understand their differences-and respect them.

As the relationships deepen between the pairs, and among the group, so too does understanding. What results is a broadening of the definitions of “Progressive Jew” and “Evangelical Christian” –to include nuance, personal narratives and diversity.

While there is much I could say about the ways this experience has been thus far transformative for the students (and the instructors!) I would rather share a few words from one of the Rabbinical students taking the course. She writes:

“Each study session with [my partner] takes us deeper into the text, into our curiosity about one another and each other’s faith tradition, and into the spaces where we differ, which is where the energy and excitement (and fear of what we will encounter) lie. When we first met, we were a bit shy and polite, almost like a first date when you are excited and want to make a good first impression, and most of all do not want to get off on the wrong foot. Now we jump right into our dialogue, not wanting to waste a second and I feel slightly annoyed when someone comes to the door of “our space” and says we have to stop!…Anyway, the conversations now are beyond intellectually stimulating – they are soul stirring!”

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.

A Jesuit priest and a Medical Mission Sister, two scholars of Islam wearing hijabs, a healthy dose of rabbis, rabbinical students and ministers, and assorted colleagues and friends gathered to hear a learned historian who is a former college president and a Presbyterian elder……

We were there as part of our ongoing salon series, Praying with Your Feet: Conversations with Socially-Engaged Religious Activists, a program sponsored by RRC’s Department of Multifaith Studies and Initiatives. Over the last three years these salons have brought a diverse group visionary leaders of many faiths to speak to our rabbinical students and to the larger community, to share the spiritual and intellectual journeys that guide their work.

Last week our guest was Professor Theodore Friend.

Friend is an historian, novelist and educator. He is the former president of Swarthmore College, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an active member of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church.

Friend shared some of the journey that brought him to be writing his book-in-progress, Toward an Open Islam: Woman, Man, and God in Five Muslim Cultures.

He also shared some of his research with us-which is in the form  of hundreds of interviews with Muslim women and men across 5 countries. Not lost on Friend, or the group, was the irony of his endeavor. He opened the session by asking himself, and us, “What’s an old Protestant white guy like me doing studying the Islamic world?”

Listening to Friend was powerful and instructive- not only because of the personal stories he shared, but also in the way he modeled humility and integrity, stopping often to seek input from the group, welcoming interpretation and even gentle critique, as he affirmed the collective wisdom in the room. In doing so, he modeled a person seeking to engage deeply with persons of another faith, taking seriously the responsibility to accurately represent complexities and nuance within Islam. He brings to his work an awareness that facts are not just facts- they land in a social context and become part of that context in ways that can be harmful as well as helpful.

We look forward to our final salon for the year, to take place in late April, when we will welcome Rabbi Sheila Weinberg author of the forthcoming Surprisingly Happy-An Atypical Religious Memior, and a graduate of RRC who has engaged deeply with Buddhism.

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?

The Goldstone Report has been a subject of conversation in interfaith gatherings between Jews and Christians and Jews and Muslims since it was issued last year. This statement by Halbertal is worth reading by all who are concerned with the continuing dialogue regarding the Gaza War and the ethical issues related to it.

An article in the New York Times today introduces the reader to three clergy- and to three friends- who are working to “increase interfaith understanding” not just through seeking out commonalities, but through respecting difference- even as they broach difficult issues, such as Israel.

Where Brooks fails his readers is in his noting just one example of such  a malevolent religious story, that of the one growing up on the fringes of the Muslim world, a story about the “conflict between Islam and the West”  that has played a role in the rise of suicide bombers and may, in fact, have contributed to the horrible events of last week in Texas.

This morning the Times printed seven letters to the editor responding to Brooks’ column. The one by a rabbi, Sheldon Zimmerman, agreed that the media has been  to eager to rush to a judgment of  “political correctness”  and thus may be missing out on a more serious threat to our country.

What would Reinhold Niebuhr have said?

It is risky to try to predict what someone who died in 1971 would say about an issue that emerged decades later. In the case of Niebuhr, I gather that this has been especially tricky. Both liberals and conservatives in the church claim to be his heirs. Based on what I know of Niebuhr’s fairmindedness , I am guessing that he would have had serious problems with the way Brooks has chosen to apply his teaching to this situation.

Yes, there is evil in human hearts. Yes, religion can be the carrier of malevolent narratives. But it is both historically and ethically flawed to write a whole column devoted to this theme and never once even mention that Islam is not the only tradition that has this problem. Brooks speaks about suicide bombers and terrorists but he does not mention that we have seen these troubled tales of “us and them” played out by many other religious folks.

As a Jew, David Brooks might have had the grace to remind us that in 1994 an orthodox Jew,  Baruch Goldstein,  killed 29  Muslims and wounded 150 while they prayed in Hebron.  Like Dr. Hassan, Dr. Goldstein, also a physician,  was both a deeply troubled individual and a product of a deeply problematic version of his faith tradition.

Niebuhr,  a  practicioner of  a self-critical Christianity, would likely have  mentioned the word “crusade” in that piece as well. Brooks, however, heedless of the real danger to Muslims in America of Islamophobia, concentrated solely on his message regarding Islam. Niebuhr was right. “Nations, as individuals, who are completely innocent in their own esteem are insufferable in their human contacts.” The more I think about it, the more I am convinced. Niebuhr would have us look at the complexity of the human heart—not just the heart of radical Islam. And he would start with himself.

I look forward to hearing what others think.

“I’m drawn to bad news like a moth to a summer porch light” confesses editor Kristyn Komarnicki in the November/December issue of the evangelical Christian magazine Prism. Komarnicki’s confession seems like dreary reading, but her unflinching interest in bad news is tempered by a faith “in God’s power to… transform us through every drop and sliver of anguish that life can hand out.”  The news that fills Prism’s columns isn’t easy reading… Behind the doom and gloom, however, the magazine’s evangelical message points toward concrete solutions. No matter how audacious the challenge, evangelical Christians are willing to fight, buoyed by a faith that lives and struggles have meaning. You don’t need to be an evangelical, or even a Christian, to appreciate Prism’s strong message of action. Even staunch atheists may be able to find inspiration in the magazine’s motivating message .”

Evangelicals for Social Action was founded by Ron Sider, a professor at the Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern Baptist Seminary) in Philadelphia, in 1978. ESA emphasizes both the transformation of human lives through personal faith and also the importance of a commitment to social and economic justice as an outgrowth of Christian faith.

Next spring, Rabbi Melissa Heller will be offering a half credit course at RRC, Hevrutah: Jewish-Christian Encounter through Text, in partnership with a professor of Hebrew Bible at Palmer.

As usual, the clearest and most helpful piece, in my view, was by the phenomenally prolific historian of American Christianity, Martin E. Marty.

Marty explains the origins of  what we now know as “evangelical Christianity”(a category that describes somewhere between 25% and 45% of American Christians) and  its relationship to fundamentalism, in particular to a brand of fundamentalism called premillenial dispensationalism. Marty just spent twenty years directing a huge project involving hundreds of experts studying fundamentalist groups –Christian Jewish and Muslim.  He is able to view this topic in the  context both of American history and  of religious fundamentalism worldwide.

First, Marty identifies the obvious focus of this conversation. “It is likely that there would not be Evangelical-Jewish conferences at all were it not for interests in Israel that are common to both.” As he notes, “Jews who find support of Israel on the part of some other Protestants to be marked by vagueness, criticism, or half-heartedness, tend to regard Protestant fundamentalists as potential allies….Jews would never have had”

He then traces the emergence of Christian Zionism within fundamentalist Christianity to the late 19th century, long before most Jews were committed to creating a Jewish state in Palestine.  Marty sees it as a “novel”  idea,  a case of “selective retrieval.” He argues that the biblical texts cited by Christian Zionists are  either extremely rare or  “subject to amillenial, postmillenial, and alternative… interpretations.” The dispensational interpretation that linked the establishment of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel to the second coming was, in Marty’s words, “anything but literal.”

The irony, ofcourse, is that evangelical Christian supporters of Israel often are “more insistent than most Jews, including many Zionists, that a certain set of boundaries of the “holy Land” were set by God.”

Marty ends  his piece on  a note of  bemusement, wondering along with many others how Jews can “wholeheartedly accept and honor groups whose vision of the outcome of history inclues either[their} conversion or destruction(even in hell).

Richard L. Rubenstein, a distinguished Jewish theologian and scholar of the Nazi Holocaust, writes a response to Marty that concludes the issue. He makes it clear that he does not believe in a God who acts in history, so he does not share the theological assumptions, either Jewish or Christian, that would see Jewish sovereignty as part of God’s plan.

Nevertheless, he believes that many in the mainline Protestant denominations are “unwilling to confront the true complexity,” that  there are those in the Muslim world working toward “a second Shoa.” Facing a battle for our very survival, Jews should welcome allies such as Pastor John Hagee whom he quotes approvingly as saying “let’s walk together in support of Israel and defense of the Jewish people.”

Not one of the articles in this journal issue grapples seriously with what appears to be a basic unexamined assumption of the entire conversation, i.e. that uncritical support for Jewish governance of the historic Land of Israel(usually understood as comprising the expansive post-67 boundaries) is actually in the best interests of the Jewish people.

There exists  a lively conversation amongst some Jews–in Israel and the diaspora–debating that very question.  What is the best way  to insure a future for the Jewish people?  This conversation is absent from the current volume. Also missing is a recognition of how closely linked this brand of Christian Zionism often is to a kind of Islamaphobia. (For more on that concern, see Chapter Five of Stephen Spector’s new book, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism from Oxford University Press.)

That said, I commend the issue of JES,  in particular the informative and thoughtful article by Martin Marty. (If you want to learn more about this topic, there is also a 2007  anthology edited by Alan Mittleman, Nancy Isserman and Byron Johnson, Uneasy Allies? Evangelical and Jewish Relations.)

Later that day, we sat in her home in the wonderful senior community, Pilgrim Place, and talked about the journey that brought her to that conference and the journey she has taken since. (Herbert Heavenrich has written a biography of Eva entitled In Search of the Sacred.)

Eva was born in Vienna in 1925 to Catholic parents.  Because  her father was a convert from Judaism, the rise of Hitler led her parents to send her as a young girl to England for safety. Eventually, the family was reunited in America. After graduating from Radcliffe and a Fulbright in Paris,  Eva committed herself to a life of faith based service through the Grail, an organization founded in 1921 as a “lay apostolate” addressed to young  Catholic women and independent of the church heirarchy.

Eva’s eventually discerned her own calling: to be a scholar of religion with a focus on the issue of Catholic-Jewish relations. In the post-Holocaust era, Fleischner was among the early Catholic writers undertake this mission. “I had found my life’s work: awakening my fellow Christians to the riches of the Jewish tradition(our roots) and the horrors of the Holocaust in which Christianity had played a part.” After earning a Phd in theology, Fleischner went on to have a distinguished teaching career at Montclair State University and other institutions.

Her most widely read contribution, still in print and still influential, is Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?, the volume she  edited based on the 1974 conference that I had attended.

In our conversation, Eva and I reflected upon the 35 years that have elapsed since the last time we were together. We found ourselves returning in our conversation to the topic of Israel. Eva has been a passionate supporter of the Jewish people and, by extension, the Jewish state.

In recent years, support for Israel has become a more complex issue for Christian allies of the Jewish people,  just as it has for many Jews.  A case in point is a  another  Catholic theologian who early took up the battle against anti-Judaism in the Church(and  also spoke at the conference in 1974), Rosemary Ruether.  Ruether, like Fleischner, saw the connection between the Church’s failures with regard to the Jewish people and other flaws in its theology. Her 1974  book, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, profoundly influenced many to re-examine their Catholic faith and their views of Jews and Judaism. Ruether went on to write and edit many books of liberation theology, particulary  feminist theology , but also books relating to the Palestinian cause.

Interestingly, Rosemary Ruether lives in the same senior community as Eva  Fleischner. Recalling the revolutionary fervor of Fleischner’s and Ruether’s early years of anti-anti-Semitism work in the church, I wonder about the causes that are stirring the hearts of young Catholic  theologians today.