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.

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?

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.

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.

According to a recent article by Eboo Patel, a Gallup poll says as much, although it did not ask the necessary questions to establish that the reverse is also true,  that people who hate Muslims also hate Jews.  You can check out the Gallup poll for yourself here.

Patel concludes that we Muslims and Jews ought to teach our children not to say “Dirty Muslim” or “Dirty Jew,” if not for their sake than for our own. This seemed like a fairly obvious, if not banal, thesis to me. Who could disagree?

Yet, on the WashingtonPost website where the article appeared, commentators have weighed in with objections, thereby confirming that, as the Gallup poll suggests, there is indeed a problem here, and not one that is moving in the right direction.

What is the best way to address this issue?

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.

I am always impressed by the level of thoughtfulness and respect shown by those who respond to Rabbi Rosen’s blog entries. Clearly, there is a community that follows his postings and is open to engaging with diverse views, taking the trouble to post their own thoughts when they agree and when they disagree.

This time, a correspondant expressed his disagreemet with the words quoted from my blog. He wrote, ” Please don’t say ‘well, they have their extremists and we have ours’. There is NO moral equivalence.”

I responded to explain that my raising the example of Baruch Goldstein, the infamous Orthodox Jew who murdered Muslims at prayer on Purim in 1994, was in no way intended to suggest “moral equivalence.” My comments were not about judging the morality of Major Hassan’s act, let alone ranking it better, worse or equivalent to Major Goldstein’s who, by the way, was also a physician with a high army rank. As someone who studies world religion, I certainly would not have attempted to make a moral ranking(or declare “equivalent”) two complex, evolving religious civilizations such as Judaism and Islam.

My judgment involved David Brooks and the responsibility he bears for his choice of words and for the way in which he failed to contextualize his comments about the dangers of radical Islam. He could have done so by noting that the vast majority of American Muslims condemn this version of Islam. He also could have noted that Islam is not the only religion with problematic versions. He did neither. Given the  vulnerability of Muslims as a religious minority at a highly charged moment in history, I though he could have been more careful.

Of course, there are those who are even less careful in what they have to say. Consider this statement by Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School and  executive editor for opinions at Forbes.

As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub–disconcertingly–”Going Muslim.” This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American…discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.

Many folks responded positively to this post, with suggestions for websites such as jihadwatch.com or  jihadtube.com where additional information could be found to support the  concerns around “going Muslim”

One correspondant wrote

Any number of people will tell you {about} Bernard Madoff, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milkin, the Rothschilds, the Protocol referring to Capital and Finance in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the relative income of the American Jewish household compared to their population, literature through the ages about Jews and their relationship with money…..there are many parallels between your narrative of “Going Muslim” and these narratives of “Going Jew.”  If the above “facts” I listed seem sparse you’ll find plenty at JewWatch.com.

The writer was not suggesting “moral equivalence.” But he was, tongue in cheek, suggesting(at least to me) that people who have suffered from overarching narratives about their group(Jewish greed/Zionist domination) might be especially careful not to help create potentially dangerous narratives about others.

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.

My focus this year will be the sessions on “Islam and Modernity” in preparation for this spring when  I will be organizing a course for rabbis about Islam( taught by Muslim scholars–but I have to organize it well) and an undergraduate course on “Jewish-Muslim Relations in America” at City College of New York.

Especially exciting is the opportunity to hear the plenum address by the Swiss Muslim scholar, now a professor at Oxford University, Tariq Ramadan. His talk is entitled, “Contemporary Islam: The Meaning and the Need of a Radical Reform.”  Also a big draw, not only for me,  is the talk by Canadian Muslim film maker Zarka Nawaz whom I know best as the creative genius behind the CBC televisiton series  Little Mosque on the Prairie.

In the hours left over, I will try my best to choose wisely from an astonishingly rich buffet of options, far too many of which sound intriguing to me. Do I go to a session on Third Wave Womanism or one on Jewish Poets of Montreal? How about Tantric Studies or a panel on Zoroastrianism. ( The program booklet notes that  this is the first time in twenty years there has been a panel on Zoroastrianism.) I am very eager to attend anything related to Science and Religion, Pragmatism, Jewish Thought and —of recent interest to me– Religion and Film. And how can I pass up learning about Barack Obama’s theology of pluralism?

All this leaves me actually delighted when I notice a topic I am pretty sure I am NOT interested in such as “Sports and Religion,”  “Neo-Platonism,” or “French Psychoanalytic Reflections on Religion.”(Full disclosure:  the last topic does interest me, but I fear I would not understand the talk.)

There is one presentation that sounded really fascinating, but I am going to pass on it while in Montreal. “Mapping Store Front Congregations on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia.”  Since I live blocks away from the avenue and the presenter, I will catch up with that material when I return home.  As for sports and religion, I am rooming  with a colleague, Professor Rebecca Alpert, who is writing a book related to Jews and baseball, so I think I may be covered after all.