Photo Courtesy of Mirah Curzer Photography

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was a bookworm. He both wrote and read voraciously. But he also was also a practical man who lived by his principles. A refugee from Nazi Germany, he knew injustice quite personally. So when he came to the United States, the racial segregation prevalent at the time made him cringe. He became active in the civil rights movement,marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama. As he noted to a fellow marcher, “When I march in Selma, my feet are praying.”

Today, the movement for religious freedom and pluralism may well define our era, much as the movement for racial equality defined Heschel’s. Mosques and community centers around the country have been singled out in a deluge of Islamophobic rhetoric and even acts of intimidation, such as theQuran burning set to take place on the anniversary of September 11 in Florida. Our constitutional rights, as well as the tolerant vision of our founding fathers, are at risk.

In response, we must pray with our feet.

When John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960, fear-mongers raised the specter of his dual loyalty. Would he really serve American interests or merely be a pawn for the Vatican? After all, he was a Catholic. Church doctrine, it was whispered, could co-opt the person designated to uphold America’s laws and Constitution.

Similar fears have been raised about Muslim-Americans, and ironically, often in conjunction with our current Christian president. Generalizations based on religion are disturbing because they reduce rich, diverse, and complicated belief structures to monolithic and inaccurate convictions. Yet what is most galling is the fact that accusations of dual loyalty, no less to a religion other than the president’s own, have not dissipated during the course of Obama’s first term in office. If anything, they have grown more raucous and extreme.

So what exactly is the unknown that fear-mongers harp on? Among other things, it is the fear that a growing American religious community may suddenly undermine the country’s Constitutional values. Sharia, so-called Islamic law, is the new specter that fills the void left by the dissipated fear of Vatican doctrine and fear of Communism that crumbled alongside the Soviet Union. Forget the millions of Muslims in the United States who drink coffee, go to work, raise children, celebrate the Fourth of July, and pay their taxes on time. Sharia equals terrorism. “Need proof,” the fear-mongers ask? Just look at the fact that the terrorists who attacked us on September 11 observed Sharia. “Do you want to support terrorism?”

This argument not only appallingly conflates all Muslims with Muslims who observe Sharia, but Muslims who observe Sharia with terrorists. The notion that 1.4 billion people could ever be the same might seem laughable, were the decision to lump all Muslims together – and then equate them with the worst handful – not made so frequently. This false logic is at the root of much fear.

The days before Ramadan in Cairo are filled with anticipation. Paper and tinsel streamers appear across inner courtyards and wide roads. Lanterns and miniature mosques made of everything from crepe paper to recycled tin are hung and lit at night. Everyone waits for the sliver of moon to appear and to hear the official news announcing the start of the 30-day fast. Ramadan this year is scheduled to start on August 11.

“Ten days eating. Ten days cake. Ten days new clothes. This is what they say about Ramadan,” Mr. Ashraf told us the night he drove my husband and I to his home forIftar, the evening meal that breaks the daylong fast.

Mr. Ashraf is a sincere and gentle man of immense bulk. At first he appeared a bit frightening, with broad hands that look as if they could knock your head off. He told us during our first trip together that he had been teaching computer science at the university for $100 per month, but found taxi driving more lucrative. He was our preferred taxi driver while we lived in Giza during the year 2001, and my husband and he developed a special friendship while driving through the snarl of Cairo traffic. Even though their worlds, experiences, and way of thinking would always make them strangers to one another, their mutual appreciation and genuine liking became stronger with time.

Rabbi Michael Lerner has helped lead a growing chorus of American rabbis who are voicing their support for the Park51 Islamic community center (often mislabeled the “Ground Zero Mosque”) in Lower Manhattan. His video of support, featured here, is a call for people of all traditions to recognize the holiness in each other. It also touches on the singular hope that Americans have of honoring each other’s freedoms and affirming each other’s beliefs.

Please join Rabbi Lerner in doing the same! Whether you are a rabbi or a nun, a lay leader or proud humanist, the need to protect religious freedom in America has never been more important. Religious Freedom USA, the organization that first featured Rabbi Lerner’s video, is quickly becoming an interfaith movement to support of Park51 as a praiseworthy center that must be protected as an expression of religious freedom.

Religious Freedom USA, of which I am proud to be a founding member, has started a petition in support of Park51. It affirms,

Since the first pilgrims reached the shores of Plymouth, America has shone as a beacon of religious freedom, illuminating the path to liberty for the oppressed from every land, in every generation. Extreme criticism of the proposed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan is an affront to the religious freedom that our Founding Fathers fought to secure. We stand by our belief in freedom of worship and freedom of expression and consider the Park51 community center to be an expression of both. We are proud to unite behind it as a symbol of religious freedom.

Join the movement. Religious freedom is either guaranteed to all or safe for none. It is a cause vital to the entire Tikkun community, as Rabbi Lerner has made so tremendously clear.

[To learn more about this topic, check out Rabbi Lerner's post on the ADL's opposition to the mosque and Josh Stanton's previous post on the controversy.]

Scriptural Reasoning, a technique developed at Cambridge University and the University of Virginia, is known as much for its peer-reviewed journal as for its august participants. But it is on the verge of going mainstream, shaking up the way we understand each other’s scriptures and taking root on college campuses around the country.

Approximately twenty Scriptural Reasoning (SR) groups exist across North America and the United Kingdom. But that number is likely to balloon as college chaplains take SR to their campuses. Two leading scholars of SR, Peter Ochs, Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, and Homayra Ziad, Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity College, brought the technique to the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Chaplains (NACUC) this past spring, where it was warmly received. Their goal was to share the methods of SR to ignite a movement among chaplains and, ultimately, colleges and universities.

Now, with the school year approaching, a number of chaplains have followed up with plans to start SR groups on their campuses as a way to enhance inter-religious engagement more broadly. Paul Sorrentino, Director of Religious Life at Amherst College and organizer of this year’s NACUC conference, plans to do just that, noting, “I believe it is both respectful of the texts and of the people of different faiths who study them.”

Terrorism is brutal and devastating, and its ultimate goal is fear. Terrorists hope to set allies against each other, and build tension between compatriots. The atrocities carried out by terrorists on September 11, 2001 were particularly devastating and, in many ways, the fear generated by the attacks is still being felt today.

Since this spring, critics have condemned a proposed Muslim community centre in Lower Manhattan, formerly known as the Cordoba House. The community centre’s leaders recently changed its name to Park51, referring to its address at 51 Park Place, in part to emphasise that it will be located several blocks from Ground Zero and that it is hardly the “Ground Zero Mosque” it had been branded.

When built, Park51 will feature “a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, art exhibition spaces, bookstores, [and] restaurants” and will be a “cultural nexus” for New York City, according to one of its sponsoring organisations, the Cordoba Initiative, which promotes positive Muslim-Western relations and interfaith dialogue.

Though hosted by a Muslim group, and indeed equipped with a Muslim prayer room, it will be open to all New Yorkers and full of all the facilities of a top-notch community centre.

In spite of Park51’s clear value to the city and its citizens, its location several blocks from Ground Zero has prompted protests that aim to keep some Muslim Americans from practicing their faith in freedom and peace, and from opening their doors in a truly American way to welcome guests from all faith traditions.

The terrible irony is that under the guise of fighting extremism, some critics of Park51 are unwittingly furthering the agenda of the terrorists who attacked us so viciously on 9/11. The terrorists wanted us to be afraid. They wanted us to put our rights in jeopardy. They wanted us to believe that not all religions are welcome in America. They wanted us to undo ourselves by debasing our own principles.

Please join the Religious Freedom USA movement to protect the freedoms our Founders established and ensure that they are extended to all Americans. Below is our inaugural article, which has been and will be re-featured in order to maximize the impact it has on dialogue surrounding the Park51 community center. This is a moment and a movement for all of America. Please note that this article was co-authored by Frank Fredericks, co-Director of Religious Freedom USA.

The core American ideal of religious freedom has been put at risk. News of Park51, the proposed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan, has spawned protests against a religious group that simply seeks to create a meeting place and has gone out of its way to make clear that the space will be open to the entire New York community.
These protests, diatribes, and campaigns against Park51 violate the ideals of religious freedom to which our country has long aspired. The First Amendment of the Constitution states explicitly that

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The local government has so far done its part to uphold and apply these Constitutional rights. The Community Board of Lower Manhattan approved the building project 29 to 1, with 10 abstentions, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg voiced his strong support.

But individuals have taken the application of this freedom into their own hands. It would appear that more extreme voices want this right to apply only to their own religious communities, and not to others. But when one group’s freedoms are threatened, the religious freedom of all Americans is at stake.

In response to the ongoing and often radical criticism of Park51 and its leaders, we are proud to announce the launch ofReligious Freedom USA. Religious Freedom USA is a new campaign to safeguard freedom of religion and mobilize Americans to support Park51 as an expression of this core American value. We invite and encourage you tojoin the movement. Send in a video of support, write a letter to the editor, sign our petition, help organize a local rally, or join us for an event here in New York.

One of many images from www.yivoencyclopedia.org

From liturgy to ideology, Yiddish literature and the mass immigration to the United States, Eastern Europe birthed many of modern Jewry’s most important intellectual and social trends. Its impact on Jewish history is on par with that of Medieval Spain and al-Andalus, and even in some respects the period of the great Talmudic academies in Baghdad.

Yet its incredible history and derivate lessons have been largely limited to books and those familiar with them. The People of the Book have long allowed their expansive history to be confined by the medium through which it was presented. This trend has become particularly stark in recent years, as the Internet has expanded the ways in which history and knowledge can be transmitted, as well as the audience with which it can be shared.

Even as Jewish organizations have created websites, online forums, and online publications in response to the growing demand for online resources, Jewish education has remained largely offline. Even as the digitization of the Talmud has facilitated rabbinic scholarship, it has seemed taboo to suggest that Jewish history, philosophy, theology, and liturgy could be accessed through anything but a book or a knowledgeable person.

Just this past week, however, theYIVO Institute for Jewish Research made significant headway in changing the notion that education for the People of the Book might somehow be confined to books alone. After extensive planning and preparation, the institute launched an online edition of theYIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. While it may not leave book learning totally behind (the print edition is being published by Yale University Press), it is set to alter the way that Jews learn about the heartland of Eastern European Jewry.

This article was co-authored by Zeeshan Suhail.

New York, New York and Washington, DC – In the rabbinic tradition, it is said that if you bring colour to a person’s face by upsetting them, it is as though you have physically struck him. If so, the Cordoba House and its leaders have endured a true assault.

This past month has seen a flurry of protests from extreme opponents of the Cordoba House, a proposed community centre in Lower Manhattan that would be founded by Muslims but serve all New Yorkers. While dissenters comprise only a small minority of voices, they have drowned out the large and growing number of the centre’s supporters, as well as those who simply want to learn more about its overarching aims.

Individuals, like Tea Party leader Mark Williams, have mislabelled the Cordoba House a potential breeding ground for fundamentalism and tried to smear its sponsoring organisations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, both of which have a strong record of promoting interfaith dialogue and improving Muslim-Western relations.

Sadly, these protesters have failed to distinguish between the mainstream Muslim majority and the tiny minority of militant Muslims.

My family was spared the worst of 9/11/01 – but it felt like a close call. My brother was midair on a trip back from Europe, set to land in John F. Kennedy Airport later that day. My father was waiting for him in Manhattan, and my mother and I were in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. waiting for both to come home. Every year, I am reminded that my brother came back safely – and how incredibly lucky our family was. For many New Yorkers, however, the anniversary of 9/11 reopens much deeper wounds.

Although 10% of the victims of 9/11 were Muslims, for nine years since, the American Muslim community has been under tremendous pressure to educate, speak up, organize, and act on the behalf of our city and our country. It seems that a significant step forward is on the horizon – one that may answer in full these calls to action.

Photo by Katya Dreyer-Oren

How should future religious leaders be trained so that they can at once be rooted in their traditions and equipped to work with people of others? This question has been asked with increased urgency, as American theological seminaries have tried to adapt to what has become the most religiously diverse country in history. Answers have proven somewhat elusive.

This week, from April 14 – 16, a group of remarkable visionaries and emerging inter-religious leaders convened at Andover Newton Theological School and Hebrew College to discuss potential answers during the pioneering CIRCLE National Conference 2010. Participants included Brad Hirshfield, co-Founder of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Ingrid Mattson, Director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary and Executive Director of the Islamic Society of North America, and Stephen Graham, Director of Faculty Development and Initiatives in Theological Education at the Association of Theological Schools.

It seemed fitting to hold the conference jointly at two of the few seminaries to cohabitate the same campus and maintain a close administrative and curricular relationship. Students at Hebrew College and Andover Newton can cross-register for courses, while several classes are team-taught by professors from both institutions. The campus also houses the Center for Interreligious and Communal Leadership Education (CIRCLE), whose “mission is to nurture a new generation of moral and spiritual leaders equipped for service in a religiously diverse world” through a fellowship program, leadership training, and inter-campus initiatives and programs. Its administrators, Dr. Jennifer Peace and Rabbi Or Rose, saw the conference as a natural extension of their work.

Peter Admirand, a Research Associate in Ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin, found himself in an awkward position. The organizers of an interfaith event had inadvertently scheduled the gathering for Passover — meaning that many if not all of the Jewish participants would be unable to attend.

In order to avoid a fiasco, the organizers asked Admirand, as a Catholic theologian involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue, to give a talk on Jewish views of the ‘other.’ So, as Admirand quips, “a Catholic theologian attempted to present Jewish views towards the non-Jew to a predominantly Muslim audience.”

What transpired personally for Admirand (and presumably many present at the gathering) gives a great deal of hope for dialogue, but also poses some challenging questions. Admirand reflects in “The Other as Oneself Within Judaism: A Catholic Interpretation“:

Not surprisingly, in examining the Jewish view of the Other [in preparation for the talk I gave], I uncovered ample material to help Christians like me become Christ-like in a more meaningful way. As I was naturally drawn to Jewish accounts that validated my religious perspective, it is not surprising that non-Christians react with sadness and distress when Christian views deny the validity of their faiths.

Hopefully, this awareness testifies to a just reading of some aspects of Jewish tradition. If not, then I pray that one has the patience to instruct me further and that I have the courage to embrace theological vulnerability, without which, most of our interreligious attempts would be in vain.

Until 1998, Indonesia could hardly be considered tolerant. Its leader, General Suharto, was among the most brutal dictators in history, known to have massacred hundreds of thousands to gain and then retain power. But since his resignation in 1998, Indonesia has blossomed. As the Economist reported last fall, Indonesia has a “golden chance,” not only to continue strengthening its surprisingly buoyant democratic institutions and fight corruption, but to become a significant economic and diplomatic power.

While much ink has been spilled about Indonesia’s political reemergence, its role as a potential leader in the movement for religious pluralism has been largely understated. As the world’s most populous majority-Muslim country, Indonesia is poised to become a strong force for outreach, pressing for greater intra-religious cooperation within Islam to and undertaking diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions between Muslim and Hindu, Jewish, and Christian communities in areas of tension overseas. Preliminary signs indicate that it is well on its way to becoming a major player.

Just this January, in conjunction with Religions for Peace and the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia hosted the “Indonesia Interfaith Forum” in Jakarta. The Forum convened leaders from the U.S. and Indonesia, as well as throughout Southeast Asia. It will likely be the first of many such forums and lay the groundwork for significant advances in poverty reduction and education through close collaboration with religious communities.

Yet even more heartening is the language for dialogue emerging within Indonesia. Rather than importing terminology, an existing set of words and expressions is being adapted and consolidated. Anand Krishna, a prominent author and interfaith activist, recently wrote in the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue of his conceptualization of inter-religious work and the potential for Indonesia to become a leader within it. But he began his piece with a discussion of terms, which foreshadow in many respects forthcoming actions:

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is getting pummeled. Great Britain just expelled an Israeli diplomat for the Mossad’s possible falsification of British passports and the United States continues to clash seriously with him over the building of settlements in East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu is known to be a pragmatist and a tactician. He will no doubt take the international criticism seriously and try his best to maneuver out of trouble. But it is clear that his sense of strategy failed him. Netanyahu is in a tight political snare, flanked on the right by members of his governing coalition and the left by the United States and much of the international community.

People may blame Netanyahu or Israeli policies more broadly for the current quagmire. But there is one person who truly deserves credit for ensnaring him: Tzipi Livni, head of the opposition Kadima Party.

With the first cup of tea you are an invited stranger. With the second cup, you are a friend. And with the third cup of tea, you are family. Such is the custom for welcoming guests in Central Asia and most symbolic for Greg Mortenson the co-author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Three Cups of Tea.

Mortenson began his journey on one road, trying to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain in Pakistan’s Karakoram. As far as that goal was concerned he failed, became disoriented and took a wrong turn, literally, and ended up in one of the remotest towns at the foothills of the Karakoram: Korphe. This was the beginning of new meaning and focus for him and the opening of doors for many people he had never met yet. Mr. Greg, as many call him, recovered his health in Korphe and while doing so, learned much about this harsh environment, supportive village and the children living there.

On February 24, Rev. Paul Raushenbush issued a call for articles entitled “Dear Religious (and Sane) America” to inaugurate the launch of the Huffington Post’s new religion section. According to the article,

HuffPost Religion is dedicated to providing a provocative, respectful, and hopefully productive forum for addressing the ways in which religion intersects our personal, communal, national and international life. HuffPost Religion will demonstrate the vibrant diversity of religious traditions, perspectives and experiences that exist alongside and inform one another in America and throughout the world.

Huffington is clearly trying to expand its reach and become one of the big players in religion media, much as it already has in politics, popular culture, and even business. Based on initial responses to the section, it appears to be well on its way.

A religious revolution is in progress in Israel. It will either upend or extend the reach of the Ultraorthodox religious establishment, which presides over the institutions of marriage, divorce, and conversion in Israel, siphons off public funding for yeshivas, and worst of all has prevented the state from enacting a constitution that could provide significant protections for religious minorities.

For much of last year, Ultraorthodox factions seemed ascendant and able to exercise their clout in new ways. They pushed for gender-segregated public buses in particular neighborhoods in Jerusalem and agitated against the tradition for Jewish women to gather for special prayers at the start of each month. Initially, the Israeli government yielded to their demands, sanctioning the segregated “mahedrin” buses and arresting medical student Nofrat Frenkel, whose only crime was to wear a prayer shawl at the Western Wall. A theocratic movement seemed to be moving frighteningly close to the levers of power.

But Reform and Conservative Jews both within and beyond Israel responded to the Ultraorthodox aggression as never before. Nofrat Frenkel’s arrest sparked protests around the world, while her fellow congregants in the “Women of the Wall” prayer group continue to meet each month at the Western Wall. The liberal Israel Religious Action Center recently brought suit against the Transportation Ministry for the segregated busses, and the Israeli Supreme Court struck down the medieval seating arrangement as illegal. These forward-looking Jewish organizations are pushing back against the Ultraorthodox establishment, and not merely to return to the status quo. They are trying to marginalize fanaticism altogether.

interView with Rabbi Dr. Burton Visotzky

Response By Hafsa Kanjwal

An important point that Rabbi Visotzky raises is the role that religious leaders and activists involved in international interreligious dialogue often end up playing in second tier diplomacy. For me, the use of inter-religious understanding to promote certain political or policy agendas can be and has been fraught with complications. Especially given the global context surrounding the politics of Islam, Muslims have been unable to truly engage the deeper issues in interreligious dialogue without a strong eye towards improving Islam’s image. In addition, significant programming led by governments or foundations relating to Muslims in inter-religious dialogue takes on a counter-terrorism narrative.

I agree with Rabbi Visotzky that it is important to begin locally. In response to Rabbi Visotzky’s question on what we are seeking to accomplish when we do inter-religious dialogue, I believe that a priority must be to build relationships that promote the common good, rather than serve narrow political or policy interests. While the translation of dialogue to diplomacy or policy is sometimes inevitable, it must be met with a critical analysis on the part of those who seek to promote mutual understanding and cooperation.