RRC Grad Teaching Won Buddhist Ministers-in-Training

Rabbi Goldie Milgram, a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, has been helping out at the Won Institute, just around the corner from RRC in suburban Philadelphia.

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.

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Progressive Jews Studying Traditional Texts: But Why?

Today’s ReligionDispatches carries an article by Professor Aryeh Cohen of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of American Jewish University.  Cohen does a great job of showing that there is, indeed, a sea change in the Jewish world in the relationship between traditional text study and progressive politics.

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.

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RRC Multifaith Salon Welcomes Prof. Theodore Friend

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.

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Young American Muslims Tell Their Story on YouTube

Recently, I came across two videos on YouTube, each designed to let young American Muslims have their chance to tell their truths—to present images different from the ones that too often fill the popular imagination.

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.

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What’s the big deal?

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?

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