Velveteen Rabbi

[JStreet] How Jews, Christians and Muslims Can Work Together For Peace

I'm blogging this week from Driving Change, Securing Peace, the first JStreet conference in Washington, DC. You can follow my conference posts via the JStreet category. If you want to watch the conference as it unfolds, it's being streamed live here.

If you're new to Velveteen Rabbi, welcome. Here's some information about me, and here's my comments policy -- please read it, especially if this is your first time here. Enjoy the conference posts! And regular readers, have no fear: I'll return to my more usual balance of blogging fare in a few days.

How Jews, Christians and Muslims Can Work Together For Peace, featuring Greg Khalil, President and Co-Founder, The Kairos Project; Salam Al-Marayati, Executive Director, Muslim Public Affairs Council; Mark Pelavin, Associate Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; and Maureen Shea, Former Director, Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations and former Churches For Middle East Peace Chair.

Rabbi Mordechai Liebling introduces the session; he's part of The Shalom Center which works for peace in the Middle East, peace for human beings and for the environment; the org has long been involved in this wor through its annual Tent of Abraham celebration and through the work of (my teacher) Rabbi Arthur Waskow who would be here today except that he was in a devastating car accident some weeks ago and is still rehabilitating from that experience.

"Jews, Muslims, and Christians clearly have a long connection to what is known to some as the Holy Land," says Rabbi Liebling. Our three communities can work together to bring peace; how to do that will be the subject of this morning's panel. There are challenges to our communities working together in this country to bring peace, but we need to remember that at its origins this is not a religious conflict but rather a territorial one. "Religion can be used to remind us all of the interconnection and interdependence of all humanity."

Moderator Ron Young from the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East begins with "There are still people who say, if were going to talk about peace in the Middle East, for God's sake keep religion out of it!" He tells a story about getting together in 1987 ago with a group of fifty leaders from all three traditions to begin this work, all of whom agreed that they weren't sure how this kind of peace work was possible but all felt called by their religious traditions to begin doing the work.

At that session, a prominent Palestinian businessman named Sami [I missed his last name -- anyone?] from Kansas City said "I have long had the deepest respect for Judaism but I have a bitter hatred for Zionism." Rabbi Arnie Wolf said, "I have never met Sami before; I hope we can work together for peace; but the left side of my heart is Judaism and the right side of my heart is Zionism and I can't take my heart apart for Sami or anyone else." The encouraging thing that happened at the coffee break, says Young, is that no one left the room, and Sami and Arnie headed straight for each other and engaged in intense dialogue. That kind of thing happened repeatedly, and at the end of 2 days these 50 religious leaders endorsed a two-state solution and spoke out in favor of self-determination for both communities.

The format for the session is this: first Ron Young will ask some big questions for all of the panelists to answer, then we'll begin to work from questions written down on index cards by people in the room. Here's the first of those bg questions:

In the last few years, there's been a convergence of advocacy positions among a range of groups in DC which heretofore had found each other problematic, simplistically pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. The American Task Force on Palestine; Americans for Peace Now; the Arab-American Institute; Churches for Middle East Peace; Brit Tzedek v'Shalom; the Muslim Affairs Council -- we've mostly been on the same page in terms of what we advocate the US Government should do. My question to the panelists is: the scene locally is not always the same as it is nationally. So these forces, which are significant nationally, are very significant but locally it gets messier. It is more complicated. I want each of you to comment on reminding us why you think this religious dimension is important, and talk a bit about the scene locally as you see it: what advice you have for people who want to work together. And also, think about how if some other community is going to work with our community, here are some things you should be cautious about or sensitive to.

Our first respondent is Mark Pelavin. "The local scene is as different as there are localities," he says. The diversity of discussion in communities is fascinating to him, and how different the conversation is in different places, how it's driven by the strengths and weaknesses of individuals in various communities. "The local level is where the most interesting things are happening, and also where the worst things are happening," he says.

A field trip into Easter

Six years ago, I attended Easter services in Williamstown for the first time. Our friend Bernard was here that year and needed a place to worship. He was far away from his home church of St. Kizito's in Nima, Accra, and he'd had a rough Holy Week, which had included the death of one of his sisters and the  robbery of his house back home. Easter that year fell on his birthday, so we offered to take him to church and then out for a birthday/Easter brunch...but Ethan came down with the flu, so I gathered a couple of friends and we took Bernard to daven at St. John's.

Going in to the experience, I felt oddly nervous. I was worried that I might stand out as an obvious outsider -- and worried too that I might blend in, that it might be spiritually dishonest of me to "pass." Mostly I worried about whether I would feel comfortable. In college I sang with a madrigal ensemble which often performed in churches during Holy Week, and on one memorable occasion the sermon was about how the Cross is meant to be a "stumbling block to the Jews." (I don't remember where that was; only that I ran out of the sanctuary in tears, and that the most ardent Christians in the a cappella ensemble followed me to offer comfort, bless them.)

Anyway. On Easter morning in 2003 I parked my car down the block from the church and emerged to see the rector of St. John's standing outside. He'd just come from the early morning service, and was getting ready to do the 10am. He saw a friend across the street, beamed a hundred-watt smile, gave him two big thumbs-up and called "He is Risen!"

In that moment, I knew I was going to be just fine.

Christmas greetings to all who celebrate!

The star embedded in the floor in the spot where Jesus is said to have been born. Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem.

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Christmas, too, has something to teach us. Every Christmas I get a real yearning for the Christian ability to imagine God as a baby. Seeing God as a newborn babe, you begin to understand that even God needs to grow, just as we do! And that this really may be the purpose of the universe -- that we ourselves are God growing Godself, and that the task of every person and faith community is to collaborate in that process.

-- Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Jewish With Feeling

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Wishing my Christian friends and readers a Christmas that is merry and bright!

An outsider looking at Lent

As those of you who are Christian are probably profoundly aware, Lent began this week. As always, I'm fascinated by the ways in which being part of the religious blogosphere offers me a chance to peek at the religious practices of others, and I'm already enjoying some of the Lenten blog posts that are rolling across my aggregator. For instance, Ash Wednesday Lavendar by RJ:

Ash Wednesday – and really all of Lent – is a journey more than a destination – a way of discerning and searching for the holy in the ordinary events of our human lives – and as you know if you have ever travelled, some journeys are wonderful and rich, some are messed up and filled with trouble, and some never get off the ground[.]

I'm also intrigued by Father Chris' post Washing off the ashes? He takes a fascinating look at the question of religious visibility on Ash Wednesday, and I think he's identified an important tension between following traditional precepts because there's value in doing so, and resisting the temptation to allow one's enactment of those precepts to feed the ego.

I see parallels between the 40-day Lenten period (symbolic of the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert) and the 40-day period Jews observe between the beginning of the month of Elul and Yom Kippur. I've written before about how the number 40, in the rabbinic imagination, represents the period from something's inception (or conception) to fruition. With that in mind, I see these 40-day journeys as chances to mindfully inhabit the work of teshuvah, turning-toward-God, that's so foundational to religious life.

One of the things that's always moved me is the practice of refraining from offering alleluias in church during Lent. Once, several years ago, I went with a friend to Easter services (that's a story I should tell here, one of these days) and was blown away by the joy I perceived in those Easter alleluias, I imagine because the community had been fasting from praise for so long. I can't imagine going forty days without offering praise; I find it tough enough to eschew praise on the single day of Tisha b'Av! But the idea has stuck with me.

To my readers and friends who are entering into Lent, I wish you a journey that brings you where you need to go. (If you're blogging about it, let me know where.) May the rest of us be respectful witnesses to your travels.

Technorati tags: religion, Christianity, Lent.

Modern midrash on Christmas

Y'all know I'm a big fan of Real Live Preacher. Gordon's a terrific writer, and I count him as one of my role models for what it can mean to be a committed, quirky, passionate person of faith. This year I decided to give myself a little Chanukah gift in a way that would support him. (Hey, I know what it's like to get a little boost, financially and emotionally, because someone decides to buy a blogger's work in print.) I bought myself a copy of A Christmas Story You've Never Heard.

The introduction begins with the first seven verses of Luke 2: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus..." And then Gordon pipes up, reminding us that "the facts are few and the account minimal to the point of absurdity." There's wonder and mystery in the story, he writes, but much of it hides between the verses and in the silences.

The way most of us imagine the Nativity -- and I'd wager that most of us, even Jews for whom this is not a sacred text, have some mental image of it -- is anachronistic in the extreme. The Greek word kataluma doesn't mean inn; the famed manger was probably a stone trough in a basement animal pen; and the magi aren't even mentioned in this gospel at all. What Gordon offers us, in the place of those familiar (and sometimes hackneyed) mental images, is a real story:

Joseph's carpenter shed smelled of leather and wood and grease and earth and work. The tools were old and the wooden handles slick with use. The place bore the wonderful patina of a man's lifework.

The smell made Isaac smile when he poked his head around the doorframe and saw Joseph's powerful shoulders rolling back and forth as he pulled a drawknife across a huge beam of wood. Chips were flying everywhere.

"Shalom, Joseph. Is that..." He sniffed loudly. "Cedar?"

This is an embodied Joseph, and one who's getting serious flack from his friends for standing by Mary in her disgraceful state. Mary, too, and her family, and Joseph's family, all appear in sometimes startling revitalized form.

This little book is midrash, pure and simple: exegetical storytelling that fleshes out the story's characters, closes off loopholes, offers interpretation. It takes the text seriously, but it doesn't take itself seriously; it's funny as well as poignant. Obviously this is a story that will be more resonant, and more powerful, to those for whom it is sacred scripture. I'm not in that camp. But I appreciate the power of a good story, and especially of a good midrash on a story I thought I already knew.

Available from iTunes as an audiobook; available in print, on audio cd, or via download from his store. (And if you buy the paper book, he tucks a little surprise into it; mine came with a candle label featuring a prayer to the Sacred Heart of Mary.) Thanks for the storytelling, RLP. Here's wishing you a week that is merry and bright.

Technorati tags: religion, Christianity, midrash.

The Faith Between Us

Scott Korb and Peter Bebergal: a former wannabe Catholic priest and a self-described "failed Jewish mystic." Close friends. Co-authors of The Faith Between Us, a book which charts their dialogue about everything from marriage proposals to veganism, parables and mysticism and the pursuit of authentic religious faith. Both men have long literary pedigrees; they've been regular contributors to McSweeney's and Killing The Buddha, and Peter is one of my colleagues at Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. Together, they fight crime. Okay, no, they don't. But they've written one hell of a book.

This book began with what has become, for many of us, a not-so-innocent and not-so-simple question: Do you believe in God?

We're nervous even to ask; simply posing the question reveals something about you, if only that you're earnest enough to care. And answering in either direction, yes or no, can often feel like a great risk, depending on the company you keep. This kind of exposure can be embarrassing. The question catches us with our, yes, Proverbial pants down.... We step carefully around the question: Do you believe?

To say that we believe means that at the center of our lives is an idea of God.

In the introduction, Scott and Peter talk about existing "on the religious fringe" as undergrads, preferring rock shows and girls to Bible study and campus-sponsored Shabbat dinners. (I know the feeling.) And about studying theology in graduate school, yearning to reconcile the desire for intellectual integrity with religious devotion that was unquestionably irrational, but was powerful nonetheless. (Yep. I know that feeling too.) And they talk about their friendship, and what it opened up for and in them.

Interfaith Thanksgiving in Austin

Austin Area Interreligious Ministries, the city's largest interfaith organization, announced Thursday that its annual Thanksgiving celebration Sunday had to be moved because Hyde Park Baptist Church objected to non-Christians worshipping on its property.

(-- Church rejects interfaith service on its property, Austin-American Statesman)

Boy: that's the kind of lede that makes me cringe. And in my former home state, no less.

Austin Area Interreligious Ministries sounds like exactly the kind of organization I'd be involved with if I lived in that neck of the woods. "AAIM envisions a respectful, caring and inclusive community where people of diverse cultures and religions are actively involved in enhancing the quality of life in the Austin area," their website explains, and "AAIM unites faith and cultural communities to foster respect, partnership and transformation in service of the common good."

For the last 22 years, AAIM has held an annual Thanksgiving service attended by over 1000 people. The sacred obligation of hosting the event rotates each year, and this year the Central Texas Muslimaat was slated to host. Since none of the local Muslim community spaces are large enough to hold 1000+ people, they arranged to rent space from Hyde Park Baptist Church...until the folks at Hyde Park realized that this Thanksgiving service would involve ecumenical worship, and yanked the proverbial rug out from under the AAIM three days before the event.

It's not my place to criticize members of other religious traditions for living out their faith as they understand themselves to be called to do, but this story saddens me profoundly, as stories of religious insularity always do.

There's a happy ending to this particular tale, though. Congregation Beth Israel, "the oldest and largest Jewish congregation in Austin," rise to the occasion and offered their building as a home for the Muslim-hosted AAIR Thanksgiving supper and service this year. Evidently CBI's immediate response was "It's an honor to be able to provide the space, especially knowing our co-hosts are Muslims," and they immediately offered to arrange space for Muslim evening prayer. (In Jewish tradition we pray thrice daily, rather than five times, but the practice of offering regular evening prayer is a place of common ground.)

The service was held yesterday, and it sounds like it was wonderful. (The Statesman has an article about that, too: Interfaith Thanksgiving service hosted by Muslims at Beth Israel.)

I am grateful to CBI for stepping up and doing the right thing, and glad to know that despite this hurdle it was possible for hundreds of south Texans to gather in a spirit of reverence, community, and gratitude to celebrate Thanksgiving together. Guess it's just one more thing to be grateful for this week.

Technorati tags: interfaith, Thanksgiving, Austin.

Walking Makes the Talk

I knew joining Jewish Seminarians for Justice was a good idea. Already, the simple act of telling colleagues that the group exists and that I'm a part of it is putting me in touch with some amazing stuff. Like this project, spearheaded by Rabbi Karyn Berger, which seeks to spark conversation and transformatoin among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim seminarians:

Walking Makes the Talk is aimed toward Christian, Jewish and Islamic seminary students (or recent graduates). The project aims to send 30 students to Poland and Bosnia to visit Holocaust sites in an attempt to engage in interfaith dialogue about genocide, racial/religious hatred, and the dangers of inter-sectarian hate.  (We will also learn about the Armenian genocide in Turkey -- but because discussing the genocide is illegal in Turkey, we cannot visit Turkish sites as an official group.)

Physically experiencing the realities of genocide -- going to the place where a genocide occurred, talking to survivors or to those who navigate the aftermath -- can open new vistas of understanding between people. Participants will engage in a curriculum not only of discussion and text study, but also one which incorporates art, poetry, and music as means toward learning. Upon returning home, each participant will be required to commit to one public service project, in his or her own faith community, which will involve connection with another faith community.

Sounds powerful, and potentially transformative not only for the participants but for their communities as well. "If we want to prevent genocide, the way to do it is not after-the-fact, not once it's already in-progress," Berger says. "Ultimately, the way to prevent genocide is to learn to appreciate and love our differences. We need to change the way we understand each other."

Common experience creates a well-laid foundation for dialogue. Walking Makes the Talk offers the possibility of communication and understanding among up-and-coming leaders of various faiths... The program is designed to help us move our communities from discussion to action. It will help create a group of men and women who are committed to social change and aware of our interconnections, who recognize the power of individual and communal action to ensure the well-being of all people, regardless of sexuality, ethnicity, or religion.

Ready to apply for one of those thirty positions? Not so fast -- right now the project is just getting on its feet. In fact, it could use your help in getting underway. Reb Karyn is looking for people who want to be involved in any way -- spreading the word (psst -- feel free to share this blog post far and wide), fundraising or grant applications, organizational work, community outreach, marketing and PR, and so on. Once the program is ready to accept applicants for the overseas program, she'll be looking for people to help screen applicants. There's interest in making a documentary film about the project as it unfolds, so if you're interested in film-making you can lend a hand there. Basically, it sounds like any and all assistance is welcome.

I should note, too, that while the overseas program is designed especially for seminarians and theology students, the project which supports the overseas program is open to anyone. No matter where you are in the world, or what kind of work you do, if this project excites you, let Reb Karyn know -- she'd love to have you on board. She's reachable at her firstnamelastname at yahoo.com.

She says: "Dream big; the door is open; we can create the future we want to see!" Kein yehi ratzon..

Technorati tags: religion, ecumenism, genocide, WalkingMakesTheTalk.

Abrahamic baby blessings

How many baptisms feature blessings and prayers offered by Jews and Muslims alongside the words of a Christian pastor, godparents, and community? This morning, the twin sons of my friend Thurman  -- who was the initial instigator of the Progressive Faith Blog Con, and who co-midwifed the first con into being with me last summer -- got an extra-special welcome into their community, the broader community of faith, and the world.

The baptism was at the Church of Our Saviour, a pretty little Episcopal church in Secaucus, New Jersey. The vicar, Reverend Mark Lewis, led a lovely service -- with a somewhat unusual twist. After the boys were formally named and baptized (on contact with the water, they laughed in apparent delight), I was called to the baptismal font at the back of the church where everyone was crowded around, and I offered this prayer:

Our God and God of our ancestors! Sustain these children through their parents' loving care. May their parents rejoice in their growth of body and soul. May their parents have the privilege of raising them, educating them, and encouraging them to attain hearts of wisdom. And let us say, Amen.

As you are wrapped in the arms of those who love you, so may your lives be wrapped in justice and righteousness. As we embrace you today, so may you embrace your tradition. As you startle to the world around you, so may you remain ever open to the whole world you encounter. As you cry for food and comfort now, so may you one day cry out to correct the world's injustices. As your eyes fill with wonder now, so may you always be filled with wonder at life's everyday miracles.

I closed with the priestly blessing, in Hebrew and in English. Then I stepped back into the throng, and Hussein stepped forward. He whispered the adhan (call to prayer) and sura fatiha (first sura of the Qur'an) into their ears, quietly, and then offered an extemporaneous prayer for the boys, their parents, and their community.

At the time of the blog con, Thurman was anticipating parenthood. (I remember offering a prayer for his wife's safety, and for the twins', at some point during the con.) By the end of the weekend, after we had learned and talked and prayed together, he asked whether Hussein and I would consider playing a part in his boys' naming/welcoming ceremony many months hence. Today that request bore fruit.

Afterwards, nearly everyone present came up to us to thank us for being there, to talk with us about our respective religions (Hussein and I laughed that we had each inadvertently been promoted -- people kept calling him Imam, which he is not, and calling me Rabbi, which I am not yet!) and to express how moving they had found our contributions to the ceremony. I found it moving, too. It was wonderful to witness the welcoming of Thurman's boys into their home church -- and to be able to play a part in welcoming them into a broader religious world.

Connecting with blog-friends in person is always a pleasure, and today's connection was especially sweet. It's not every day I get to walk this kind of ecumenical talk. I believe that our lives are enriched when we can encounter each others' religious practices respectfully, with awareness both of our differences and of our common ground. Today gave me an opportunity to live out that practice, and it was sweet indeed.

Technorati tags: religion, ecumenism, baptism.

Up the spiral

One of the good books I've read during these days in San Antonio is The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, Karen Armstrong's memoir about moving into, and then out of, and then in a different sense back into religious life.

Karen Armstrong was a Catholic nun for five years, beginning in 1962 when she was seventeen. The Spiral Staircase begins with the profound culture shock of leaving the regimented religious life, and entering into the wild tumult of the 1960s. Armstrong weaves together the details of her academic and professional life with their underlying emotional and spiritual narrative of struggle, trauma, and reintegration. And then, in the latter third of the book, we follow her into a new life of writing about the three major monotheistic religious traditions, and a new understanding of what transcendence, practice, and faith might mean.

The T.S. Eliot poem Ash Wednesday serves as an organizing principle for the book. The first section appears after the preface; each chapter is titled with a phrase from the poem, and as the book unfolds, the poem's significance to Armstrong becomes increasingly clear. This is a gorgeous poem which I hadn't read closely in years. It's really worth re-reading. (Go read it now, if you want; I'll wait.)