I was at an
advisory board meeting for the Greenfield Intercultural Center when I decided
to participate in iBelieve: Interfaith Service in Action, an Academically Based
Community Service course. I first became involved with interfaith dialogue and
intercultural interaction at Penn when, on a whim, I decided in my freshman
year to participate in Alliance and Understanding—a spring break trip to the
American south to learn about Black and Jewish collaboration during the Civil
Rights movement. At that time, neither Judaism nor intercultural dialogue were
major parts of my life.
I’m now a junior, and a lot
has changed in my life since that first interfaith experience here. I’ve
drifted from Reform to Orthodox on the Jewish observance spectrum, and my
friends and my extracurricular commitments have changed as a result. Something
that has always stayed constant, both here and before college, was my
involvement with community service, and I took this class partially as a way of
exploring that commitment.
My previous experience with interfaith work has not been very inspiring.
I remember a lot of surface-level discussions growing up about the similarities between all religions and the need for people of different backgrounds to get along. I grew up as a very engaged Reform Jew, and my synagogue held an interfaith commemoration of Dr. King every year around his birthday. This involved our synagogue opening its doors to Bethel AME church on a Friday night and the Church opening their doors to us on a Sunday morning. Our respective spiritual leaders traded pulpits for the weekend, each offering a sermon at the place of worship they were visiting. What strikes me now about these experiences is that what I remember most about them is how close my rabbi and the reverend grew over this decade-long collaboration. This friendship didn’t extend to their flocks, and I’m beginning to believe that this is the reason most interfaith dialogue doesn’t accomplish much. I think what sets this class apart from other interfaith experiences is that we have built those friendships that can lead to results from interfaith work.
My previous experience with interfaith work has not been very inspiring.
I remember a lot of surface-level discussions growing up about the similarities between all religions and the need for people of different backgrounds to get along. I grew up as a very engaged Reform Jew, and my synagogue held an interfaith commemoration of Dr. King every year around his birthday. This involved our synagogue opening its doors to Bethel AME church on a Friday night and the Church opening their doors to us on a Sunday morning. Our respective spiritual leaders traded pulpits for the weekend, each offering a sermon at the place of worship they were visiting. What strikes me now about these experiences is that what I remember most about them is how close my rabbi and the reverend grew over this decade-long collaboration. This friendship didn’t extend to their flocks, and I’m beginning to believe that this is the reason most interfaith dialogue doesn’t accomplish much. I think what sets this class apart from other interfaith experiences is that we have built those friendships that can lead to results from interfaith work.
One particular conversation
I had during this class sticks out to me as the kind of interfaith dialogue I
came to this experience seeking. I was talking to a friend about a story we
heard of a Presbyterian church that was financially supporting a messianic
Jewish church. The person who told us that story was a member of a Conservative
Jewish congregation engaging in interfaith work with that Presbyterian church,
and she said that she found their financial support of the messianic church
anti-Semitic. I think in mine and Zack’s conversation about this issue, we
stumbled on something that was a genuine difference in fundamental belief.
I felt that the church was anti-Semitic for supporting messianic Judaism because, in my mind, messianic Judaism is targeting proselytization specifically at Jews. Over the years, I’ve come to a good working definition of anti-Semitism as singling Jews out for “crimes/sins” (in the broadest possible sense) that other people commit as well, and I see messianic Judaism as doing just that—why are they trying to convert just one specific group, and why are they using people who once called themselves Jews to do so? Zack’s position on this issue was that it’s obvious why a church would enlist people who are similar to the people it aims to convert—it’s the same reason that missionaries who speak the native language are sent to certain countries.
There can be a civil discussion about this issue, but it doesn’t seem like there will ever be a universal compromise or resolution possible. It was important for me to reach this limit, because I do think that there is some frame necessary on what interfaith work can accomplish. There’s a fundamental disconnect when interfaith dialogue ends in a “kumbaya” sort of feeling and then its participants return to normal life and immediately recognize that all of the world’s religions will never be in universal harmony. It’ s far better to know that I can talk about irresolvable conflicts, among friends, in a way that leads to mutual understanding. Our public discourse would be in a much better state if people could say “I understand what you believe, why you believe it, and the history behind it, but I still don’t agree with you” rather than “I don’t understand what you believe so I don’t agree with you.” I think that in this class we learned to use the former option.
My biggest challenge throughout the semester was conveying a moderate view of my religion, when my practices hardly reflect that philosophy. I am committed to the three major streams of Judaism (Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox) surviving and thriving, and I do not feel that I did a good job of bringing liberal Judaism into our discussion of interfaith issues. The small size of this class is necessary to facilitate meaningful connection between all members of the group, but this precluded us from bringing all the major perspectives to the table. The place that this stood out most to me was on our retreat, when I and the other Jewish student in the class did not partake of the food prepared by the retreat center at which we were staying. I made my peanut butter sandwiches and still showed up to meals, but it was hard to escape the feeling that I was watching the others eat. Some nights, we stopped at a kosher restaurant to buy food, and one night the entire group ate kosher pizza with us.
I am troubled by this state of affairs, but at the same time I know that I wouldn't have given a true representation of myself if I had ate the same food as everyone else. One of the ground rules we set at the beginning of this class was to bring our entire selves to the table, and the practice that I’ve come to find most spiritually meaningful is keeping strict kashrut. Other types of Jews would have different opinions on this, and I wish that they had been a part of our discussion, for I still don’t have a good answer to this question: how can I be an equal partner in an interfaith dialogue with anyone when I’m not even willing to eat the salad they prepare in their kitchen?
Service, in the end, was not a major part of this experience for me. I enjoyed experiencing how service touches the lives of all different kinds of people committed to faith, and the service project that my small group worked on (teaching middle school students about interfaith dialogue) was fulfilling. As a part of the structure of the course, however, it’s not what I will remember decades from now. It seems to me that there are two models of interfaith dialogue as service: either service is the priority and only the people organizing it have a dialogue, or dialogue is the priority and the service doesn’t have a unified purpose or goal in mind. I would put this experience squarely in the second category, where our intention was very clearly to build an interfaith community and our scattered service projects only served as a means to that end. That’s not to say that service was not a key part of this class, but what I will remember are the relationships that I build by doing service with others.
Where will this group of people go from here? In our preparations for one of our service projects, speaking to a group of fourth and fifth graders about how to talk about differences with each other, someone in the class remarked that our peers in college still don’t know how to do this properly. Penn recently implemented a “Cultural Diversity in the U.S.” sector requirement, which should supposedly require every student to learn about a culture different from their own throughout their undergraduate career. In practice, few of these courses include any sort of dialogue, and some people even take courses to meet this requirement that are exclusively about their own cultures. My goal, moving forward, is to begin a discussion on how to bring the kind of experience we had in this class to more people at Penn.
I felt that the church was anti-Semitic for supporting messianic Judaism because, in my mind, messianic Judaism is targeting proselytization specifically at Jews. Over the years, I’ve come to a good working definition of anti-Semitism as singling Jews out for “crimes/sins” (in the broadest possible sense) that other people commit as well, and I see messianic Judaism as doing just that—why are they trying to convert just one specific group, and why are they using people who once called themselves Jews to do so? Zack’s position on this issue was that it’s obvious why a church would enlist people who are similar to the people it aims to convert—it’s the same reason that missionaries who speak the native language are sent to certain countries.
There can be a civil discussion about this issue, but it doesn’t seem like there will ever be a universal compromise or resolution possible. It was important for me to reach this limit, because I do think that there is some frame necessary on what interfaith work can accomplish. There’s a fundamental disconnect when interfaith dialogue ends in a “kumbaya” sort of feeling and then its participants return to normal life and immediately recognize that all of the world’s religions will never be in universal harmony. It’ s far better to know that I can talk about irresolvable conflicts, among friends, in a way that leads to mutual understanding. Our public discourse would be in a much better state if people could say “I understand what you believe, why you believe it, and the history behind it, but I still don’t agree with you” rather than “I don’t understand what you believe so I don’t agree with you.” I think that in this class we learned to use the former option.
My biggest challenge throughout the semester was conveying a moderate view of my religion, when my practices hardly reflect that philosophy. I am committed to the three major streams of Judaism (Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox) surviving and thriving, and I do not feel that I did a good job of bringing liberal Judaism into our discussion of interfaith issues. The small size of this class is necessary to facilitate meaningful connection between all members of the group, but this precluded us from bringing all the major perspectives to the table. The place that this stood out most to me was on our retreat, when I and the other Jewish student in the class did not partake of the food prepared by the retreat center at which we were staying. I made my peanut butter sandwiches and still showed up to meals, but it was hard to escape the feeling that I was watching the others eat. Some nights, we stopped at a kosher restaurant to buy food, and one night the entire group ate kosher pizza with us.
I am troubled by this state of affairs, but at the same time I know that I wouldn't have given a true representation of myself if I had ate the same food as everyone else. One of the ground rules we set at the beginning of this class was to bring our entire selves to the table, and the practice that I’ve come to find most spiritually meaningful is keeping strict kashrut. Other types of Jews would have different opinions on this, and I wish that they had been a part of our discussion, for I still don’t have a good answer to this question: how can I be an equal partner in an interfaith dialogue with anyone when I’m not even willing to eat the salad they prepare in their kitchen?
Service, in the end, was not a major part of this experience for me. I enjoyed experiencing how service touches the lives of all different kinds of people committed to faith, and the service project that my small group worked on (teaching middle school students about interfaith dialogue) was fulfilling. As a part of the structure of the course, however, it’s not what I will remember decades from now. It seems to me that there are two models of interfaith dialogue as service: either service is the priority and only the people organizing it have a dialogue, or dialogue is the priority and the service doesn’t have a unified purpose or goal in mind. I would put this experience squarely in the second category, where our intention was very clearly to build an interfaith community and our scattered service projects only served as a means to that end. That’s not to say that service was not a key part of this class, but what I will remember are the relationships that I build by doing service with others.
Where will this group of people go from here? In our preparations for one of our service projects, speaking to a group of fourth and fifth graders about how to talk about differences with each other, someone in the class remarked that our peers in college still don’t know how to do this properly. Penn recently implemented a “Cultural Diversity in the U.S.” sector requirement, which should supposedly require every student to learn about a culture different from their own throughout their undergraduate career. In practice, few of these courses include any sort of dialogue, and some people even take courses to meet this requirement that are exclusively about their own cultures. My goal, moving forward, is to begin a discussion on how to bring the kind of experience we had in this class to more people at Penn.
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