Prelude and Fugue

There are men who leave you for another woman, and there are men who leave you for a man. Then there are those who dump you for God.

By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim for Tablet Magazine

 

We met during a youth music festival, flirting across the wind section of a large symphony orchestra. If there was an obstacle to our romance, it was not that he was Jewish and I wasn’t; it was that he played the tuba and I played the violin. There’s a reason why there are no duets for these two instruments.

Two years later, on a sweltering afternoon in his mother’s apartment in Holon, we tried to read through Handel sonatas with him playing the basso continuo—an athletic feat for the tuba. Soon he was sweating with exhaustion, and my ears rang as if my head had been stuck inside a church bell. The tuba and violin just weren’t meant to be together without the chaperone of a full orchestra. But that didn’t stop us from moving in together soon after. When he got a position with an orchestra in Jerusalem, and a job I had meant to take up in London fell through at the last minute, I moved to Israel to be with him.

Our religious difference was not an issue—at first. At age 23, he was stridently secular. He despised his Orthodox fellow Israelis for their refusal to serve in the army, their reliance on the state to support their large numbers of children, their attempts to kill any form of fun on a Friday night. Penguins, he called them, in reference to their black and white clothes. Parasites.

Like many young Israelis, he had traveled the globe and was as intrigued by other spiritual traditions as he was repelled by his own. He had been mesmerized by the ritual of a Japanese tea ceremony; meditated in a Zen monastery in San Francisco; joined in the cathartic whirl of Capoeira on an orchestra tour to Brazil.

I, on the other hand, wanted to convert to Judaism. There were Jewish roots on my father’s side, and when I first entered a synagogue in college, I had felt their tug. I wanted to learn the beautiful tunes of Erev Shabbat, the mysterious choreography of the Amidah prayer with its bows, turns, and curtsies. I played with ideas for a new, Hebrew, name.

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Mixed Messages

An increasing number of intermarried couples are choosing to raise their children with two religions. Three videos, part of a Columbia Journalism School project, allow interfaith kids to speak for themselves.

By Elettra Fiumi and Lea Khayata for Tablet Magazine 

When Samuel Oliver turned 12, he asked his parents why he wouldn’t have either a bar mitzvah or a confirmation. His Jewish mother, whose family includes Holocaust survivors, and his father, who grew up in a religious Christian home, at first brushed off his question. Then they decided it required further investigation. 

We met Samuel, along with other teenagers in similar situations, while conducting research for Being Interfaith, a multimedia project on Jewish-Christian families that we created earlier this year while students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. We began the project in part because we were struck by a statistic: Over one in four American adults are married or living with a partner of a different religion. A small but increasing number of these couples are choosing to raise their children in both religions. These families often face opposition from extended family and struggle to be accepted by established congregations and religious organizations, many of which advocate educating children in only one religion. 

Then we found an alternative: the Interfaith Community. Founded in 1987 in New York City, with branches now in Denver and Boston, the organization provides support for religiously mixed families, hosting services and celebrations for Jewish and Christian holidays and offering counseling for couples and classes for children and adults. These classes are taught by two instructors, one Jewish and the other Christian, with each sharing his or her own faith’s history, traditions, and practices, to give the teenagers the tools to make informed decisions regardless of the religious path they choose.

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Muslim Jewish Conference Meets In Sarajevo To Combat Islamophobia And Anti-Semitism

The Huffington Post | By Paul Brandeis Raushenbush 

Students and young professionals from around the world have gathered in Sarajevo, Bosnia to exchange experiences and fight prejudice and hatred. They represent different cultures and races and speak dozens of languages, but they share either one of two identities: they are all Muslims or Jews.

As religious tensions flare and Islamophobia and snti-Semitism plague societies, these courageous young people are determined to forge a future of greater peace and understanding.

The conference is the fourth organized by The Muslim Jewish Conference (MJC), a Vienna-based organization whose goal for the conference, according to their website, "is to provide the next generation with a learning experience for life and a positive outlook for establishing intercultural relations and sustaining Muslim-Jewish partnerships."

In three years, the MJC has attracted more than three hundred young leaders from fifty countries to lead and participate in conferences in Vienna; Kiev, Ukraine; Bratislava, Slovakia, and now Sarajevo.

Jay Schultz, an American currently living in Israel, and Shanza Ali, who is from London, spoke to The Huffington Post from the conference. Both explained how they have taken advantage of this unique opportunity for an open and honest dialogue with the "other" that seems impossible at home.

"I came to the conference from Israel where I don't get to interact with Muslims outside the Israel Arab debate," Jay explained. "Butt for me, the theology is so interesting, what it means to both the be the descendants of Abraham and work together together to create 'chesed' or kindness in the world. Being able to discuss how to work hand-in-hand is not something I get to do with Muslims in Israel because of the conflict."

For Shanza, the university life in the United Kingdsom is where she finds the divide between Muslims and Jews. "The conference gives me the opportunity to interact with Jews from so many backgrounds, but most of all I have made some incredible friends. I am in the gender and religion project at the conference and we are working together to find solutions to mutual problems we face on that topic. The conference has proven intellectually and spiritually beneficial."

Ilja Sichrovsky, founder and Secretary General of MJC, started the conference in 2009 with 15 volunteers from six countries. It has expanded to include 30 volunteers from 16 countries.

Sichrovsky explained that each year they look for outstanding applications from Muslims and Jews who have an important perspective to share, but who are also interested in listening to the perspectives of others. The conference also acknowledges that it is not only important to have a good balance between Jews and Muslims, but also a balance between the more secular and more religious participants.

One of the surprise benefits of the conference has been the intrafaith conversations that take place alongside the interfaith ones, as well as the intrafaith conversations that happen when participants return home to their family and friends in 39 countries.

When asked about the organizers measure of success, he was quick to mention the six committees that the participants work on, including conflict transformation, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia through cinema, hate speech and its influence on public opinion, introduction to Judaism and Islam, gender and religion, and education and the effects of historical narratives.

But when it comes down to it, success is something much more basic.

"It's not always what you can measure, but the fact that young Muslims and Jews from around the world would journey out of their countries daring to believe something is possible that everyone says is impossible."

Photos by Daniel Shaked.

And Now a Word from the “White Lady”

by Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, Ph.D. for MultifaithWorld.org

I recently had the occasion to speak at a prayer breakfast organized by the Philadelphia chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first African American, inter-collegiate, Greek-letter fraternity, founded in 1906. APA has become an important national organization, and this event was to honor the memory of Reverend Canon Thomas Wilson Logan Sr. the oldest serving African-American priest in the Episcopal Church, USA who died last year at the age of 100. The brothers of the Rho chapter were establishing a scholarship fund in honor of Father Logan, as APA has become a philanthropic, as well as service and activism organization.

It was my great honor to be part of the “warm up acts” that preceded the keynote speaker, the Reverend James Forbes, Jr.

Newsweek named Reverend Forbes one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English language, providing just one of many titles, prizes and honorary degrees the minister has collected over a long career. Although my expectations were high, Forbes’ sermon exceeded them. In addition to brilliance, wit and warmth, the man radiated genuine kindness and humility.

Among the pleasures of the morning was getting to hear my colleague Reverend Dr. Wil Gafney of the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia give a stirring meditation on the Biblical heroine Deborah. Wil had the good grace to post her words on her blog here and I recommend them to you. That said, you really had to hear Wil’s delivery to fully experience the power of her teaching. I am planning to avail myself of the next opportunity to hear Wil preach.

My own words for the occasion were far from notable. What was memorable for me was the experience of being in a large, very full room, and realizing I was the only white person there. (The only other interfaith invitee was an imam and he was black.) I am used to being a religious minority---the token Jew among a group of Christians---but being a racial minority was an unfamiliar experience. When the speaker before me mentioned the phrase “white lady,” I startled. In just another minute, I would be rising to deliver my words. I don’t think of myself as a “white lady,” but there it was, and there I was.

I realized then the burden of being a token in a society that is, despite claims to the contrary, very far from post-racial. I opened by saying “And now a word from the White Lady.” I added, in a phrase that I don’t believe I have ever used before, having heard it that morning from another speaker, “Lord, have mercy.” Fortunately, the audience laughed with me.

There is always so much to learn. As President Obama said in Jerusalem just last week, it is imperative to try, whenever we possibly can, to see how the world looks from someone else’s eyes.

Going Home Again

Originally published on InterfaithFamily

By Heather Subba

Hanukkah this past year, I felt the need to raise our child within a synagogue. When my four-year-old son lit the candles every night and demonstrated a sincere interest in the story of Hanukkah, he convinced me that joining a synagogue might be the right decision for our family. While I can support my son's desire to know more about Hanukkah at home, I am limited in my ability to provide him with the presence of a Jewish community.

Like a persistent humming sound that gradually agitates your senses over time, I found that our lack of involvement in a Jewish community was gnawing at me more and more. During

During a brisk and overcast afternoon walk with my husband, I casually brought up visiting temples. Nervous to broach the topic, I was not entirely surprised when he was not immediately supportive of the idea. He questioned why we would want to raise our child in only one of our religions and not the other. He also feared that we would be classified as "different" or "other" in a synagogue setting. Truthfully, my husband was right. This was an explicit decision to raise our son in one religious setting and I had no way of knowing whether we would fit into a Jewish synagogue as an interfaith family. In addition to my husband's apprehension, I also had fears.

My own synagogue experience concluded when I turned 18 years old. I had not been in a synagogue for many years; I wondered if I would feel at home in one, considering that I had to reach out to a rabbi I had never even met to marry us. Previously, I pondered whether I let my community down when I married someone who wasn't Jewish, but now I wondered if I was disappointing my husband for trying to place us in a society that might not consider us one of their own. Yet the only way to confront our fears was to work through them and to try something new.

With my main reasons comprised of faith, morals, education, tradition, and community, my husband ultimately understood why I wanted our son to be part of a synagogue. Due to my husband's open-mindedness and willingness to visit a temple, I located one accepting of interfaith families. When we slowly drove up to the temple for the first time on an early Sunday morning, all three of us were nervous. While my husband and son had to journey into a completely foreign environment, I re-entered a familiar setting at a different point in my life. As an adult, I returned to synagogue bearing choices that fell outside of the socially acceptable norm. Would I continue to be judged for these decisions and, consequently, face segregation in some way? Would my family also face alienation for my choices? Would we feel ashamed if we did not fit in?

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