The Compassionate Listening Project

One of our graduates contacted me recently to say she is heading for Israel/Palestine with a multi-faith delegation of fellow clergy from her area. The program is organized by The Compassionate Listening Project, an organization based near Seattle. The group seems to be doing excellent work, mostly in relationship to Israel/Palestine but has also worked with Germans and Jews.It is headed by a visionary leader, Leah Green.
If anyone knows more about this organization and trips sponsored by it, please comment here.

Moral Psychology and the Science/Religion Conversation

This blog follows the Science and Religion dialogue since, particularly of late, a breed of "crusading atheists" has emerged (Dawkins,Harris,Dennett) that argues against religion in the name of science, adding another voice to the multifaith conversation. Of course, there are also scientists who see religion in a more positive light. Until recently, it was the field of PHYSICS that generated most of the scientific writing friendly to religion.

Worth watching are the new developments in the field of MORAL PSYCHOLOGY. When I was in college and interested in moral psychology, the place to go was Harvard to study with Lawrence Kohlberg. His adaptation of Piaget's stages of development had become the dominant paradigm in the field. Like any other kind of cognitive capability, moral reasoning was seen as developing through stages over a lifetime. The focus was on how individuals think about moral dilemmas. In the seventies, Carol Gilligan challenged Kohlberg's system by introducing the idea that women might speak about moral issues "in a different voice."

Today, the Kohlberg/Gilligan debate is becoming a side show in the field of moral psychology as the spotlight shifts to evolutionary biology and neuroscience. Emotion,including ones of which we are barely conscious, turn out to be key elements in determining moral behavior. What we say about our moral reasoning may be no more than post hoc explanations for what our evolved brains tell us is the "right" thing to do.

Religious leaders will want to keep up with this line of research as it has important implications for the relationship of religion to morality. For an excellent review of the field, see Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis or check out his article,"Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion" on the Edge website,
http://www.edge.org/discourse/moral_religion.html

Interfaith in Israel: RRC's Newest Student Internship

EXCITING NEWS from RRC! Next year, through the generosity of the Joseph Slifka Foundation, RRC will be placing one of our students in a one year interfaith internship in Israel.

As the picture to the right graphically illustrates, Israel is a place where interfaith issues are very much alive.

We are looking forward to learning more about the various organizations engaged in interfaith work in Israel. Our Israeli program manager, Rabbi Mira Regev(pictured to the left) will be researching an appropriate site for our student to work.

If you have ideas concerning the work of interfaith in Israel, please send a comment to this blog or contact us at nfuchs-kreimer@rrc.edu

Good News for Muslim-Jewish Relations

As 2007 draws to a close, there is good news for Muslim-Jewish Relations here in the U.S. The following is from the Washington Post. The photo is of Ingrid Mattson.


Jews and Muslims Set Up Big Interfaith Effort

By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 16, 2007; A09

Two major Jewish and Muslim organizations unveiled an interfaith dialogue curriculum yesterday and are urging their hundreds of thousands of members to use it. Both sides say it is the broadest Jewish-Muslim interfaith effort in the continent's history.

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, North America's largest Jewish movement, announced the partnership with the Islamic Society of North America at his group's biennial convention in San Diego.

"As a once-persecuted minority in countries where anti-Semitism is still a force, we understand the plight of Muslims in North America today," Yoffie said yesterday. "We live in a world in which religion is manipulated to justify the most horrific acts, a world in which -- make no mistake -- Islamic extremists constitute a profound threat. For some, this is a reason to flee from dialogue, but in fact the opposite is true. When we are killing each other in the name of God, sensible religious people have an obligation to do something about it."

This summer Yoffie became the first major Jewish leader to address ISNA, the continent's largest Muslim organization with 30,000 attendants coming to its annual convention. ISNA President Ingrid Mattson will address the 980-congregation Jewish group today, the first leader of a major Muslim group to do so.

The manual and video are built around five sessions that touch on topics including the place of Jerusalem in Jewish and Muslim tradition and history. The toughest potential sticking points will probably be related to Israel and to stereotypes both groups carry about the other, Mark Pelavin, director of interreligious affairs for the Jewish group, said in an interview. "Jews want to know how Muslims feel about terrorism in the name of Islam, and Muslims want to know how Jews feel about Palestinian suffering."

Eleven synagogue-mosque pairs have already been set up as pilot programs, including two in the D.C. area: the Islamic Society of Southern Prince George's County of Temple Hills and Temple Solel in Bowie is one, and the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Sterling and the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston is the other.

Yoffie also announced that the two groups created an adult curriculum on Islam and pressed every synagogue to consider offering it.

"There exists in our community a profound ignorance about Islam, along with a real desire to learn about what moves and motivates Muslims today. We must respond to this desire with serious programs of education," he said.

Both groups already have dialogue programs with various other faith groups, but on a much smaller scale.

The Faith Between Us

I read the review below in Publishers Weekly and recommended the book, sight unseen, on the basis of the description. So much of official "dialogue" turns out to be about matters academic, political... anything but deeply personal. This sounded like a refreshing change. I must admit I was also taken with the idea that it was men
doing the more intimate sharing across the faith lines. That wasn't so often the case when I was a thirty-something. Got the book and as I had hoped, I loved it. Leaving aside the Jewish/Christian dialogue(which is quite fascinating), this is just a wonderful depiction by good writers of what might be called,for lack of a better word, post-modern faith. Anne Lamott calls herself a "bad ass Christian," and there is a bit of Anne's sensibility in these men. I find, however, that they tend to stick with a subject longer than Anne does, go a bit deeper.
Bottom line: This is a great read, for winter vacation or any other time.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. What's the saying? Never discuss sex, God or politics if you want to keep your friends? In this particular case, the questions of faith and God are actually what brought Peter Bebergal and Scott Korb together, initially through a correspondence related to their writings for various online magazines. Faith was not something either particularly discussed with their other friends, even though both hold advanced degrees in religion. Like a conversation that continues all night into the early light of dawn, this collection of stories is filled with the deepest of personal feelings and confessions as well as the mundane details of everyday life. The format-the telling of a story by one, followed by a reflective epilogue by the other-highlights not only the seamlessness of their dialogue, but the depth of their friendship and understanding of each other. No topic is taboo; amid their questioning of faith and God come tales of addiction, neuroses and ineptitude. These thirty-somethings are as diverse as their upbringings, and yet between them they represent a little bit of all of us in this thoughtful, engaging debate about the virtues of faith and the existence of God. (Nov.)
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Amina Wadud to speak in Philadelphia in March

The Luce Project is thrilled that we will be bringing Amina Wadud and Susannah Heschel to Philadelphia this March for an evening of dialogue concerning Women and Gender in Judaism and Islam.
In anticipation of this event, readers might want to check out this short documentary about Dr. Wadud.

"Gender struggles are at the very heart of reforming Islam today, and no one represents these struggles more powerfully, deeply, and passionately than Amina Wadud."
Omid Safi
Co-Chair, Study of Islam Section at the American Academy of Religion

The Noble Struggle of Amina Wadud

A film by Elli Safari

The Netherlands/US, 2007, 29 minutes, Color, VHS/DVD

On March 18, 2005, Amina Wadud shocked the Islamic world by leading a mixed-gender Friday prayer congregation in New York. THE NOBLE STRUGGLE OF AMINA WADUD is a fascinating and powerful portrait of this African-American Muslim woman who soon found herself the subject of much debate and Muslim juristic discourse. In defying 1400 years of Islamic tradition, her action caused global awareness of the struggle for women’s rights within Islam but also brought violence and death threats against her.

Filmmaker Safari follows this women’s rights activist and scholar around the world as she quietly but with utter conviction explains her analysis of Islam in the classroom, at conferences, in her home, and in the hair dresser’s shop. Wadud explains how Islam, with its promise of justice, appeals to the African American community. And she links the struggle for racial justice with the need for gender equality in Islam. Deeply engaging, this film offers rare insights into the powerful connections between Islam, women’s rights, and racial justice.

For more information, see http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c699.shtml

Susannah Heschel in Conversation about Jesus

Nextbook: A New Read on Jewish Culture held an event last spring in New York City on the topic of Jesus in Jewish Culture. Here is a video of Susannah Heschel discussing her scholarship on Jews and Jesus with the chief rabbi of Rome.

Jesus and the Rabbis
Susannah Heschel and Riccardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome in conversation with Federica Francesconi
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