Daughters of Abraham Book Clubs

While trying to track down the extent of this phenomenon(just how many Daughters of Abraham Book Clubs --or similar groups---are there in this country?), I decided I'd post one of the gems I found on the internet exploring... A Reading List! I haven't read all the books mentioned on the list, so I only edited the list to include only ones I could personally vouch for. The list if far from perfect, but I thought it was a good start.

Readers: Do you have suggestions to add to such a list? Any knowledge of a "Daughters of Abraham" group in your area? Please share...

Jewish:

NUMBER OUR DAYS by Barbara Myerhoff. A study of aging through a portrait of elderly Jews in Venice, California. Describes ethical Jewish culture through the lives of this mostly immigrant community.

AS A DRIVEN LEAF by Milton Steinberg. Historical fiction based on Judea in the time of the Roman occupation. Examines the tension between religious life and secular high culture.

THE RED TENT by Anita Diamant. A retelling of the life of the biblical character Dinah through her childhood, short marriage, and adulthood.

AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN by Yossi Klein Halevi. Jewish Israeli journalist spends time getting to know and worshipping with Muslims and Christians.

TALES OF THE HASIDIM by Martin Buber. Martin Buber has assembled and translated a comprehensive two-volume set of stories from the early and late Hasidic masters. Organized by master, with historic introduction and reference material.

JOY COMES IN THE MORNING by Jonathan Rosen. Contemporary American tale of a woman rabbi who falls in love with a secular Jewish man. Issues of faith, ethics, creating a Jewish home, observance of rituals, and the balance of public, rabbinic and family life.

A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS by Amos Oz. Covers the history of modern Israel from the vantage point of a participant.

HOLY DAYS by Lis Harris. A secular Jewish writer spends a year with a Brooklyn Hasidic family.

THE CHOSEN by Chaim Potok. Fiction about a relationship between two Jewish boys, one secular and one Orthodox, set in New York in the 1940s and '50s.


Christian:

CLOISTER WALK by Kathleen Norris. A married Protestant Christian woman spends two nine-month periods living with a celibate society of Benedictine monks. She discusses the life of having one's days lived in an environment of frequent, scheduled prayer and one's year marked by the saint days as well as other festivals. She also discusses celibacy and women's history through the stories of the saints and the life stories of the nuns and monks she gets to know.

TRAVELING MERCIES by Anne Lamott. Memoir of finding faith and trying to live it.

LYING AWAKE by Mark Salzman. Fiction about a nun/mystic who faces serious illness and difficult decisions.

THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS by C.S. Lewis. Senior devil advises his apprentice on how to corrupt the soul of a hapless young man. A good view of Christian ideas of evil and temptation. (also SURPRISED BY JOY by C.S. Lewis)

THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN by Nora Gallagher. Liturgical year as seen by a woman who returned to faith as an adult Christian in the Episcopal tradition.

GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson. This novel in the form of a letter to a son from his minister-father covers the time of the American Civil War and the generations beyond.

THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY by Marcus Borg. A discussion of the emerging paradigm of Christianity and how this way of embracing the faith works.

Muslim:

BORDER PASSAGE by Leila Ahmed. Egyptian woman's memoir of growing up in an Egyptian/Turkish family in the 1950s, going to college in England, and understanding the complex identity of Egyptian women in her time.

EVEN ANGELS ASK by Jeffrey Lang. Memoir of finding faith and trying to live it.


THE HADJ by Michael Wolfe. American convert to Islam visits Morocco and goes on the Hadj.

POEMS OF ARAB ANDALUSIA. Amazing thirteenth-century poetry.

THE STORYTELLER'S DAUGHTER by Saira Shah. European-raised Muslim journalist has the opportunity to visit her Afghani homeland while covering the beginning of war years there.

ISLAM: THE STRAIGHT PATH by John Esposito. Thorough review of Islam. More historical and philosophical than it is social or practical.

STANDING ALONE AT MECCA by Asra Q. Nomani. Memoir of an American-born Muslim woman who had been a foreign journalist and a friend of the late Daniel Pearl. She returns to America unmarried with her son, joins her family on Hadj, and defies the right-wing swing at her local mosque.

ISLAM IN AMERICA, a video produced by Lindsay Miller (Christian Science Publishing Society). Demonstrates the Five Pillars of the faith through interviews with American Muslims. At the same time, the history of Muslim communities in America is shown.

Multifaith:

THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS by Huston Smith. We read the chapters on the three Abrahamic faiths to establish a common background from which to begin our dialogue.

ORNAMENT OF THE WORLD: HOW MUSLIMS, JEWS AND CHRISTIANS CREATED A CULTURE OF TOLERANCE IN MEDIEVAL SPAIN by Maria Rosa Menocal. Tells of a time and place (from 786 to 1492 in Andalusia, Spain) that is largely and unjustly overshadowed in most historical chronicles. It was a time when the three cultures -- Judaic, Islamic and Christian -- forged a relatively stable, though occasionally contentious, coexistence.

DAUGHTERS OF ABRAHAM: FEMINIST THOUGHT IN JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM edited by Yvonne Yazback Haddad and John Esposito

ABRAHAM: A JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THREE FAITHS by Bruce Feiler. A review of the biblical and historical Abraham.

A HISTORY OF GOD by Karen Armstrong. A comprehensive history of religious thought from Abraham to the present.

COMMON PRAYERS by Harvey Cox. About an interfaith Jewish/Christian marriage. Written through the eyes of a well-informed Christian husband who celebrates the Jewish liturgical year with his Jewish wife and child.

THE LEMON TREe;AN ARAB,A JEW AND THE HEART OF THE MIDDLE EAST by Sandy Tolan. A good introduction to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict through a compelling personal story.

The Faith Club

The Faith Club is a book that illustrates a thesis I have held for some time now: the grassroots is where the action is.
While the organized religious institutions stumble along, in the living rooms of our country, interfaith is moving ahead in exciting ways.
This book tells the story of three suburban New York women, a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew, who get together shortly after September 11th to meet and learn about each other. None are professional clerics or religion scholars, or even especially knowledgable or devout. All are earnest and want to understand more about each other.
The Faith Club was started when Ranya Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, recruited Suzanne Oliver, a Christian, and Priscilla Warner, a Jew, to write a children's book about their three religions. As the women's meetings began, it became clear that they had their own adult struggles with faith and religion, and they needed a safe haven where they could air their concerns, admit their ignorance, and explore their own faiths.
The book is the story of their efforts, told by them. In my next blog entry, I will report on the "movement" being created by women around coffee tables.

A new blog on Religion and Politics

“It’s a great time for a student of religion in America to be alive and blogging.”
These are the words of Mark Silk, a professor at Trinity College in Hartford and director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life.

During the election year, this is a blog worth following.
http://egghead.cc.trincoll.edu/weblogs/spiritualpolitics/

Those interested in interfaith matters will find this an easy way to keep track of the latest news and opinion pieces relating to the role of religion in the political process, especially the presidential campaigns.

Silk is a respected scholar of American Religion( Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America.)

It is, indeed, an exciting time.

The pictures that accompany this entry do not reflect the politics of the management of this blog.

RABBI JOSHUA LESSER ON INTERFAITH WORK

The Reconstructionist rabbis have a list serve on which we discuss many issues, including the challenges and rewards of interfaith work.I found a recent post so helpful that I received permission from its author to share it on this site. Rabbi Joshua Lesser serves Congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta, Ga.and is the incoming president of Faith Alliance of Metro Atlanta. Here are Josh's words:




I have grown passionate about interfaith work because:
1. My sense of God's unfolding is that interfaith work can be salvific fostering better understanding of each other and therefore I believe it makes me a better Jew.
2. I have an opportunity to build allies and do social justice work more effectively--especially in a red state that "prays for rain" and invites God in the legislature. Of course, I believe in a separation of church and state, but religious voices countering other religious voices holds sway here in Georgia.
3. I am able to promote an open, loving, approachable face of Judaism to my fellow faith members. In doing so, I am open to the faces of other traditions and have learned much from them including how to be a better Jew.
4. It awakens in me compassion for my own ignorance and the ignorance of others. It guides me to humility and teaches me to temper my righteous and self-righteous anger (which there can be plenty) with gentleness.
5. It is an act of service and stewardship that strengthens a city that I love.

The same approach that I have to being gay in a heteronormative world is one that informs my walking in a christian-normative world. It is the sense of oblivion due to normativity that often pains the minority and ends up with a response of patronizing tokenization or worse invisibility. Anger is always an option and one that I used to choose frequently.{But}I have realized that anger as a default for me is not the path I want to choose. Nor is fuelling any more sense of victimization than I have already experienced. I expect that people do not see the world from my experience and my rabbinate is a conscious choice of education and building bridges. As Gay and Jewish, I navigate differently and work hard to try to choose to use my insights to enlighten not to shame, lambaste or disengage.


This does not mean I acquiesce or conform. Most of the fruitful work I have done has come out of a place of relationship and a recognition of the other clergy as human beings and not just roles. Eating with people, meeting their families, travelling with them has opened them up to me and vice versa. I have participated in interfaith travel to Turkey and Jerusalem with Jews, Christians and Muslims. This has done much to help me better understand Christian theologies and to see aspects that I found repugnant as beautiful. It has made me realize that it is not Jesus that is the obstacle but the triumphalism of any religion, especially the dominant one but including ours.


I go into interfaith encounters with the assumption of goodwill on all parties account even if the message or the outcome does not reflect that goodwill entirely. I do this not out of beneficence, but because my actions and ignorance do not always belie my goodwill.

The most powerful convergence of interfaith prayers was at Ebeneezer Baptist Church (MLK Jr's home community) where I helped plan the city's interfaith service of mourning, healing and hope after 9/11. It was a rare moment when the best of the richness of Atlanta's faith communities, which was vastly beyond the Abrahamic traditions, was offered and for me was inspiring and brought healing. It is not surprising that interfaith services work best when addressing a universal need and not just a demonstration of a value or a desire to show that we can get along.

Most days though are fraught with the personal, cultural, racial, religious minefields that trigger and touch one of many of the participants. When we are engaged in a process, where asindividuals and as a group we work with the assumption that we bring goodwill and a desire for better understanding, profound moments can occur. Much like my prayer life in general, there is a great deal of slogging through and disconnection on the way to a godly moment. Interfaith connection and services can be that godlyvehicle for me.