– Hope you’re all well-nourished and ready for our panel. We’re grateful to start off the second half of our day with a panel of local faith leaders from a variety of spiritual and religious traditions. I’m gonna start off by offering a brief bio of each speaker,

Then I’ll invite each of them to take a turn speaking on our conference theme from their perspective of their particular faith tradition. Finally, we’ll open up to Q&A for all of you. So as speaking, if you have questions that start to bubble up,

Please feel free to save them and ask them at the end. So a couple of bios, Reverend Stephanie Johnson, furthest to my left, is an Episcopal priest and rector at St. Paul’s in Riverside, Connecticut. She offers workshops, clergy training and retreats on eco-theology, preaching on climate change

And grief in the face of the climate emergency and congregational greening. For 20 years, prior to her ordination in the Episcopal church, Stephanie worked as an environmental planner and educator. Following her ordination, Reverend Johnson worked for the Episcopal Bishops of New England, providing support in reducing congregational energy use in environmental ministries.

Reverend Steve Kanji Ruhl, a little bit over, two down from me, is an ordained Zen Buddhist minister through the Zen Peacemaker Order, and has served as a Buddhist advisor to the Yale Buddhist student community for the past 10 years. He received his master divinity degree from Harvard

And is a faculty member of the Shogaku Zen Institute. He also serves as the Buddhist spiritual life advisor at Deerfield Academy and teaches independently through his touch the earth cyber sang. I’m keeping these bios pretty brief so that you can hear from them rather than me. Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, three down,

Is the Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain at Yale, and he works in the Slifka Center just down the hill. He comes from a background as diverse as Yale’s Jewish community, a childhood at Reform Temple Micah in DC, formative years studying at the Orthodox Yeshiva Maal, is that right? Pardon me.

In Northern Israel and rabbinic ordination at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary. From 2008 to 2018, Jason taught on the faculty of the Hadar Institute working to create classrooms, conversations, and communities that bring Torah to life by drawing on the fullness of students’ lives. Last but not least, AR Malik, right here,

Is an award-winning journalist, educator and cultural organizer. In June, 2019, he was appointed lecturer and associate research scholar at the Yale Divinity School. He also serves as a program coordinator at Yale University’s Council and Middle East Studies, and responsible for developing curricula and partnerships with public schools to promote better cultural language

And religious literacy about the Middle East to educators and students alike. AR also serves as director of the Muslim Leadership Lab and Innovative Student Leadership Program being incubated at the Dwight Hall Center of Social Justice at Yale. All of these people have biographies that extend way beyond what I’ve said,

But let’s leave it there for now. Now that you’ve gotten to know a little bit about them, let’s hear from you. I’m gonna give you five, you have five minutes to speak. I’m just gonna very impolitely make a purring sound into a microphone, and that’s a gentle way of saying enough is enough.

So Stephanie, would you like to start? – Thank you Chris. And yeah, I said for sure keep me to five minutes, cuz I could go on about this topic for a long period of time. I just wanna say that I would not be here without Mary Evelyn and John.

15 years when I walked into the doors of this school, I had no idea that my life would be transformed into a ministry of ecological faith and ministry and climate change response. And when I first met Mary Evelyn, I think God invited us into a conversation that I never knew was gonna happen.

And because of the two of you, my life has been changed and I hope that other folks have learned from me because of you. And Mary Evelyn said that, I hope this doesn’t count from my time, but I just really wanna do a public acknowledgement.

Chris, you’re gonna gimme an extra minute on this tribute because anyway, so Mary Evelyn said this morning that her students were her children and I felt that love every single time I walked into your classroom or into your office and sometimes in tears, because I felt like I was your child

And I am eternally grateful for what you have done, not only for me, but for so many other people. Thank you from the deepest part of my heart. So crocuses. Four weeks ago, the crocus came up in my town and I was walking to my church and I started to cry. I cry when they come out at the right time of year because I have the gratitude of the creation of the earth and the beauty of new life.

But I cried four weeks ago in deep despair, crocuses, I feel it in the deepest part of my heart. My body gets uncomfortable when the weather is wrong. I recently had someone come up to me in tears saying, the elm trees are blooming, my bees are going to die.

Ecological grief is what we’re living with and we feel it or I feel it in the deepest part of my soul and my being. It’s a physical reaction to the changing times in the climate emergency. 15 years ago when I started here at Jim Antala, UCC minister said,

If every fourth sermon is not about climate, every sermon in the future will be about grief. 15 years ago, and I lived with that statement and we are living with that reality now. It’s hard to imagine the depth of our despair, but it’s also wonderful to live into the hope

Of the possibilities of the future. And so I live in a place of hope and I know some of the questions are gonna be about how do we find hope and resiliency? So I’m not gonna go into it too far, but I just wanna sort of acknowledge

That I have always lived in hope. It’s my Christian faith that leads me to hope and new creation and new possibilities, after the crucifixion into the resurrection. I also live in a place of anticipatory grief. I’m really good at anticipating grief in the future.

And part of the sadness of that is I live in anticipatory grief for those who come after me. My son is here, and if he has children, his children will live into the climate emergency in ways we can’t imagine it. And I grieve that today on behalf of them.

And so I anticipate their grief and I anticipate the future of grief. So what am I doing about it? I’m learning from you. I’m preying on it, I’m acting on it. And I have been working on a project in my heart for 15 years about how rituals and prayers

And music and gatherings can help us survive and dare I say, thrive, in the midst of the grief and give us hope. And so it’s a 15 year project. It started when I walked in the doors here and it will continue in the years ahead, and I’m happy to talk more about that.

But I just wanted to frame that as anticipatory grief and the possibility of community giving us the hope, but also letting us sit in the sadness of today and for future generations. – [Moderator] No purring. Thank you. Thanks very much. Jason, would you like to go next? – I hope I’ll get double purrs since we missed out the first time. Thank you. That was so beautiful. I want to thank Chris and everyone who put so much into gathering us today.

And also I want to thank the source of all life who graces us with wisdom for the opportunity to live and to reflect and to grieve, which is part of living. There is a story in four parts that I’m gonna try to tell you in five minutes.

That is how one kind of enters into the waters of grief, Jewishly around the climate, and then how one allows those eddies to pull and push and hopefully cleanse us. And each part kind of builds on and also unsays the part before it. The first place we start is that

The structure of our standard, kind of climate crisis predictions and calls to action is exactly parallel to the structure of the biblical prophecy of doom, right? If you take the biblical case of idolatry and replace it with carbon emissions, right? Watch the following unfold. You’re all doing this thing.

You think it’s actually part of sustaining your life. In fact, it’s destroying your life. You think it’s okay, it’s not, and you think it’s not okay, but it’s actually really not, and you have to find a way to stop. Other people are telling you it’s okay,

You heed their advice at your own peril. And if you don’t, the combination of the accumulated sins of previous generations added to yours will initiate a crisis which will begin as ecological and then become a full-blown economic and political one, and end with your inability to live on the land.

Then things get interesting because scene two is that the rabbis call BS on the prophetic tradition in two senses. The first is especially with Purim coming up on Sunday night, they say that when Ahash Veras took off his ring and gave it to Hamman, he accomplished what 48 prophets and 24 prophetess couldn’t,

Which is to get the Jews to fast and pray right? Already in Jeremiah, God is lamenting that no one listens to the prophets and the rabbis actually thought the prophecy was completely ineffective as a moral and rhetorical tool. And that’s why every page of the Talmud reads differently and the prophets consoled, right?

Isaiah said, after the destruction of the first temple, the source of life, this was just a moment of anger, I will gather you to me in comfort everlasting. I promise as I promised for the floodwaters of Noah that I will never do this again.

And then God did it again and the temple was sacked. And the rabbis imagine God not consoling in this moment, but asking a heartbreaking dialogue to the angels, how do human beings grieve? Angels say they take off their their shoes and God says, I will do that.

Person sits in silence and God says, I will do that. Angels say and human beings weep and God says and I will do that. So there’s a resistance to the sense of agency that we can change it. Rabbis think they can’t rebuild the temple, and they’re right, they live under Roman empire

And there’s a resistance of the easiness of consolation. There’s a centering of grief what William James would’ve called the twice born, did call the twice born soul, sorry for quoting a Harvard scholar here in these halls, but not in a kind of existential, a historical way, but historically post certain human events,

A destruction environment or the destruction of the temple, we live in a world of grief. That’s scene two. Scene three is that grief is a teleological process with a goal which is allow us to live a flourishing life and love again without someone or something who is completely indispensable to us.

And so if we take the frame of grieving the earth’s fecundity and biodiversity seriously, it means that our end goal, just taking imminent to the frame of grief would be a human life that is flourishing and full of joy without the biodiversity of the earth and all the senses of treason and betrayal

That come with successful grieving. Is it a betrayal to get married again, to start a second family, to love again? Those questions should haunt us if we’re doing it right. And here the rabbinic tradition, I’ll share is haunting and fascinating, it says, if someone is reciting their learning,

Which they maintain as an oral tradition, they stop to say what a beautiful tree. They’ve done something terrible. Or the word brio, which derives from the Hebrew root (foreign language), which is a verb for creation reserved to God. In rabbinic Hebrew doesn’t mean creatures, it means human beings.

There’s a radical disinterestedness in the natural world, which might actually be a spiritual resource for us going forward. And then scene four is that in Jewish grieving, it’s unseemly and it’s forbidden to prepare for someone’s death in eulogy while they’re still alive. We shouldn’t be, we can’t be anticipating what we would say.

We have to be horrified at this prospect and also know that we can and will flourish through and after it. – Thank you. And Chris, thank you. Thanks to the conference organizers. I’m glad to be here. I originally was going to share 10 minutes of notes that I jotted down with you,

So I’m cutting that in half and I hope it won’t be too disconnected. I’m happy to do that. No problem. So as Chris said, I’m a Zen Buddhist practitioner and also I’m someone who approaches the topic from several different angles. I was involved in the very first Earth Day in 1970

And I vividly recall seeing a film at a conference that day on something that was very concerning called the Greenhouse Gas Problem. That was 53 years ago. And since then nothing has been done. And as we all know, the problem has worsened considerably, very terribly. Now I also took an Earth Systems course

As an undergraduate in college. And so I know what abido means, I know how feedback loops work, I know what the runaway greenhouse effect is. So I bring some basic scientific understanding to what we call Green Buddhism, which is the application of Buddhist practices and principles such as interconnectedness and caring

For all beings to the current environmental crisis. And I’ve also participated in socially engaged Buddhism, among other actions. In 2014 I marched with 400 other folks in the People’s Climate March in New York City. And I’ve also made life decisions that allow me to live very simply in accord with Buddhist economics,

Very lightly on Mother Earth. And yet through all these decades in my growing alarm about the environmental apocalypse that is now unfolding, I’ve moved through a deeply embodied grief and hopelessness, disgust and despair. And because of my spiritual practice, I’ve reached what I feel to be a place of strength and clarity.

Now, what Buddhism calls the three poisons of craving, anger and delusion, feed both the secular materialism and the pietistic dogmatic religiosity that contribute to the environmental crisis and the realm of secular materialism. The poison of craving feeds consumerism and worship of profit. The poison of anger feeds the toxic politics

That impede progress on environmental issues. The poison of delusion feeds the mistaken notion that humans are separate from nature and that the earth can be endlessly exploited. In the realm of pietistic dogmatic religious institutions, the poison of craving feeds lust for power. We see this in the Christian Nationalist Movement

Among many other places. The poison of anger feeds an embittered self-righteous holier than thou attitude. And the poison of delusion feeds institutions of hierarchy, sham holiness and superstition that also deny the present danger of the environmental crisis. Both secular materialism and dogmatic religion desacralize the world.

When I say that as a Zen Buddhist minister, I’m focusing on healing the planet by promoting the transformation of human consciousness, what I mean is that I’m working to restore our sense of the sacred. That sense of the sacred, which is the authentic mystical source of all the world’s beautiful religious traditions,

Including those represented here today. I’m focusing on helping people awaken to the sacred interconnectedness of life on earth. People who experience the earth as sacred will not destroy it. People who experience the earth as sacred will not destroy it. Now if that sounds naive, let me say that along with the terrible destruction

That’s occurring now, the mass extinctions, the melting ice caps, the rising seas, the sizzling temperatures, the droughts and wildfires, all of that, along with that, the transformation of human consciousness and the reclaiming of the sacred also is occurring. We may not see it often because the establishment media tends to ignore it,

But it is happening. And in fact, this conference is part of it. We’re witnessing the frenzy collapse of the old order, a society built on militarism, class oppression, systemic racism, sexism, ageism, a decentralized society falling apart through its own rotten corruption. And it’s being challenged. The Buddhist teacher and systems analyst Joanna Macy

Calls this the great unraveling and it’s unleashing a tremendous amount of death energy. I’m not talking about death itself, which is a natural process. I’m talking about death energy, apocalyptic, violence, cynical, suicidal, but simultaneously a new vision is emerging of how we can live on this earth in a sacred way.

It’s a new vision that involves a transformation of mind, of heart, of spirit, of consciousness, and it counters the death energy that’s now rampant and running amok. And Buddhist teacher and systems analyst Joanna Macy calls this The Great Turning. And that’s exciting. Am I being purred at? Okay, I’ll wrap it up.

Thanks, thanks Chris. So just very quickly, I’m purring out here. The question is, can The Great Turning happen quickly enough? I just wanted to say in terms of hope, Buddhism has a problem with hope because hope distracts us from the present moment and projects us into an imaginary future that doesn’t exist.

And not only that, but hope is conditional. Hope says if such and such happens, I want this desired outcome. So I reject hope. I reject hope, I embrace faith. Faith is unconditional. And faith says, I believe this will happen. My faith is in the life force. I’m gonna leave it at that.

Thank you very much. – Thank you. You won’t be able to purr if I use that. All right, alright. Thank you to to the organizers and to my fellow panelists. The topic that was offered to us today is I think particularly just prescient, but I think it touched a certain nerve for me. I lost my mom last year in May and so this year has really been a year of contending with grief. And my mother wasn’t the first person close to me

Who passed away, certainly not during the pandemic, but I think it brought together all the elements of what does grieving mean and what does grieving mean as a spiritual practice? And I think my beloved colleagues have spoken about that. And then I think when we multiply that grief

At this moment of social, political and economic fracture, climate emergency where literally the ground is disappearing from under our feet, I think this idea of grief takes on a greater resonance and theme. So I begin from that very personal place and using that wanna offer two or three perspectives

From within the Islamic tradition. In the second chapter of the Quran, we are told this kind of dramatic story that God and God’s wisdom announces to the angelic realm that there will be a new creation and this will be the human being. And the angels immediately respond, will you create a new creation

That will undoubtedly bring facade and bloodshed? Facade meaning corruption, it’s a fascinating word in the Arabic language that will bring corruption and bloodshed to the earth. At that point God could disagree with this, said no, I’m creating the human being with a particular aspiration or with a particular perfect outcome.

But God doesn’t actually disagree with the angels. God merely says, I know that which you do not know. And so this idea that in our insertion into creation itself was already noted very early on by the angelic realm as being something that would cause imbalance, corruption, fitna and facade in Arabic and bloodshed,

I think sort of indicates the challenge that the human being faces. The Quran tells us that we were created with a divine perfection and we become through our actions the lowest of the low. And that we can only recover by reestablishing some sort of balance. And that the earth and creation itself offer a witness to the creator about us. On the last day, when we’re called before the majesty of God, the earth will speak about what we did upon it, it will testify, it will weep,

It will tell us all of the things that we did to harm it and to hurt it. The Quran reminds us that there, that around us are communities like yourselves with complexity. And we know this now to be more than true. So the communities of animals and creation itself

And perhaps cells and plant life and the trees that speak to each other will all rally around and say, this is what was done to us. That imbalance was brought in. So I think we are living through a moment, the climate catastrophe. If it’s nothing else,

Then it is a bearing witness to the imbalance that we collectively as human beings have caused upon the earth. And I think for me that kind of relationship is really important because there’s a saying of the prophet Muhammad which we often will repeat in times of great trial and tribulation.

And that is that the prophet advised that if you intend to plant a tree or you have a seed, which we you want to put into the earth and the trumpet sounds to indicate the beginning of the judgment hour, plant the tree anyways. Plant the seed anyways.

I might suggest that the trumpet’s been blown. I might suggest that the hour or an hour has come. If I think if we don’t see what is happening around us as not just a witness, but a judgment on our place on the earth, then I think we’re sort of missing the point.

And yet, and I understand reverend when you talk about hope, I think in the Islamic conception, the hope is not in our desire of what will happen, but an abiding hope that the divine plan is unfolding in the way that the divine wishes.

And that it is our role and duty to do what we can in the present moment to try to achieve mercy, justice and compassion, knowing that the outcome is not in our hands and never has been. And yet we are empowered to do in the now and in the moment

Because there is in our tradition, and I’ll close on this, a sense of radical personal responsibility. We are made into communities, nations and tribes as the Quran said so that we may know one another and yet on the last day we stand before the creator alone with ourselves, our deeds, our actions,

What we wanted to do, what we could do. And I think that kind of call to radical personal responsibility in the amelioration of the condition that we’re in, but it seems so large, so what do we do? Systemic change is needed, we understand that. But at an individual and personal level,

There has to be kind of a personal commitment and a deeply radical individual commitment to dealing with this moment when the judgment at least of the planet and of the biosphere is upon us. And I think that is tied to grief because I think that is a huge responsibility.

And the horse has bolted and the hours late and yet, not but, and yet we are here, we have life sentience, freedom, apparently, to act and to do. And I think there’s a call from the divine to do. – Thanks to all four of you. I have some questions prepared,

But I’d be much more interested in hearing yours. So I think everybody would, so if anyone has any questions, please raise your hand and we’ll have Noah walk around with a microphone. Yeah, great. – [Participant] Thank you so much for this presentation. And my question is based off of Reverend Steve

And Professor Malik, I guess both of what you were speaking, but this notion of hope and bearing witness. So how is like the condition of hope or the notion of hope, how can you be a weapon to blindness or our responsibility to bear witness? – We can share these two mics.

– I mean I appreciate the question, but I would love to hear, I would love to hear Stephanie and Jason on this question of hope and responsibility because I would love to hear how your tradition sort of deal with that dilemma. – Right. I mean I think one of the questions that Chris

Had presented was sort of greenwashing, the idea that religion can be greenwashing as much as corporations can be greenwashing right? And so I do think hope can be used as a crutch not to move forward, to be paralyzed or to say, well something else will happen

Or there are people who have hope that the world will end, right? There’s a Christian theology in some places that the end times are what we aspire to. And so the world destruction is actually God’s plan and Jesus will come back, right? So there’s the type of hope that is not,

Is contrary to my theology. So I think that there’s this broad sense of what hope can be within all traditions. I mean, I don’t wanna, Christianity is not a monolith, right? From my perspective, I have a friend who often says, I am not an optimist, but I am hopeful in Jesus.

And so I’m not optimistic that climate change will stop. I’m not optimistic that the world’s climate emergency will necessarily end. I’ve often come to the conclusion in my own reflections that humanity may disappear from the earth, but the hope I have is that the hope in God is and the belief in God

Is that the world will still continue even if humanity’s no longer here. And so that’s a theology that I’ve sort of worked through for a very long time. So the hope is that is not a greenwashing, but just a deep sense that God is with us in whatever it is that transpires,

That God has never left us. And in my theology, it’s the idea that even in the darkest of the crucifixion, Jesus was in conversation and calling out and there was the hope at the end. And so I think there’s that transformative moment of hope. So, yeah,

So I just reflecting on my very personal theology, again there’s so many different views of hope in Christian tradition. – I think I want to take what Reverend Steve did and go maybe a step further. Instead of an alternative to hope, I wanna speak in favor of hopelessness and fantasy.

And what I mean by that is, I think part of the structure of hope is the idea that if I were to confront the fact that things either will or might always be this way, that would be unbearable. And Judaism basically thinks things are always gonna be this way, right?

The most influential mainstream position about the redeemed world after the Messiah comes is the only change is the restoration of the Jewish people’s political sovereignty. There’s still gonna be intimate violent partner violence, there’s still gonna be oppression, there will still be judges on the take in corporate corruption and environmental injustice and everything.

Like that’s never gonna end. And don’t try to tell yourself that we can only take this for one lifetime or one generation or one century. Like part of being a grownup human is like confronting this is as good as it gets. And you know there’s an amazing statement (indiscernible) says to his wife,

When someone comes to ask for bread at our door, give it to him quickly so that when our children go to his children’s door and our children are begging for bread, his children will give it quickly to ours. And she says you’re cursing our children.

And he says, no, there’s a wheel of fortune that turns in the world and it’s a play on a biblical versus about. There’s not a sense of progress. Like we’re gonna reduce, you’re gonna give that’s gonna end poverty or even reduce it. There’s gonna be poverty and the only effect

Is the world might be a slightly kinder place, but again, it’s not a hope, it’s a kind of prediction in a sense. And I also wanna hold out the sense of fantasy, like the core, it’s amazing thing about it in the bible the core ritual is sacrifice, right? Like literally it’s the center,

It’s Leviticus and it’s in all the stories, Abraham sacrifices, Moses sacrifices, Noah sacrifices, Canaan sacrifices, the biblical sacrifices is actually like, it’s not about the rules, it’s like a very simple idea, right? Bartlett Giamattii had this idea that games, which sacrifice is right. It’s a magic circle with special rules, games encode myths.

And the myth of sacrifice is to carve out a tiny corner of the world where only the right creatures die at the right times and in the right ways and for the right reasons. And that flies in the face of everything we know about the world and probably everything

We can even imagine about the world. But there’s this idea that by occasionally, maybe at once a year, maybe a few times a life, the world for word for pilgrimage in biblical Hebrew is the cognitive hodge. You enter into a place where that’s reality and it allows, it’s like a crowbar

That lets you hold your soul open, that you can keep that childish dream alive without necessarily believing it’ll come to transpire in the world at whole with no hope. But the very, very live fantasy that gives you a different plane to exist on and actually like live in and grieve the very stable,

Very obdurate reality of this world. – I love listening to Rabbi Jason cuz it always, it pushes me and it helps sort of, it’s like stretch testing the things that I hold to be true. Yeah, this question of witness I think is really important. And I think certainly it’s important

Within the Islamic tradition writ large, there is this idea that we are all (foreign language) we are all witnessing, and yet the word (foreign language) also means martyrs. And for me that has always been a really powerful connection between the idea of witnessing and the idea of martyrdom. Because the martyr witnesses

By engaging their whole being in the act of bringing mercy, compassion, justice to the world and dies in that process, bearing the ultimate witness to what? Their success or lack of success, not important. But in the doing of. On Monday we’ll be celebrating and marking and honoring the 58th anniversary of the martyrdom

Of Hajj Shaba Malcolm X, the series of programs. Martyrdoms been on my mind a lot these last few weeks. And I think about folks like Malcolm and their struggle, and that he died at the age of 39 at a critical moment in his work and in the movement for not just black liberation,

But what he became to believe was human liberation centered in black liberation. And yet that has not been achieved. And yet we see him as a witness to that. And I do think the time is coming with there will be witnesses and there will be martyrs in this moment.

Will they move the needle? Don’t know. But does that kind of, is that kind of sacrifice needed when the injustice is so great. And what are we witnessing in what way? What are we reading in the world? And this is another thing, Rabbi Jason, you had shared with me that beautiful anecdote

About reciting the Torah and that if you are distracted by nature, it’s something sinful, that really struck me. I’ve been thinking about that all week actually since I saw you at Slifka last week because it reminded me that one of the words that describes the verses of the Quran is (foreign language) signs.

And the Quran often reminds us that look to the signs, the ayas and that creation itself becomes a text. And so I was trying to filter that in my own tradition and saying that what if I was, if someone was reading Revelation and then looked up and saw that creation,

And I feel like one of the things, particularly in the Islamic mystical tradition is that there is a connection between the revelatory text and the text of creation itself. And so the idea of witnessing and the idea of becoming a witness is that by immersing ourselves in witnessing creation

Itself it’s an act of devotion. And in that active devotion there should develop a call to some kind of higher good work or service. And that in a way the Quranic text flows in to the text of creation itself. But I think it is fascinating for me that connection between witness and sacrifice,

I think those two things are really connected. And that can be a disturbing thing too. That is a kind of a challenging idea for me because it involves a lot from us who are claiming to be witnesses on behalf of creation or as part of creation. – Thank you.

I appreciate the question too. Thank you. And I appreciate all these responses. I’ll be brief because I’m sure people have other questions as well, but I just wanna share that in our Zen Buddhist tradition, our vow is beings zar numberless, I vow to save them. That’s hopeless. It’s absolutely hopeless.

There’s no possible way that we can save all infinite beings throughout the universe, but we stake our faith on that and then we move forward with love and compassion. And we also have three tenants. The first tenant is not knowing, not knowing isn’t ignorance, not knowing is approaching each situation

That arises freshly and without preconceptions. And in this environmental apocalypse that we’re now confronting, it indicates a certain amount of freedom in not holding to hope for particular outcomes, but being flexible and being able to be responsive in that mind of not knowing. The second tenant is bearing witness.

A phrase that we’ve heard several times in the past few minutes. So bearing witness in a way that involves not separating ourselves. And finally, the third tenant is loving action. It’s necessary to take responsibility and to take action. In our tradition it’s said that we’re responsible for the whole catastrophe.

So we take action in whatever way we feel that we’re called to do. And we simply hope for the best. And as I say, we move forward with love and with compassion in order to do that. – [Participant 2] Hi, thank you all for those beautiful answers.

I’ve been really stuck on the story that Professor Malik shared about planting seeds, even if the trumpets are gonna be going. And so I just wanted to ask a question about, for many of our ancestors, right, whether you’re thinking about a particular cultural group or religious group,

We’ve experienced things that felt like the end of the world and in many ways were. We felt the trumpets or heard the trumpet singing, whether it was persecution or enslavement or some sort of displacement or something else that forced us to adapt to grotesque violence situations

Or new climates or X, Y and Z. And so I’m wondering what do you all, what are some of the lessons that you all see as learning from your ancestor’s ability or other groups if it doesn’t apply, their ability to keep planting seeds

Even as the trumpets of the end of the world we’re going? I’m sorry for that question. – Oh, thanks. The silence here is a testament to the quality of the question. It’s depth, it’s silence gotten us all things. So I’ll share. I think the fundamental Jewish stance,

And this is really the rabbinic tradition, which is the Judaism that we live today, is an ambivalence. And what I mean by that, my therapist is sick of me using that word, but it’s warranted here. On the one hand, right, we mourn the destruction of Jerusalem,

Every year and actually in some ways every day. On the architecture of Jewish homes, you’re supposed to leave a segment of the wall unpainted, like bare plaster or drywall. You’re supposed to leave something off, even your most festive meals menus supposed to kind of never quite be adorned

In your full finery because we’re still grieving Jerusalem. And the Tallah records an encounter between (indiscernible) and people who were full on grieving Jerusalem, including some members of the rabbinic movement, and now without God’s presence in the world, life isn’t worth living. We won’t eat meat because there was meat

Offered at the sacrificial table. We won’t drink wine because libations of wine were offered, we won’t have children anymore because their world isn’t a place worth inhabiting. This is very resonant. Read surveys of people thinking about whether to have children nowadays, like something like five, six of them

Report concerns about the climate is a reason, a weighty reason not to have children. And yet, if you’re Jewish and you’re alive today, your ancestors, biological or spiritual, are the people who didn’t take that route, who chose only to adorn a corner of their house barronly and not to cease living.

And there’s a sense to both grieve and to say, you know what, we don’t really need that. Rabbinic Judaism is born out of the decision not to keep fighting for Jerusalem, but to surrender it to the Romans in exchange for a small coastal town called Yavnet where an academy could be built

And a new type of religious life could be set up. And so the second side of the ambivalence is a sense that actually no catastrophe is final. The world really did end with the destruction of the temple and with the holocaust and with pogroms in many towns over the millennia.

And it also continued. And to think about, you know, most probably most Jews of the Roman Empire couldn’t and didn’t want to have felt unfaithful to have moved on from the temple and believe that Judaism was over. And for them it was. And so to be the inheritor of a faith that knows

That excessive grief will consume you in its flames and the way that grief needs to be moderated is a central part of what I and my community carry today. – Sure, I’ll be really short. So I often think about Lazarus because he died and he came back. Jesus called him out. And so in the dying, he wasn’t present, but then unbind him, come out into the world. And what was Lazarus life like after he came out of the tomb?

And did he have a new life in Jesus because he saw Jesus when he came out? So for me that’s an image I think about a lot about when things are dying, what what can we unbind from ourselves and what do we see? And my understanding,

It’s the light of Jesus that gives us the hope, even in the death. So there’s that story about Lazarus that resonates with climate change and death and resurrection and new life in the human form. So I could talk a lot more about that, but Chris says just a minute, he’s purring down there.

– This question about ancestors is so powerful. I’ve recently been rereading the testimony of Omar Saed, who was brought to Charleston in the Carolinas on a slave ship. And he was someone who was versed in Islamic scholarship and knew the Quran by heart. And after having run away from the first place

Into which he was enslaved and sold, he found himself on a farm in the rural south in a prison. And he started to write the verses of the Quran that he remembered on the walls of this prison cell. And later on he was taken into a household and apparently converted to Christianity

And asked to write in Arabic a defense of Christianity, and he decided to write his life story interspersed with narration from the Quran. They didn’t know what he was writing. And I think about that story a lot. It’s recently been made into a remarkable opera penned by Rhiannon Giddens,

Who many of you will know, and it’s gonna be playing in Boston the first week of May, and then coming to New York in 2024. It’s called Omar and it’s absolutely marvelous. But that story for me is not just a story of resilience. I think we talk about resilience a lot,

But is also about resistance. And it is also knowing that one couldn’t return home. That it wasn’t about the hope of returning home, but it was the hope of carrying a sense of what was home into your life at this moment. And for this particular personality on (indiscernible),

It was those sacred texts which you could write in this new land and it would be sensible to him and to some around him and that was the place that he drew strength from. And I think there is a kind of an estrangement we have, I think migration, enslavement, the refugee crisis,

Leaves us estranged and strange. And yet my tradition says to me, this tradition came as something strange, it’ll leave us something strange. Be like someone who is traveling who stops under the shade of a tree for a few moments, the prophet said and then moves on.

So this is our moment under the tree. Maybe we can hear what the tree is saying. We have a moment in this time to create, but knowing that our home is with the divine, actually gives us a sense of emergency I think that this time is limited, it’s short.

How many breaths do we have? How many days are ahead of us? That recent book that talked about 4,000 weeks, we started breaking our lives down in that way. So how do we capture from our ancestors how they dealt with that sense of urgency?

I think that for me maybe holds some of the secret. – Thanks. These are such beautiful, beautiful answers. I will just say quickly that in the Chan and Zen Buddhist tradition, the ancestors are very, very much alive with us. Every time I sit down on the meditation cushion,

I’m very aware that the ancestors are sitting with me. And it’s a unbroken lineage of over 1,500 years from teacher to student, all these men and women passing the heart tradition down to us. And within that lineage of ancestors, there’s a very, very strong tradition of communion with nature.

It comes out of Daoism in China, but it’s a very strong tradition of mountains and rivers. And we also have a strong tradition of the teachings of Buddha nature are expressed through all beings, including those that are generally considered to be in sentient, including the stones, including the rivers,

Which in fact are not in sentient at all. Everything is sentient, everything is full of Buddha nature. So the ancestors and the sentient beings are all with us at all times. And I think that really informs a Buddhist approach to this environmental crisis. – So one thing I’m learning today

Is that this panel could have been three hours long. I’m sorry to be the referee here and cut us off, but this is the closing of the panel. So can we have a round of applause.

#Interfaith #Panel #Graduate #Conference #Religion #Ecology

Good afternoon, welcome to the Commonwealth Club of California I’m Celia Menchel chair of the clubs member LED Middle East forum One of many member LED forums that does a variety of programming at the Commonwealth Club The next Middle East forum event is the fourth annual Trump and the Middle East panel our

Panelists will discuss the last year the policies of Trump in the Middle East you can find out more about these and other upcoming programs at Commonwealth Club dot org and If you have questions for our speakers today, would you please submit them via?

Chat and I would now like to thank a few people I’ll begin with Marc Kirschner the director of audio and visual Services at the Commonwealth Club. I’d like to thank the Graduate theological Union rabbi, Daniel layman The United religions initiative and the San Francisco interfaith council for assistance with this program. I

Also would like to give a very special. Thank you to Michael Pappas who in one word is a mensch He has helped me so much over the years moderating many programs and so helpful and Dedicated to the common good Would you please welcome Michael Pappas?

Thank you so very much Celia and thank you for your hard work and all of the love you put into this Good afternoon and welcome to today’s virtual meeting of the Commonwealth Club, California we also welcome our listening and Internet audiences and invite everyone to visit us at WWF club you are G

Today’s program and the club’s new virtual efforts are generously supported by the Chan Zuckerberg initiative and a collaborative of local funders and donors We are grateful for their support and hope others will follow their example and support the club during these uncertain times

I’m Michael Pappas executive director of the San Francisco interfaith council and I’ll be moderator for today’s program called the importance of interfaith understanding allow me now to offer a brief overview of today’s subject as the executive director of an

Organization whose mission is to bring people of different faiths together to celebrate our rich diverse spiritual and religious traditions build understanding and serve our community I’ve observed that the importance of interfaith understanding is at no time more significant than in times of crises

We seem to naturally come together and desire to build interfaith understanding at times of anti-semitic attacks Islamophobic attacks terrorist attacks on houses of worship Attacks on human and civil rights to name a few today. We find ourselves in the midst of a very different kind of attack an

Unprecedented public health crisis from the outset we’ve heard scapegoating rhetoric from the highest echelons against Asian people as a way of placing blame for the pandemic and At the same time interestingly When first called upon to shelter in place

10 weeks ago the three major Abrahamic faiths were preparing to enter into their holiest of seasons But the Jews it was Passover with a message of liberation over oppression for the Christians It was Easter the triumph of life

Over suffering and death and for our Muslim sisters and brothers who were preparing for a month-long of ascetic practices to better come to Relationship with their creator the planet one another in themselves to become better people This was a time of great

Introspection, it is my hope that as we discussed the importance of interfaith understanding That today we do so through the lens of the present corona virus and how interfaith understanding Can help us emerge from this season of physical economic and spiritual struggle more enlightened sisters and brothers of faith

And now it is my pleasure to introduce our distinguished panel. Allow me to begin with Masha being Dalla, Marcia beam is a religious motivational speaker and humanitarian with a master’s degree in Islamic studies presently she is pursuing a doctorate in Islamic studies at the Graduate theological you

Margene would you please begin our program with your remarks? Hello everyone, and thank you Michael for that generous introduction I thank God for giving me this opportunity to share this esteemed panel with everyone and to be able to serve all those who have Joined in and on listening in live

For my opening remarks I would begin with a greeting of peace to everyone Salam to help whoever is joining us and I’d like us to think about Internally jia city and about this interfaith Communication that we are aiming to bring into this world

I’d like to think about it from how we arrived at this place where we died illogically engage with one another how we proceed in that location and What we take away from there as we move away from an enriched dialogue

I think it’s so important to be mindful that when we arrive into an inter-religious engagement that we have to be cognizant that there are some traditions that are Minority traditions and they somehow feel an extra burden of having to explain themselves so the premise with which we arrive into a dialogue is

Very important and as important as to the different subjects that we’re going to speak about for the longest time I think the premise with which we used to engage in dialogue with one another was either due to colonization You know

You want to learn about the other so that you can subdue the other you have a history of learning about the other? just because you’re afraid of the other and You just want to come out there and say oh you’re not as scary as I thought you were

Nice to meet you. All those might be the crises resolutions that we might have at this point But I think the beautiful way to arrive at an interval Egeus or an interfaith dialogue is perhaps what is inspired at least for me from the Quran which is the sacred text of the Muslims and

And that talks about Engaging with the other at a human level not at a religious level not at a cultural level not at a gendered level but as another human being and the famous verse of the Quran which is 49:13, which says? You know enough anak now calm min Beca danwoah antha

Which are now come sure Obon Merkabah? We created you in male and female and we distributed you in different tribes and nations Lita RF oooh so that you may get to know one another and learn from one another this in no way is an indication of

Supremacy in the a chemical in the mahi at Karim the one who is virtuous and the eyes of God is the one who is God weary and who is responsible as a human being so I I think that that sets a premise of how you

Arrive at it you arrive at it wanting to know the human other Another religious other or the cultural other and once you arrive there you engage with different Modalities and and I’m so blessed to be at the gtu where we have this inter-religious environment where we can study about

Different faiths religions based on texts context spirituality Pilgrimage there is so much that we share with one another as human beings and and because I’m in the sacred text Department I think our text and the multiplicity in which people understand and

Render those texts and actually emulate those texts is is provides us with a plethora Of opportunities to engage with we also come about and engage with social concerns. We look at the coronavirus for example you know the pandemic that were it that we were in we

Approached it from a moral mandate point of view from each of our traditions We had a moral mandate to seek out the other and to reach out to the other And I think over this pandemic we were able to share smiles. We were able to share stories

We were able to share support for one another even though we were sheltered in place and I think the the final point that I feel I can make at least for my opening remarks is how we move forward from there

So when we come in we come in realizing that sometimes this is an extra burden For those who are minority traditions when we’re in there We’re actually engaging with text with context with social concerns with issues around gender with issues aren’t poverty refugees and when we move away from there, I

Think it is. So important to realize that we have only engaged with one rendition or one part of a diverse tradition, so what I might have engaged with is perhaps One of the several intersections in which in which aid religious Trent tradition?

Manifests itself. So if I speak here today, I’m only a part of a multiplicity of Ways in which Muslims express their faith and a diverse understanding of different? intersectionalities of geographic location of language of culture and that is where I speak from so when I walk away

I know that I’m not really speaking for us. I’ve gotten to know an entire tradition No, it’s just that one part and Islam just like any other tradition is not a monolith It has several and diverse ways in which people, you know render their faith and express their spirituality

So I think just to wrap that all up how we arrived What we engage with and how we leave is very important to a successful and dialogical Engagement and inter-religious faith. Thank you Thank you so very much much a beam We look forward to asking you some questions in a few minutes

But now I’d like to introduce the right Reverend William swing the former Episcopal bishop of California and the founding trustee and president of the United religions initiative my dear friend bishop swing the floor is yours Thank you, Michael Wonderful to be with Majah Dean and Sam today

They come from the gtu the Graduate theological Union over in Berkeley over 40 years ago various denominations Decided instead of just studying together. Why don’t we put our libraries together why don’t we have classes so that people from one religion or one denomination can get to know other people and study other traditions

This is such a gem In the Bay Area. It’s one of the largest interfaith libraries in the world, by the way But Sam teaches there and Raja Dean Dean is getting a PhD there inshallah But this is not the way it is all over the world There are places in the world where?

There are schools that teach people of one religion to hate the people of another religion And there’s a lot of money behind those groups They hundreds of millions of dollars. They send people all over the place to build schools to teach children to hate people with other religions

But that’s not just in schools That that’s in little groups, we’re in Charlottesville, Virginia people can go down the street saying the Jews will replaces or In Evidently Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world I’ve seen statistics on that

Muslims are persecuted. There are there are schools of thought there are centers of thought that are churning out hatred Interfaith hatred Every day there have got to be people on the other side Who are putting up? The opposite that we can move farther as a civilization

If the religions can learn to live together study together And love each other and work together for the Civic good And if they do that, you can build a greater civilization than if you start Killing everybody from other other religions

And therefore I just if I had a hat on I take it off to the ggu and to The people I’m on the panel with today The second thing is I represent the United religions initiative and by the way, we are WWWE you are org And if you look that up

Right up at the very top it says interfaith a responses to the coronavirus And if you hit that Then comes down a whole wrath of things about These are the seminars these are the actions. These are The people you can get in touch with these are and all over the world today

People of all kinds of faiths are getting together to serve their communities in the midst of enormous family Norma’s hunger it’s not just I You know somebody hating another religion. It’s a matter. How can we eat? I saw one little story where? These people were standing in line for they said are you?

This religion are you from that religion they say we’re from this religion they said you don’t get food this one gets hurt so it gets it gets very practical Our United religions initiative I went around the world to talk to the Pope and the Dalai Lama and Grand Mufti Xand

Sheikh of al-azhar and Buddhist Wan Buddhist leaders and Chief rabbi and Senate center and I learned that Much easier to work not it with the people at the top of religion because they don’t have much Ability to to stretch

Beyond their own tradition, but grassroots people have a chance to move out into the community and get together Without worrying about too much about doctrine or discipline They can they can find a need in a community and get together from all the different religions and indigenous traditions and

Ethical or spiritual this perspectives and they can form coalition’s cooperation circles to address the needs so we We got into that 20 years ago. We’re now going to be 21 at 20 years old on August or not, June 26 We’ve gone through our teenage years now we’re young adults and

We’re in a hundred in eight countries of the world we’ve got well over a thousand cooperation circles the God well over a million people and We don’t we don’t have a campus we don’t have a building we don’t have overhead

We only have 36 employees all over the world and everybody else is a volunteer There there’s a big heart in the world among people of not only Jewish Muslim Christian, but Buddhist some Hindus and Indigenous tribes there’s a big heart that if if we could tap into that resource

We could change the world. So that’s what we’re doing. And so number one I’m really pleased to be on but these two people from the GTU That’s that’s not my I greatly look up to and number two. I represent URI and glad to be here today Michael my dear friend

Bishops Wang I would be remiss after listening to you if I didn’t make two confessions one is that the San Francisco interfaith council is a cooperation circle of the united religions initiative and we are proud of that and The other two Sam and Maha beam is in a different iteration in life

I served as the interim director of the patriarch athenagoras Orthodox Institute at the gtu and and served on their board and it was very very Rewarding and I know the amazing work that you all are doing So, thank you. And thank you bishops wing for your leaders

Our next panelist is Sam Baron Sean cough who earned his PhD in the history of Judaism at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School he’s an assistant professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate theological Union at Berkeley and It gives me great pleasure to present Sam

Thank you so much my goal and thank you to bishops wing and some other beings Allah, this is Already a beautiful conversation that’s happening right now And I might just throw another log on the fire to stoke our discussion as we move forward Such an important conversation to have at all times and

Particularly during times of strife when when different groups of all kinds including religions, of course have a Very wily tendency to pit themselves against each other in ways. The Bishop’s wing was alluding to earlier And we are in such a time in a variety of ways

Most acutely most presently the pandemic but all the other all the other divisions remain and in this context, especially I think we can all I hope we can all agree I’m including the listeners here that um That it is counterproductive

To say the least to take a position of my religion as beautiful your religion as ugly My religion is morally good. You are religious morally corrupt. Um But I would like to suggest that it’s also insufficient It’s inadequate to simply take a position of

My religion is beautiful. And your religion is beautiful. My religion is morally good and your religion is morally good. Um See, this is a really strong understandable in many ways tendency in Inter-religious relations and conversations. I think a really common example when this comes up is when we witness

Episodes of violence or bigotry in the name of a particular religious tradition and there’s a real sort of reflex that I think we have to come together and to say those people are Misunderstanding they’re perverting this tradition whose essence is one of love humanism of one of justice and so on and

That is an important message and there’s often truth in that of course But it is also true that each of us Comes from a tradition. It is complicated We each come in and not only the Abrahamic religions that we have in this conversation here but every every tradition Has a complex history

And has its shadows And I would like to suggest that actually here too is really important common ground for us to meet each other around When we sugar coat or oversimplify our traditions and those of our friends We are missing a really important opportunity to for a robust inter-religious encounter and also

An opportunity to engage in really important work of Solidarity to heal this fragmented and wounded world that we’re living in and I’d like to Suggest also that actually maybe counter-intuitively in some ways when we sugar coat and oversimplify our traditions We’re actually Fanning the flames of inter-religious tension in some ways

And I hope that’ll become more clear just in the couple comments that I want to that. I want to bring to light here and this is not just a matter of intellectual honesty or historical accuracy

Although it’s also of course that I want us to appreciate its ways that this is actually an important dimension of love Love for our traditions and in love for each other. I think it’s especially Illuminating to think of this in terms of interpersonal love that when we really love another individual, of course

It’s not just for their greatest strengths and their sort of peak moments, but to really love is to also Look upon and be in relation to their vulnerabilities their mistakes their areas for growth There’s a lot of talk about what it means to love a country these days a lot of people’s accusing

Accusing folks that for example not loving America where there’s a sort of sham Picture of love that is about just waving a flag standing for a national anthem Drawing attention to exceptional qualities of our country without also looking upon the very complicated

Histories and shadows of this country as if to say that to talk about histories of massacres of indigenous people histories of every and ongoing legacies of racism is somehow a failure to love I Think that is a dangerous perspective to take and it applies also to what it means

I’d like to say to love our own religions and to love the traditions of other people around us It’s not just to cherry-pick the verses that resonate with our contemporary values It’s not just a highway it golden ages It’s also to look upon the fact that our traditions invariably

Have teachings that are hurtful offensive We’ve all gone through long periods in artists in the history of our traditions of inflicting physical violence and spiritual violence And to look upon all of this is Truly to be able to bring a robust deep love to the traditions in the Torah in the Hebrew Bible

In Deuteronomy 6:5, we have a line that huffed and fashiona the whole about You shall love God with all of your heart and there’s a there’s a midrashic Teaching on this of what is this kind of love that?

We’re talking about with all of your hearts and the word for heart in Hebrew is love and as you heard the word for your Heart here is live fob. There’s an extra fuck. There’s an extra letter get in here and so the ancient Midrash asked the question of What’s up with that? And?

The suggestion is that this is telling us to love the Schnee is Loretto The answer to the answer with both of your inclinations with your good inclination and your so-called evil inclination and the Text goes on to wonder. What does it mean to love?

With both with up with that with that shadow side with that yetzer Hara And the answer is shallow. Yeah leap ha ha Luke Ohama calm your heart is not divided In relation to the divine and I would add in relation to one another and our traditions. So this is a kind of love

That looks upon the wholeness With a full open heart and I might just quote another Jewish physician of the soul by the name of Sigmund Freud who drew our attention to ways in which When we deny or suppress things that we know to be true that is actually far more

Dangerous and exerts far greater control over us than when we let those things into our conscious awareness and actually Externalize them speak about them not act upon them and I want to be clear about that but to be aware of them and to be open with them and so in our interfaith understanding

Our inter-religious relations, I think that is actually a matter of not just intellectual honesty, but a matter of wholehearted Open I’d love to bring to one another To actually engage with our traditions and with each other’s traditions in their wholeness in a spirit of

Asking the questions of ourselves and one another, how can we grow? Thank you Thank you Sam and now it’s time for our question and answer period I think I’d like to pick up on some of the The themes that you raised as well as mobis

Bishops wing the first question. I’d like to put to Sam and Masha being in particular. I started this Overview of the subject today and mentioned that interfaith understanding Is heightened the interest at least is heightened during times of crises

And I talked a little bit about sign of phobia the hatred in Asian people that has Been the scapegoating and and the playing at our Asian sisters and brothers. I’m wondering in your own cultures and traditions if you have seen a spike in

Islamophobia and anti-semitism and what you would attribute that to? Why do we start with much of being? Yeah, that is that is a very important point that you bring up Michael It seems the whenever there is a crisis in the world. It will bring out the essential character it seems

Sharing away from in such essentialism chat But it brings out what we’re made up of so if there is goodness in someone’s heart, you know they do just go deep down and bring that goodness out and is the crisis that Reveals the goodness in people and sometimes even though we would not

You know want to admit it or would not want to acknowledge it sometimes it even brings out the very dubious From among ourselves. So like every other tradition, I think we’ve also seen

What you say or what you speak off with the Asian population here in the United States. There were countries in the sub Subcontinent in in India, you found that The Muslims were targeted with the same kind of rhetoric and the same kind of hatred that we saw against the Asians here in America

There is no denying that and and it did cause a very real impact on people’s lives on their economy on how they Associated with their neighbors and and with a larger public but I think deep down We should also acknowledge the good work that came out of it

So there was there was an entire community this earlier last month in the month of Ramadan I was invited by the World Federation of Muslim organizations to do a talk on Philanthropy and how all Muslims all over the world United to come to the rescue of those who were being marginalized?

And those who were being fired from their jobs just because they were or you know associated with certain religious tradition So at one side when you do see this coming out on the other side You see that the goodness and the people they’re reaching out

United in solidarity and reaching out to those people who have been Mistreated this way so that is true And we see this is what I’ve seen at least in in In the Muslims and and here I think it in at the San Francisco area

You found the African Muslims who are coming out and they’re concerned about safety and they’re talking about how even when we Reopen the religious, you know churches and organizations That we are giving safety their priority. So I think it brings out a bit of both in people

Thank you for raising that last issue. That’s another question that one of our Audience members has a so we will address that as well Sam. Would you chime in? Yeah, I’ll just say briefly Absolutely anti-semitism has been on the rise lately and that has been bound up with as You emphasized importantly Michael

In and also much of him that’s been bound up with increases in discrimination and marginalization of all minorities and There’s a very long tradition of blaming plagues on Jews And you’ve seen that come up a bit lately

And I think even more so there’s a something that David Nierenberg has brought out in recent book anti Judaism there’s a there’s a long tradition of whenever there is a time of Great ideological shifting and visioning of new ways new new philosophies new economics new politics There is a great tendency to

To point to some oil right to some other to some shadow as the antithesis of whatever it is that you’re envisioning and There’s been a long history of Jews Of course being put into that hot seat of being the other against which these new Visions are articulated and

Today, it’s not just Jews. Of course They’re away. This is something We see all all groups being used in this way, but I think we’re living in a time of great vision Great transformation and upheaval in some ways that are very exciting actually

But I think that that’s also part of this rise of Islamophobia anti-semitism Xenophobia more generally That gets that gets bound up with this and I should say that that happens not to do the both sides But we see that we see that all across cultural spectrums thank you on bishops wing

Feel free to chime in and give your thoughts on this, but I have another question for you and in particular I know you’re a little bit of a philologist and The theme today is the importance of interfaith understanding

My mind importance has always had to do with impact could you give some examples how interfaith understanding? Could lead or has led to importance, you know the word understanding here It connotes two ways of understanding one is in the head Do it. How do I learn about? Judaism

How do I learn about Islam? What is your theology what if what are your rituals? Etc so I learn what’s your language? What what’s your Holy Scripture? And then another way of learning is is just to Know you as a as a Jew know you as a Muslim

And we don’t have to we don’t have to know our sacred texts, but just need to know each other To be citizens to share a common concern for the neighborhood or for the town we live in I remember going to the Vatican in 1996 and I

Was dealing with the Cardinal who was the head of inner religious activities for the Roman Catholic Church and We were talking about interfaith. He said, you know we decided to take Islam seriously 30 years ago. He said in 1930 in 1996 over this we’re talking to 1996. He said

1966 so we got a whole lot of our young scholars to learn Arabic to learn Muslim scripture to learn the geography of Islam around the world And he said we have a cadre of people who really understand Islam

And I I was so impressed by that that that you would make an investment in understanding the other But then after I thought about it It’s also that’s just a few people there are billions and billions of people the world and only a few people really understand

Intellectually understand the language the theology the Etc So so what’s what’s available? What’s available is to understand the other person? The other day I was talking to Ambassador Thomas Graham who has negotiated almost every United States Negotiation with Russia concerning nuclear weapons and we’ve signed some pretty good things like the

NPT non-proliferation treaty which he was the head of The New START talks, etc, etc, which he’s been involved in almost all that He said, you know We wouldn’t know we wouldn’t have gotten anything done or nuclear disarmament between Russia and America if it weren’t for the human relationships that were built up between

The Russian diplomats and our diplomats and their scientists and our scientists and their politicians and our fathers they actually we he Became deep friends, and we’re negotiating we were negotiating as one Human being who really respected the other you and me. I still want to talk about understanding

It’s not interfaith understanding isn’t just what you know It’s also who you know It’s who you respect and who respects you and what you what could you build from that so Interfaith understanding for me. Yeah, it’s a luxury to do it intellectually It’s necessary. It’s important

But but for the masses of people in the world, the real issue is to know to know each other and Marja being said this earlier It’s to know each other as humans That’s it

Thank You Bishop swinging I’m going to pick up because we are speaking with scholars and III I’d like to ask majah being What are some of the ways in which inter religious education equip scholars and practitioners? For dialogue and action and engagement Yeah, thank you Michael for that question

This really is a very I think it’s a necessity at this this point where humanity has arrived here at this place to To be ready to embrace diversity, you know, there is there is just no way that we can complain about it There is just no way we can get around it

Diversity is here to stay and the sooner We embrace it the the faster we will be able to achieve That common good that all of us are trying to arrive at you know in our diversity as human beings So it is so important that we engage with one another, you know as colors

As as as just human being citizens of a country Sharing the same concerns sharing the same challenges and and then I think what I’m getting at with this is It’s so important to know how we are interconnected in in this pain that we all share. So I

Realized that we were going to we were going to have this event when all of us were going to be in a celebratory mode all the three Abrahamic traditions were going to be in some sort of form of a celebration or the other and

Then coin did the coin just flipped and we find ourselves in a suffering mode now and we’re all suffering together and somehow This inter religiosity that that going down to the human Core of one another has connected us and interconnected us in in beautiful ways. So I think

What this does for other scholars is it equips us first by knowing that we’re not just into religious, but we’re also intersectional we all When we’re talking to one another we’re not just talking from that part of a different religion Tradition or a tradition that is different from mine

But it’s also a person in a different location than I am in a different body that I am With different access abilities than I have with different privileges than I have. So Everything that we bring to the table comes from these different intersections different geographical locations different languages different

Cultures so I think you come into this study termed inter-religious study But you leave away from here equipped with a lot more to expand that Conversation with now you can take it into a gender discourse. You can take it into you know, middle-east

Relationships you could take it into geographical. You can take it into calling for justice, and I think I really like this about you know about it this verse of the Quran which says that God really doesn’t like

Making noise if you were to say so love jihad, Ebisu God doesn’t like it when you don’t talk politely Alarm on Gulen except for the one who’s been oppressed, you know, the googles are relaxed for those who are oppressed

They can go out and they can make noise and it’s and it’s totally fine for them to do so So I think when you leave or in inter-religious dialogue you you come out with all these understandings and with all these

You know intricacies and different ways in which we connect and be express ourselves. So at least for me, I find that a very beneficial tool in my toolbox when I engage with someone else on a different level and and you know dialogical II and

Collaborate with them thank you, Michael. Thank you and Sam a companion question here The gtu is known for its inter-religious approach to the study of religions as a professor there and from your vantage point of the GT use Center for Jewish Studies What does this look like in practice?

Are there any aspects of the GT use approach that might be more instructive for interfaith dynamics in the broader world? Thanks for the question And I just want to say first of all I’m obsessed with everything lesser being just said it resonates really profoundly And I’ll just pick up on this point

I just want to highlight at this point if she said which is really a part of my answer that this notion that we come To think about and study inter religiosity and we we nuance that and Texture that in ways that let us see that what we’re studying is also

Intersectionality and that it’s not simply a Jew a Christian and a Muslim walk into a bar as if these are You know three types of human beings in the world But that actually we are all complex

Constellations of identities and positionality is and I will highlight that as something that I think the gtu is doing increasingly well is my is my impression in a direction that I think is really important for Inter-religious studies in religious studies. Um

But yeah in Bishop’s wing and I appreciated your remarks in the beginning where you you noted the Institutional history of the GT you as beingness this union of schools And I think that this that you of the GT you says a lot

We are not striving to be a kind of melting pot of Religious and spiritual people we really are a community of communities. We are a union of centers and schools And what that means to me? Is that while we sort of maintain a bifocal vision in some way we keep in mind

The world at large and what it means to live in a globalised diverse World of people. Um, and we also keep in mind the specificities and particularity z’ of traditions in their in their historical context in their textual hermeneutical dynamics So a good example of this we’re launching a really exciting

In many ways groundbreaking inter-religious Chaplaincy program this fall Directed by kamal of busan sia In the way that this is working is that this is training people to do spiritual care with diverse populations in all kinds of contexts and settings but also part of the training is to

Also complete a master’s in one of the particular centers of the gtu So to say that we want to train you in these sort of broad humanist Universalist traditions of spiritual care, but we also

Value being rooted in a particular tradition and speaking from place of being in forms. I think that that that bifocal vision of keeping the world at large in mind while also being sensitive and it’s used the particularity of different traditions and different communities is something that the gtu does remarkably well and

I think does shed light on broader possibilities in the world Thank you You know when when we’re at the club and I’m moderating I’m used to Celia Bringing up these little cards with questions if you’ve heard a little ping

Over and over and over it’s because my Kershner from the club is sending me your Questions and so many of them are so wonderful. I know think we’re going to get to all of them, but I would like to To post a couple and I think would be instructive here. Um

This one is for bishops wing and I guess it’s asking for some clarity from your opening remarks If those at the top of religious hierarchy are constrained say my dogma and doctrine How is it possible that? Followers should lead without such constraint. Is it a shared leadership?

If we take away the shared leadership, but yeah, I don’t follow Let’s say the people at the top I Remember being in Jerusalem with the Dalai Lama and he and I went by to see a

Patriarch and the patriarch was seated high on a throne and the Dalai Lama and I were seated on the floor And we were I was telling him about the United religions initiative and

Ceteris and I said, why don’t you join her to join us and let’s do something about interfaith, and he said he said I I Can’t I’d love to do that, but I can’t do it. He said I’m a prisoner in on my own throne I can’t I can’t leave here

I’m up here, which said the world to me he was wonderful man and very spiritual and he got it in terms of a bigger vision that the economy of God involving many more than one one faith perspective but When you’re dealing with religious leaders usually

There’s a pyramid and they’re at the top of the pyramid and they’re their number one Obligation is to defend the faith of the people underneath them and if they act like That they’re just one of many faiths It kind of means Maybe one faith has is kind of as good as another

And that destroys the pyramid and so they don’t have a lot of chance to Get away from the pyramid, but the people at the bottom of the pyramid they just live in towns and villages If they want to build it well together with other people I could just do it

So there’s a great deal of Flexibility at the bottom. There’s very little flexibility at the top And you see that in the cooperation circles Yeah Very interestingly we decide okay. We’re just going to start a grassroots movement, etc

But as well as we work around the world, we find that more and more religious leaders joint cooperation circles so that we have rabbis and Imams and and bishops and Etc, etc. In the cooperation circles. It’s very interesting you start at the bottom and all kinds of

People in the hierarchies begin to work with you. So that’s great. I guess it’s our human nature to be together Yeah, exactly This question is for Masha beam you speak about approaching the other as a human being first What can be done by Muslims in the United States?

To help the public understand Islam as you express it Yeah, thank you for that question, Michael and it’s a very genuine and beautiful concern That that that has been shared through this question. But again, I’d like to go back to the

To the initial remarks that I made. I think it’s key. It’s really key to understand that when we are Inviting the Muslim folk in in our country to be able to engage with others on a human level That we’re also ready to engage with them at that level

So I sometimes find it very burdensome if there is just one Muslim individual who is called upon to explain everything. That is Islam And and I find that that is just so unfair because each one of us is so different and we’re a different location And we’re at different places in our own

Spirituality and humanity. So um I would just I would suggest but we are also open to learning at our own pace from our own points of view and perspective and and I think you know this country and every other country and every other community of human beings is going to find

Muslims just as welcoming as any other religious tradition to sit down and Talk to another person as a friend or as as as a community member I think it becomes a little problematic and and that’s why I said it’s important to recognize that sometimes Minority traditions feel they have this double burden

I remember once at the Asian Art Museum when I was speaking to a group of K to 12 features and and many of those teachers would just not talk about Islam as as world religions because they thought it was very intimidating to talk about Islam and instead of that

What was happening was that was a 14 year old? Muslim kid in high school was tapped on on the shoulder to explain why there was a certain event happening in the world pertaining to Muslims

So I I think what I meant that when we engage with another at a human level is that we realize that that one person can really Might not even want to it’s not whether their equipment equipped or not might just not want to engage

At that level with someone else. So instead of saying can you explain why this happened to me? You could come up and give a human comment and say I hope you’re OK in the middle of all of this What can I do to help you get through this?

So I think that is what I meant about a human engagement rather than just you know Take someone little is visibly Muslim and and you know just start up a conversation which they might not want to engage with

You know when you first mention this it really it hit home because a lot of our work is service oriented and I remember a long long time ago. Somebody said to me somebody Yeah people might not pick up a book on the Greek Orthodox faith and all they’re going to know about your

Your faith is what they see in you and And so you are a living and walking book if you will to some extent on on what your faith teaches, um, Sam just a question here it as much as Jews have been a minority population

Wherever they lived almost all their entire history until just the past seventy years or so for Jews living in the State of Israel How do you think this has shaped Jewish perspectives on interfaith relations? mmm Yeah

Profoundly, I and this this again connects to some of the wise words that might redeem was just saying that I think something and also this this image Michael Lee you concluded with of Of each of us being a sort of book that gets studied as Kind of representative

In some cases of an entire tradition in ways that that can be a beautiful opportunity but also ways to use measure Dean’s Term ways that that can be burdensome and I think that with the ways in which that is burdensome Or more are often more clear to people who are having minority experiences

Something that in any kind of conversation We at the most micro or the most macro level that we have to be sensitive to is power power dynamics Much of being spoke earlier about about what it is to have a dialogue and I think that we can We can contrast dialogue with

Disputation right a lot of the so-called Inter-religious dialogue of the past when we look back to the sort of great you know inter-religious dialogue happening in the medieval world say These were almost exclusively scenarios where there was a particular authority via a king an emperor

Arranging for these kinds of fellows either directly or indirectly but there being a conversation between a religion of religious group that is hegemonic that is dominance that is in power that is stable and secure and not having

Tremendous reason to fear for its existence or it’s for others perceptions of them and other religious groups that have minority experiences in that place and Jews as the question indicated Have Judaism arose in exile Judea Judaism as we know it rabbinic judaism arose after the destruction of the temple in the year 70

And in almost in the Formative centuries millennia of this tradition was was diaspora experienced. So I think that there’s ways that Jews the inter-religious Conversations have not always been safe For Jews, if that conversation doesn’t go. Well if Judaism doesn’t end up looking rational or or or

Theologically or philosophically sound at the end of that conversation. There are real material risks there I think something also that from the Jewish perspective and it really any minority religious perspective on interface Relations and conversations to be aware of is ways that this is always happening in a particular language and that language

Is is Is inevitably shaped more by The majority hegemonic religions than by the minority traditions that are participating in that conversation And even in the most well-meaning cases for example the term interfaith That strikes me is a quite Christian term right as a Jew and you know

Faith as doctrine or belief actually isn’t isn’t such a Foundational part of what it is to be Jewish. So to define a religion as something that is a faith already Kind of indicates a particular setting in which this conversation is taking place

I for the record feel very comfortable in this conversation, and I’m Grateful to be here and to be a part of this and I find this to be fruitful But it’s just a small subtle example of something that can actually be far more insidious

You know there in other kinds of contexts. So I think that those are some ways that that The Jewish tradition has has emerged and involved around some of those particular Conditions and situations with regard to interfaith inter-religious dialogue

Thank you. You’ve given us a lot of food for thought and I’m gonna be very careful how I use language moving forward We’re coming to the end of the hour but I feel compelled because we’ve received more than one question on this particular issue and as the father of

Twins who are supposed to be graduating from high school Next week this week. Excuse me The question is how can we involve? young people of different faiths in this context of the covert 19 pandemic in growing in

Better relations of people of different religions and faiths and I will put that out to all three of you. It’s the last question Well, I think that the The human problem drawls the young people If you have if you have climate change

The young people don’t come at it. Like this is a Jewish problem or a Muslim problem or a Christian problem It’s just a human problem and the young people see it and they go to it And therefore they find their community In their action I

Was just thinking earlier when I was listening that Korona must be an inter-religious virus If it goes to all the religions and it creates a A human response that has to be global in order to do something about it Thank you, thank you

Maha beam yeah. I’m wondering if I could I mean, thank you and congratulations Michael for your I Think coming to that age group and the young people of today there is so much that we inherit from our parents and sometimes we also inherit their

Limitations and I don’t mean physical limitations or DNA and stuff like that. I also mean how we think Inadvertently, sometimes we pass on those limited ways in which we’ve shaped our intellectual ‘ti to our children when we

Sort of discipline them or tell them what they’re supposed to ask and not ask and and this I think when crisis hits Humanity, this is God’s Way of embolden Ain new thoughts So I think especially with that age group when they’re ready to question and they’re ready to question their own

Traditions and say why is it that in my tradition? I am or am I I am NOT able to Associate with another member of a certain religious tradition at this level I think that’s a very bold question

And and and I think our young people can readily see this they are not afraid of asking questions They are not afraid of breaking laws that we thought that we just couldn’t and we were bound by them

And and I think this is the beauty with which I think the next generation can take this work of interconnectedness Farther down we all feel the same pain we all bleed the same blood we all bruise in the same manner and I think this our young people relate to

For easy in any easier manner than I think people who are set in a tradition like perhaps, you know We are or maybe I can just speak for myself But I I would like to welcome this when my daughters questioned me about something that you know corners me. I Feel good about it

I really feel good about it because that’s a thought that never came to me and they’re asking me this question And I think a pandemic like this has brought the young people together and they’re looking for answers perhaps at places that we were too scared to look for and

Just to shout out to them to keep on Doing that good work and connecting us in ways that we thought there were no bridges to connect This will define their generation as say 9/11 to find ours Sam you’re gonna get the last word and now

Well, I must start with gratitude and I’m just really really enjoying listening to each of you and conversing with you Yeah This is a great concluding question you know something that a lot of religious traditions you give out particularly the mystical dimensions of those traditions is that moment when you realize that the

World as we know it right the the ways of the world that we were taught that everything that are the sort of laws of existence that Actually that is only the outer layer. That’s the sort of crust of a much deeper Mysterious unknown Dynamic Truth and an inner reality. Um, I

Think that we’re seeing in this in this upcoming generation of young people An attunement to that in a very real social political sense There seems to they’re straight. I have a lot of faith in this in this new generation and There seems to be a really remarkably pervasive sense that

The world as we know it doesn’t have to be this way that there actually can be we can gain insight into Dynamics of power and authority and all of the institutions that structure our existence and all of the different parties and

Canons and documents that tell us how things are and how they ought to be that actually um, These are that it’s possible to see through the veil To use to use the language of many of our traditions. Um

And they’re pairing that a lot of young people are I think more so than when I was growing up our pairing that with a real thirst for information and and that combination of both trying to see beyond the veil and narratives With a genuine thirst for information for details very counter histories

That is gonna be very potent for the world at large. But also that just opens up tremendous fertility and possibilities of renewal and the resources of our traditions As we’ve seen in the history of religion some of the the moments of flowering of transformation of new revelation

In within traditions happens when people see something completely different in those in those foundational sources and not to glorify the young people too much But I see a lot of promise. I see I see I see a very exciting churning of Commentators interpreters and practitioners of the future

And my hope is that we can have some intergenerational dialogue And learn from them we have exceeded the time in my apologies to the many other questions that we couldn’t address we could be here all day, which time does not permit, but the spirit does wish I

Want to say a very special thank you to our distinguished panelists Magi Bean dalla Bishop Williams swing and dr. Sam Baron Sean cough I’m Michael Pappas executive director of the San Francisco interfaith council today’s moderator for the program called the importance of interfaith understanding Now this meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California

Celebrating over a hundred and fifteen years of enlightened discussion is adjourned You You

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