Interfaith Conference, and Afterwards

After 2 lovely days home with my parents, I left Tuesday for the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding's Institute for Seminarians and Rabbinical Students. I took the bus to the train station (the bus having come very nearly as late as it could without me missing the train I planned to take), the train to Fairfield, and after some wandering, I found the cab company and got myself to Sacred Heart, where the conference was. I arrived and was totally spacey and more nervous than I expected to be or was quite aware of- I kept replying to questions oddly, and I was quite aware that I was a bit off. So I went, put my things in my room, and by the time I got back down, I was on my way to being in normal mental space again.

There was a bit of time to hang out before things started, and I met a student from HUC, and we shortly thereafter realized that not only do we have friends in common (shirei_shibolim and terriqat), but that we'd both been at their wedding... I also looked down the list of participants and found not only a few folks whom I knew from Interseminary Dialogue here in NYC, but also my boss from the Interfaith Community. The conference proved to be a really lovely chance to get to know them better, as well as making some new friends. It was really lovely to meet people who were really devoted to both thinking seriously and openly about their religious lives and beliefs, without so much of the layer of boredom, scepticism or pure professionalism that seems to grow up over things at JTS. It was very refreshing.

The actual lectures and text study experiences were overall quite good, with some interesting things to think about. We had a really interesting discussion about whether or not Christian belief in supersessionism threatened the ability to have dialogue. Apparently a the idea that we may believe things that are not only different but exclusive of the other and still respect each other and have dialogue is a very new one, something that we could literally see played out in the responses of people of different ages. I think I can make that work, partially because I expect that to be the case, going in to a dialogue with people who believe very different things from me. On the other hand, well, yes, of course it's threatening, although I think that supersessionism is less troubling, in some ways, than a commitment to proselytization, and yet that's something that's a legitimate part of Christianity as well. (I suppose part of it has to do with my inability to believe in a God who would have so little mercy as not to be able to pardon devoted worshipers who have been good people and worshiped Him and Him alone their whole lives, just through the "wrong" forms.)

I had one moment where my own reaction really surprised me. We were talking about not blaming the other for things that had happened in the past, and one of the Catholic students talked about how like we weren't blaming him personally for the Holocaust, he also didn't blame modern Jews for the death of Jesus. I was totally shocked, and rather strongly responded that I found it painful and shocking that he'd equate the death of one individual with that of 6 million. It worked out into a really interesting discussion of theology of suffering and purpose in life, and that was very rewarding. I don't think that my question really got answered, but the ensuing conversation was Really worthwhile. However, my shock came from the strength of my reaction- I've spent a long time refusing to get involved in a lot of serious thought about the Holocaust, I think as a reaction to how overdone it was when I was a kid, and I think I'm going to need to do some more serious and honest thinking about how it has influenced Jewish life these days, and how I want to react to that. It was something that I started thinking about reading For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, Yitz Greenberg's book about interfaith communication and relations, where he talks seriously about the Holocaust being the cause of much of modern interfaith dialogue, and I was both surprised and rather disturbed.

There was also a lot more discussion of Israel than I'd expected, but all by-the-way of some other topic, which I thought was an interesting tactic, which both made it frustrating and also made it easy to leave when the stress level got too high.

We visited a church (actually a Cathedral, but originally built as just a Catholic church) and a synagogue (Reform, which a very sweet rabbi with whom I disagreed on occasion). The student priest with whom I'd had the long conversation about theology and the like and I ended up providing some useful glosses to the lectures for each other, which was awfully handy, and gave me my space to voice my disagreements with the Reform rabbi in a less disruptive or frustrated fashion than I might have otherwise. Afterwards, a bunch of the Jewish folks stayed to put the Torahs that had been taken out of the ark to show off back, and then discussed some of our disagreements with what the rabbi had said, and also had a brief discussion about the proper direction to pray when one is in a synagogue/chapel where the ark is not on the East wall, and there is no minyan there.

At some point that evening, my classmate from JTS arranged a ride for the morning to a local conservative shul for shacharit through the reform rabbi, and offered for me to come along. I did, and the people were lovely (there was a lady with Alzheimer's, and another lady who sat next to her every morning to turn her pages for her, who seemed very pleased and genuine in doing so), and the service was everything that I dislike about some Conservative shuls- they skipped All of Psukei D'Zimra (including Barukh SheAmar and Yishtabach), Tahanun (ok, less of a problem), did a Hekhe Kedushah, and a very long El Malei Rachamim. And then we returned the the conference and had really interesting conversation over breakfast.

There was also a deaf student priest (and his two interpreters) there, which made for a really interesting dynamic. He was a lovely guy, very enthusiastic. The interesting part for me was more the way that the younger students basically glossed over the fact that he was deaf and just interacted, while the second career folks were fairly talkative about how wonderful it was that he was there, and how interesting seeing the interpretation into ASL was.

The whole thing was very friendly and delightfully open. (Their phrase was "be open minded, but not empty headed".) This made the other couple of things that happened on Thursday a bit of a shock, and certainly colored my reactions. As we were walking back to where we were staying after lunch on Thursday, a car stopped, and there was a hasid inside who wanted to know what we were doing (a bunch of Jews around a Catholic university), and whose reaction at first was: Why would Jews want to talk to Christians? and then does that mean that the Christians are becoming Jews? Ok, understandable, I guess. But the latter part- he wanted to know why I wore a kippah, and after I tried to explain, he beckoned one of the guys over, and asked him, rather than me. As the conversation was reported, he was confused as to why I wouldn't just want to light Shabbos candles, bake challah, and go to mikvah. He also wanted to know if I'd asked my rabbi about it.

The other 'funny' interaction happened while Steve and I were learning. We met at Barnes and Nobles, and were sitting there with Ahavat Chesed when two young women came up to us, wanted to talk and ask us if we knew about the Mother Goddess, how God must be plural, how God hates philosophy, and how they could prove God's existance, or eternal life. They were Really bad at listening, and their arguments were both all over the place, unstructured, very poorly filled out, etc. I guess it's because God hates philosophy.