NEWS FEATURE: Israeli interfaith project breaks new ground

c. 1997 Religion News Service BAKA AL-GARBIYA, Israel _ The chant of the”dhikr,”the Sufi Muslim recitation of the 99 names for God, resounded inside the mosque. But here and there a word of Hebrew blended into the holy din. Spaced among the Muslim men chanting their devotions in Arabic were Jews wearing skullcaps. One murmured […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

BAKA AL-GARBIYA, Israel _ The chant of the”dhikr,”the Sufi Muslim recitation of the 99 names for God, resounded inside the mosque. But here and there a word of Hebrew blended into the holy din. Spaced among the Muslim men chanting their devotions in Arabic were Jews wearing skullcaps. One murmured Psalms.

These religious Jews and Muslims are charting new territory in interfaith relations in the Holy Land by studying each others scriptural texts, rituals and celebrations.


Their venture _ sponsored by a group of Jewish, Muslim and Christian academic institutes and called the Elijah Project _ is one of the boldest, and potentially most promising, attempts to bridge the region’s deep divides that recent events show have not been eliminated by politicians and peace treaties.

Among the group in the mosque was Yehuda Wachsman, the father of Nachshon Wachsman, an Israeli soldier who was kidnapped and killed by the Islamic Hamas movement two years ago.

A religious Jew, Wachsman began to explore interfaith meetings as a way to come to terms with the killing of his son _ and personally cross the religious divide of hate and enmity that created the background for the Hamas attack.

A foundation established in his son’s memory, Moreshet Wachsman, has lent its sponsorship to the Elijah Project.”In the end human needs are human needs,”said Wachsman.”There is not much difference between Islam and Judaism. There is no reason to kill one another over religion.” The ultimate aim of the project, said founder Alon Goshen-Gottstein, is to create the world’s first interfaith academic institute in Jerusalem _ a city he described as a”crossroads”for people in search of spiritual meaning.”Very often in a university setting you study the history of religion, but one doesn’t integrate the dimension of the spirituality as it is lived by people,”observed Gottstein, a lecturer in Jewish thought at Tel Aviv University.”I want members of each faith tradition to be teaching their own tradition from academically responsible but faith-oriented perspectives to a multi-religious classroom,”added Gottstein, noting that in Jewish tradition, Elijah is the everpresent teacher and peacemaker.

The Elijah Project has created some uncommon alliances among its sponsors, bringing together Orthodox and Conservative Jews, Roman Catholics and Sufi Muslims, followers of Islamic mysticism.

A full-fledged Elijah School planned by the project will expand horizons even further to include Asian traditions not widely represented in the Middle East.

The formal study program will begin with a summer session this year, Gottstein said, and will expand eventually to a four-year institute where students will study theology, religious anthropology, ritual and law from both an experiential and scholarly perspective.


Gottstein said the idea for the school arose out of a conversation with a Jewish friend a year ago. “She asked me where she could take a class on the lives of the Christian saints _ and I realized that there was no such program for her anywhere in Israel,”he said.

While Christians are full-fledged members of the Elijah Project, it is the Jewish-Muslim dimension that is most innovative, breaking new ground in the relationship between two generally hostile communities, said Orthodox Rabbi David Rosen.”Until now, the Muslim presence in religious dialogue in Israel has been very weak,”said Rosen, one of the pioneers of Jewish-Muslim-Christian dialogue in the Middle East. He is also a founding member of the Elijah Project.

The project, Rosen continued, has for the first time created a dialogue between Jews and a”new generation of young Muslim scholars, self-confident in their relationship with the rest of Israeli society, and capable of representing their religious tradition in an interreligious forum.” The project also has sponsored some precedent-setting spiritual”encounters”between Jewish, Muslim and Christian seminarians. Gottstein called them”celebration-based”learning on topics ranging from the Muslim dhikr, to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, to the Christian Eucharist and Easter.”Interfaith encounters that do take place are usually on common human ground, for example, human rights, ecology; issues that are common to various traditions,”said Gottstein.”Instead, we have tried to focus on the unique spiritual identity of each tradition to explore the depth of the religious experience.” These are radical notions in a land where rabbis and imams preach fiery sermons about the exclusive truth attached to their particular tradition. More pluralistic attitudes have been slow to take root here.

For the overwhelming majority of people here _ including religious leaders _ interfaith dialogue is still unusual, if not highly taboo. Few religious Jews have ever been inside a mosque, or Muslims inside a synagogue.

The Elijah Project won’t change entrenched views overnight. But if the project’s first meetings are any indication, the encounters can quickly transform absolute certainties to questions and eat away at long-established fears and stereotypes.”One of the best bases for dialogue, humanity and tolerance should be religion. Politics hasn’t succeeded in bringing people together because it isn’t based on those principles,”said Ziad Zamal Abu Mukh, principle of the Baka Al-Garbiya Islamic College, the leading Islamic partner in the Elijah Project.

It was at the Elijah Project’s first meeting last winter that Abu Mukh personally broke new ground in Jewish-Muslim relationships by participating in a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony.


Taking the podium, the Muslim scholar gave a short but moving sermon on the philosophical meaning of light in Islamic and Jewish tradition, drawing parallels between Hannukah, the Jewish festival of lights, and the”sura,”or chapter of the Muslim Koran named Light.”Each light of the Hannukah candle reflects a different truth. Only when they are all lighted together do we have the Hannukah candles, which show the way of God,”said Abu Mukh, wishing his astonished Jewish, Christian and Muslim audience a”Happy Hanukkah.” In mid-February, about 60 Jews and Christians paid a reciprocal visit to Abu Mukh’s Muslim college to join a study session and celebration centered around the ceremony of the dhikr.

The Sufi-sponsored college represents a meditative, mystical stream of Islam that embraces a pluralistic approach to other religious traditions. Sufis shun both the political extremism and conversionist zeal that characterizes many fundamentalist Islamic groups.”The differences in color, religion and nation reflect the abilities of God and his mercies. Imagine how boring the world would be if everyone thought the same way,”said Abu Mukh.”I tell my students that wisdom isn’t that you just understand yourselves, but you have to understand the other side.”All religious and cultural values flow from one spring,”he said.

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After introducing the concept of the dhikr, it did not take long for Abu Mukh’s Jewish and Christian guests to find parallels to the Muslim ritual in their own prayers and rituals.

For Naomi Graetz, a Jewish Israeli who teaches English at Ben Gurion University, the dhikr echoed the”sh’ma,”the Jewish creedal statement _”Hear or Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”_ of monotheistic belief.

The brief Hebrew prayer, which is recited daily by religious Jews, is in essence a dhikr _ a remembering of God’s name _ observed Graetz, and has much the same goal.”When you say the sh’ma, you are uniting yourself with God,”she said.

While Gottstein aspires to make the Elijah Project’s study sessions a high-level discussion of sophisticated religious texts and topics, the mutual level of Jewish-Muslim ignorance means that even the most basic subjects must also be tackled.


In one study circle, a Muslim student explained to a Jew the meaning of the Islamic”sharia,”or legal code, that governs daily life, a concept that the Jew soon realized was almost identical to religious Jewish law, or”halacha.” In an all-women’s group, meanwhile, the talk reflected the common cultural ground that religiously observant Jewish and Muslim women share. Both live in largely male-dominated, religiously segregated societies where women’s prayers and rituals vary widely from those of men.

Mervat Mahmoud, a smiling 20 year-old Muslim student who wears a long, loose traditional dress and covers her head and neck with a white”hijab,”or scarf, was clearly moved by the meeting.”For many people, the only thing they know about Muslims is that they don’t think like Jews,”she said. The Elijah Project, she said, could help change that.

MJP END FLETCHER

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