NEWS FEATURE: Dalai Lama to headline Jerusalem interfaith meeting

c. 1999 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ For millenniums this holy city has been a place of conflict between rival Muslims, Jews and Christians. Now a high-powered group of interfaith activists wants to make Jerusalem an international center for interreligious dialogue _ beginning with a conference this weekend in the presence of exiled Tibetan spiritual […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ For millenniums this holy city has been a place of conflict between rival Muslims, Jews and Christians. Now a high-powered group of interfaith activists wants to make Jerusalem an international center for interreligious dialogue _ beginning with a conference this weekend in the presence of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

The meeting, which begins Saturday (June 12), is the first time a Buddhist leader has been a central figure in a major interfaith event in the religious heartland of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.


The unprecedented assembly, sponsored by the Inter-Religious Friendship Group, will draw together dozens of participants from around the world, including Shintos and Hindus from the Far East; Christians, Jews and Muslims from the Middle East; and European and American religious delegations.

At the helm of the Friendship Group initiative is San Francisco businessman and philanthropist Richard Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., as well as Bishop William Swing of the Episcopal Diocese of California, and the Dalai Lama.”We want to make sure that Jerusalem is seen in the largest context, not only as a major center for three religions but also as a force in the global interfaith conversation that is emerging,”said Swing in an interview on Monday, prior to leaving California.”In the past, religious conflict has always been seen as the religion of one tribe against another,”Swing said.”In the global world that is unfolding, all of the religions will live in proximity with each other … so Jerusalem in the future will have to do with Hindus, Buddhists, Shintos and the whole world of religions.” The three-day event will include a giant reception for hundreds of religious figures who live and work in the region, honoring in particular the work of a local interfaith group, the Inter-Religious Coordinating Council in Israel. The core of the program, however, will be a series of smaller and more intimate gatherings of a few dozen conference participants, in which local Jews, Muslims and Christians will share the spotlight. They will explain their history in the Holy Land and the special obstacles here to religious dialogue.”Very often people who come to visit from abroad come to pontificate, to tell people here what to do,”said Rabbi David Rosen, an Orthodox Jewish theologian who is a member of the Friendship Group and local coordinator of the initiative.”This delegation is different in that it is coming here to listen, learn and not to preach _ and that is a much wiser approach toward places of complexity and concern.””This conference is part of a process of reaching out to different religious communities,”added Bhuchung Tsering, a member of the Dalai Lama’s entourage, who arrived here Wednesday.”His Holiness thinks that Buddhists and other faiths have much to learn from each other,”he added.”For instance, he is interested in Jews and in Israel together because of the way Jews have been able to preserve their identity throughout the years in the diaspora. We, the Tibetan people, are in the same position, facing a challenge to our identity, and we’re also outside of our country.” Tibetan Buddhists have conducted a long-standing dialogue with Western Jews and Christians, Tsering said. Ties with Arab Muslim leaders are not as developed, he said, though the Dalai Lama has a long history of dialogue with Muslim figures in Tibet and India.

Blum and Swing joined forces in 1998 after spearheading separate efforts to further interfaith dialogue and cooperation. Swing founded the United Religions Initiative in the mid-1990s in an attempt to create a grass-roots-style United Nations of religious dialogue and cooperation. Blum, meanwhile, founder of the Inter-Religious Friendship Group, has been a close associate of the Dalai Lama for over two decades.

The Friendship Group is designed as a loose-knit organization of some dozen spiritual leaders, theologians and lay activists from around the world. Participants range from Sudath Devapura, president of the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress of Sri Lanka, to Blu Greenberg, a prominent American Jewish feminist theologian.

The overall goal of the Friendship Group, its leaders said, is to create a”confidential and relatively unstructured forum”where leaders of the world’s religions can have regular conversations.”If the world is looking for a systematic approach, that is not what we’re talking about,”said Swing.”We’re not talking about painting by the numbers, but an art form where real people get to know real people and where there is a certain amount of spontaneity.” The Jerusalem conference is the second sponsored by the Friendship Group, which launched the forum with a meeting last November in Washington. A third interreligious gathering is planned for November in Atlanta.

It is also the second private visit by the Dalai Lama to Jerusalem. Israel, which has nurtured a growing diplomatic relationship with China, has no official relationship with the exiled Tibetan leader.

The Dalai Lama made his first visit in 1995 to attend an environmental conference hosted by the Israeli Society for the Protection of Nature where he was also escorted by Blum.


During that visit, the Dalai Lama observed that”if the leadership of the world’s religions could get to know one another better … the world could be a better place.” DEA END FLETCHER

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