Rabbi Heschel knew that action comes in many forms. He once wrote that "Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed." He knew that words had the power to affect change in the world – be it positive or negative. He knew that the way we talk about one another, the way that we address our fellow humans and the problems that confront us, affects the future as much as physical actions.

This is why it is critically important that we learn how to talk to each other about religion in a productive way – because the alternative doesn’t just end in hurt feelings, but in a deed that threatens the world of interfaith cooperation we are building.

I spent a lot of time talking with young people this month, and I am encouraged by what I am hearing. Our IFYC Fellows Alliance 2008-2009 held a final retreat this month in Chicago. I enjoyed hearing the Fellows reflections on their year organizing interfaith action on their college campuses – but the most inspiring moments were discovering where they are headed from here, what they will do with the tools they have learned and the new language they have. (To see pictures of the 2008-2009 Fellows, click here.) I also spent time at Princeton University, giving a public talk as well as getting a chance to have smaller discussions with the Muslim Students Association as well as the organizers of a city-wide Day of Interfaith Youth Service (DIYS). (You can read more about DIYS in the article below.) In Connecticut, I spoke at the Taft School, and in DC, I spoke at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s Consultation on Conscience.

Boston Area DIYS event brings together students from different religious backgrounds to serve

The Roxbury Mosque in downtown Roxbury, Mass. stands as a tall, proud, red brick building with a black, domed roof. It sharply contrasts with the surrounding urban neighborhood and the recreational park across the road. Upon first glance, the mosque almost looks out of place, but upon further inspection, it becomes clear that it is this diverse nature that makes the mosque so beautiful.

Because of its distinctiveness, the Roxbury Mosque served as the perfect setting for Greater Boston's third annual Day of Interfaith Youth Service Sunday, March 29, when over 100 people gathered for a day of discussion about religion and various community service projects. During the DIYS, Jews, Catholics, Muslims and members of other religious faiths participated in open discussions about what religion means to them and meaningful projects they have participated in.

Click here to read more.

Princeton University’s Green DIYS event participants plant flowerbeds and vegetable gardens for a local school.

More than 100 young people of different religious faiths gathered at Rivera Elementary School in Trenton yesterday to plant some gardens in the hope that food and flowers, as well as some interfaith understanding, would grow.
The event was Princeton University's Day of Interfaith Youth Service, but students from beyond the university lifted shovels, pushed wheelbarrows and discouraged weed growth by laying down gardening fabric.
Ivy Alphonse-Leja said she came out to shovel sod because she was inspired by the words of Eboo Patel, who was recently named to President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Click here to read more.

Washington University hosts a powerful interfaith discussion on faith and environment sparked by the documentary Renewal.    

Senior Divya Srinath, the 2008-09 Washington  University Saint Louis (WUSTL) Interfaith Youth Core Fellow, will lead a group of WUSTL students and students from Saint Louis University and Maryville University in a national day of interfaith youth service March 29.
Nationally, this event is planned and run by hundreds of local student leaders, college chaplains, congregational youth leaders and interfaith organizers.
Focusing on the topic of faith and the environment, the group, made up of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopal and Methodist students, will meet at 1 p.m. to prepare community garden beds at Clark Elementary School to get them ready for spring planting.
Click here to read more.

Join the Bridge-builders’ Network to learn more about the Days of Interfaith Youth Service Campaign and  to organize your own DIYS!

Imagine yourself at the head of a middle school classroom. The daily task of delivering a persuasive speech has been assigned, and your first student stands up to speak. “Jesus is my Savior,” the girl says earnestly. “He died for my sins, and he died for your sins, too. By accepting Jesus, you will gain eternal salvation.” You’re dumbfounded. You gaze around the classroom, suddenly fully aware of the diversity you always saw - different skin tones, facial features, dress and realize that religious diversity is just as present in the room. Your eager student at the head of the class is speaking on in heartfelt tones, and other students are starting to look around at one another, and more importantly, looking to you. What do you do? If you stop your student, are you halting a well-prepared response to the assignment at hand? Doesn’t she have a right to express her genuine beliefs? Yet, if you let her continue, what about the rights of the other students? What about your own religious beliefs?

This is just one example of the difficulties educators face every day in our classrooms. In an ever-diversifying world, educators face the challenge of finding ways to address and respect individual identity without disrespecting the rights of others. It is a tenuous balance, and there are many resources available to address issues of racial, socio-economic, and cultural differences. Religion, however, is such a taboo subject in secondary schools that most educators avoid the issue altogether. Yet it inevitably arises, perhaps in an overt way as described above, or in the obviousness of different dress codes or eating habits, or even perhaps more subtly in course curriculum. How are we equipping teachers to be leaders for religious pluralism in the classroom, a place where religious diversity is readily apparent?

This summer, Interfaith Youth Core is partnering with Global Youth Leadership Institute (GYLI) to offer a summer workshop for educators entitled, “Religious Pluralism in Your School.”  IFYC and GYLI staff aim to provide educators with the tools necessary to engage religious diversity in classrooms and schools in a thoughtful, meaningful capacity. IFYC will share ideas on incorporating IFYC’s methodology of storytelling, shared values, and service-learning into classroom interaction and curricula. GYLI will present frameworks to understand diversity among students. Eboo Patel, IFYC’s founder and Executive Director, will lead an interactive workshop providing the vision, knowledge base and skills-set for interfaith leadership in secondary schools. In the end, educators will depart with a learning plan to implement ideas learned in the workshop, a school assessment resource to analyze religious pluralism in their own community, and a strong network of other educators who are addressing similar issues. Educators are at the forefront of religious diversity issues in the United States and this session will help them address these issues confidently and respectfully.

I wanted to share this Persian poetry with you in honor  of the season that is sacred to so many. This month, Muslim communities around the world celebrated Navroz, the Persian New Year. Last night, Passover began at sundown. This weekend Christians will come together to celebrate Easter Sunday. This season is a time for many people from different traditions to reflect on the past, and it is also an opportunity to think about the possibility that the future holds.

(If you'd like to read some interfaith reflections on Lent and Passover from IFYC staff, please click here.)

For me, the greatest possibility of all is a future where religious communities live together in equal dignity and mutual loyalty. This dream lies in the hands of a critical group of young people: interfaith leaders.

At the Interfaith Youth Core, we work to equip young interfaith leaders with the framework, knowledge base and skill set to realize religious pluralism in the 21st century. One way we achieve this is through intensive leadership fellowships. Throughout the past few months, we have been working to select exceptional candidates for two different fellowships. The first program, the Faiths Act Fellowship, on which we are partnering with The Tony Blair Faith Foundation and Malaria No More, brings together 30 interfaith leaders from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The inaugural class of Faiths Act Fellows will spend the next year as ambassadors for inter-religious cooperation in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and ending deaths due to malaria. The second program, the IFYC Fellows Alliance, supports interfaith leaders on college campuses across America. These Fellows organize interfaith action on their campuses - from service projects to speakers to dialogues - to promote cooperation across religious differences. You can read about what one of our 2007-2008 Fellows Alumni, Josh Stanton, is doing these days in an article below.

These programs nurture young interfaith leaders who bring the ideal of interfaith cooperation to life. We believe in their capacity to engage the great religious diversity in America to achieve pluralism. But they can't do it alone. They need support from all levels - from policy makers and philanthropists to college chaplains and faith community leaders to educators and parents. This is why we are trying something new with our Spring Appeal that launched last week. We are turning it over to our young people to tell their success stories. By clicking here, you can read about and watch videos of our young leaders sharing stories about their interfaith action in the world.

The Exodus is the defining moment in Jewish consciousness. On the day we escaped from slavery in Egypt, we came into our own as a nation. Moses, the great prophet of the Jewish people commanded of his followers: “Remember this day, on which you went free from Egypt, the house of bondage, how the Lord freed you from it with a mighty hand…”(Exodus 13:3). Three millennia later, we still heed his call.

The upcoming holiday of Passover, which commemorates the Exodus from Egypt, is a particularly significant holiday for those engaged in inter-religious work. In most historical epochs, it was not possible for people of different religious communities to collaborate as equals, learn from each other, and work for the common good. Societal norms forbade it, as did leaders who saw such interaction as a threat to their legitimacy.

Thankfully, in our era, inter-religious interchange has become evermore possible and its fundamental importance significantly recognized. It is no longer difficult to find a medium for dialogue. Churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues, as well as a myriad of non-profit organizations, offer programs centered on dialogue between members of different religious traditions. Now the real challenge is increasing the level and frequency of inter-religious discourse.

The new Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue™, www.irdialogue.org, hopes to respond to this challenge by providing a forum for academic and social issues affecting religious communities around the world. Through a peer reviewed publication and multiple online forums, the Journal seeks to build an inter-religious community of scholars, in which people of different traditions learn from one another and work together for the common good.

While the first issue of the Journal will be dedicated to the dynamics of dialogue itself, subsequent issues will address topics often shied away from in the context of inter-religious dialogue. The second issue will be entitled "Engaging the Taboo: Gender, the Body, and Sexuality in our Religious Traditions,” and the third issue will focus on the role that religion can play in both fomenting and preventing violence.

The Journal’s goal is to bring scholars together with activists and non-profit leaders to discuss these topics. By drawing members of all three groups together to learn, discuss, and debate on a free online platform, the Journal hopes to enhance crosspollination and promote innovation within the field. Moreover, because of its electronic format, the Journal will be accessible to an international audience. While inter-religious dialogue, work, and scholarship often takes place locally, lessons learned can be applied globally.

The Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue™ will be stewarded and peer reviewed by a staff of seminary students and religious scholars, and an illustrious Board of Scholars and Practitioners, including: The Swami Tyaganada, Hindu Chaplain at Harvard University; Edward Kessler, Director of the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths and Fellow of Cambridge University; Burton Visotzky, Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; Eboo Patel, Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core; and Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, Academic Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School.  

The Journal was founded in June 2008, when I approached Stephanie Hughes, co-Chair of the Student Senate at Union Theological Seminary, with an idea for some kind of inter-religious publication. As a rabbinical student, I felt motivated to find a partner from another religious background equally invested in the idea of mutual respect, learning, and religious cross-pollination. Having formed a strong partnership, the two of us set off to found what became the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue™.

While in London, Hind and Noah held an interesting peer-to-peer learning session with some of the staff members at the Three Faiths Forum and St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace. While sharing IFYC’s training curriculum, Hind and Noah also learned about how the educators at the Three Faiths Forum use the shared values among the Abrahamic traditions to spark interfaith and intrafaith dialogue among elementary school students, underscoring both the commonalities of substance, as well as the differences in articulation. Immediately following the session, one of the TFF educators led a workshop with students sharing her personal story, following IFYC’s storytelling methodology, allowing her to connect with her audience in a new way.

While much of the conversation in the UK surrounding the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism (PDF) agenda focuses on the Muslim community in particular, most organizations Hind and Noah visited welcomed the IFYC approach of combining narrative-based interfaith dialogue with reflective community service as an alternative. IFYC’s methodology was seen as a noncontroversial way to address the feelings of marginalization among some youth of color, as well as some economically disadvantaged white youth in rural areas, by focusing on shared civic values and not on religious differences.  In the north London borough of Harrow, the most religiously diverse in the country, the PVE officer had been encouraging his youth to serve their community in intentionally interfaith settings. He enthusiastically embraced IFYC’s methodology and expressed his desire for other local governments to also view the PVE goals through an interfaith lens.

Hind and Noah also linked organizations in London and Manchester with one another and plugged unaffiliated individuals into existing UK-based interfaith networks. They met with a lively group of Muslim students in Manchester, whose aim this year is to reach out to other faith communities through community service and dialogue. Noah and Hind discussed the difference between diversity and pluralism and led the young women in a dialogue facilitation workshop. IFYC later connected these young ladies to the London-based network of the Coexistence Trust, through that organization’s Student Leadership Seminar.

Already, interfaith organizations have begun to adopt IFYC pedagogical tools, members of the Muslim community have found a more palatable angle by which to address the Prevent Violent Extremism agenda and a major secular, youth empowerment organization is including religious diversity in an upcoming leadership training seminar this summer. Hind and Noah also met with many extraordinary people and learned about the stellar work their organizations are spearheading. IFYC hopes to continue strengthening these relationships as an interfaith partner from across the pond.