Dear friends,
In June and July Katherine Hadijski interned with the Interfaith Encounter Association, as part of her studies at George Mason University. Upon completion of her internship she wrote the following account of her reflections on her experience, as someone from the outside who was able to see the inside for some six week. I am happy to share it with you with the hope it will shed light on another aspect of the Interfaith Encounter Association.
Yours,
Yehuda
I can honestly say that I have walked away from Interfaith Encounter Association with a completely different, yet positive experience about interfaith dialogue. Before I began working, I assumed that the interfaith dialogues were the “end all is all” to peace building within this conflict. I came from a very religious background, and I believed that the only way that any peace could be made through relationship creation between the faiths. During a seminar of lectures I attended in Jerusalem there was one speaker who represented the Muslim Brotherhood spoke of interfaith dialogues as elitist, I was a little offended and wanted to prove to him I was wrong. Within the first couple of weeks of the internship, I was the one being proved wrong. I almost felt embarrassed how idealistic and utopian my beliefs were for the dialogues. When I went to my first dialogue, I was so confused on how these attempts were going to make any kind of positive and peaceful progress towards the Israeli and Palestinian mess of a conflict. I thought the topic being discussed was incredibly basic, and that all of the participants were hiding their intrinsic beliefs of a false hope of progress. During the dialogue I felt impatient, I wanted to ask controversial questions about each separate faith and alienate those who I felt were not being genuine. I did not understand why discussing the opening chapter of each holy book of the monotheistic faiths would help this conflict. I had a lot I needed to learn in this aspect. As I continued to attend dialogues, my perspective had begun to change slowly. The people who came to the dialogues were also very open minded about different faiths and cultures, which caused my belief to change that of the dialogues to be redundant and transparent to trust with relationship building. The dialogue that had opened my mind and brought me back to a reality was the women’s only group. We had met only a few weeks ago at the American Cultural Center in Jerusalem. The dialogue opened up with lighting a candle to represent hope, comfort and community among the women in the room. This sense of community was the strongest I have ever seen in any of the dialogue groups. When I looked around the room women were holding each other’s hands and showing verbal affection. I really felt as though there was a genuine community and love through out the room. The most amazing thing I saw was a very conservative Muslim woman holding hands with one of the more conservative Jewish woman. They held hands or each other’s back throughout most of the dialogue, and I have never been so sincerely genuinely moved during my time here in Jerusalem. It was the first time within a dialogue that I felt comfortable and open enough to speak fully about my emotions and ask questions. The women in the room were so open and warm to everything I had to say, and often encouraged for me to speak more. We were discussing the different type of fasting within the three monotheistic faiths and how the faiths affect our diets as women and our health. It was also one of the few times that honestly saw a connection between the faiths through the topic we were discussing. It was not just a discussion about the complete polar opposite views but also rather a discussion on how similar the religious traditions are. This type of dialogue was personally more affective because I felt as though the women were able to connect over their similarities rather then their differences. For the first time with an interfaith dialogue, I felt as though I had actually made a connection and friendship with participants involved. After the dialogue, we sat around talking about my different experiences as a woman living in Jerusalem. After this experience, my views about interfaith dialogue have completely changed. I was finally able to see how there could be progress with peace and relationship building in this environment. I learned that could be hope within this process because I was incredibly cynical about the dialogues and my opinion had changed incredibly. I learned that interfaith dialogue may be self-selecting and elitist, but it will never expand unless people keep an open mind. Currently, most of the people who attend the dialogues are already open minded about other religions. This will have to change clearly for the dialogues to expand and reach those who are intolerant and radical. The only way that we would be able to reach these individuals is to continually slowly expand the demographic and number of individuals involved in each dialogue. Along with slow growth rate, funding and recruiting have been the two main challenges that have stood in the way of interfaith dialogues to succeed within this conflict. I have learned that it has been possible to overcome these hurdles, but you must keep a lot of faith, patience and perseverance. The biggest thing I have learned has been the patience with the dialogues. My biggest issue in beginning was not having enough patience with the progress and the subjects of the discussion. I have had to learn how to be patient with the discussions, and it is not necessarily a bad thing if we speak about issues that do not confront very controversial issues. Hopefully with maintaining peace, successful recruitment and proper funding then interfaith dialogues will expand and will materialize as an important peace-building tool.
The Interfaith Encounter Association
P.O.Box 3814, Jerusalem 91037, Israel
Phone: +972-2-6510520
Fax: +972-2-6510557
Website: www.interfaith-encounter.org
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