(Photo: Lanterns floating on the Hudson, 11 Sept 2007)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York.

By Matthew Weiner

Everyone has a September 11^th story, especially those living in New York, and just about every religious community has a way of commemorating it. Most religious leaders include the topic in their weekly sermons. Others hold prayer services on the day itself. Do different religions do so differently?

Some Buddhists do. On Friday, September 11^th, Rev. T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki, a Japanese Buddhist priest, hosts his annual Lantern Lighting Ceremony at Pier 40 on the Hudson River. He has done so every year on the day of anniversary. Hundreds of people attend- many of them Buddhists, but mostly they are just New Yorkers who have made this the way that they pass the evening of 9/11 as the sun sets.

An obon ceremony, as it is called, is traditionally done in the summer to commemorate the dead (specifically for the victims of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima). Small rice paper lanterns are built, families write the name of loved ones who have passed on the lanterns, candles are placed inside and the lanterns are set out to sea. Nakagaki has used the service, but changed it, for this annual purpose.

In the New York version, lanterns are set out in kayaks, courtesy of the New York Kayak Club, and bob along the shore of the Hudson . Their soft glow speckle the reflections the twin tower light beams, emanating from Ground Zero.

The way he came to this says something about living in New York as a Buddhist.

Buddhists are often seen in the West as being passive or contemplative in the face of serious problems. This is a general mischaracterization. Rev. Nakagaki’s story of response to the attacks on 9/11 serves as good example of the different kinds of action a Buddhist may do.

On the day of September 11^th, Rev. Nakagaki was in his temple on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He got a call inviting him to lead a meditation at Columbia University, which he did, guiding students in mindfulness meditation and loving kindness meditation. Two days later, he joined the Interfaith Center of New York’s United Nations Prayer Service.

That afternoon, he participated in the Interfaith Center’s press conference, which included fifteen Muslim leaders, all of whom condemned the attacks. Nakagaki’s job was a bit different. He also condemned the attacks, and more than most insisted that non-violence was the only proper response. But he also pointed to his own Buddhist community and called on Buddhists to be tolerant of local Muslims. Muslims were already being attacked. A Sikh man mistaken for a Muslim had been killed in Texas. He reminded the audience that after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Japanese were put into internment camps. Remembering this, he said, we have to respond differently.

While Nakagaki was involved in many other responses, he noticed that no Buddhist was invited to Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s nationally televised Yankee Stadium prayer service. This, in spite of the fact that Chinatown was the residential neighborhood most affected by the attacks. “I guess they forgot about us?” Nakagaki asked.

Although Nakgaki was never able to get a straight answer to his question, he kept asking, and decided to create his own service.

Most interfaith services are structured in a Christian way, and so Nakagaki decided to have his interfaith service revolve around a Buddhist ceremony for the dead. But others would be involved. The Interfaith Center of New York, a co-sponsor, convenes the interfaith prayers from many other faiths (although this year, as the service falls on Shabbat, there will not be a Jewish representative). United Sikhs serves delicious food, as they always do. Other co-sponsors include the New York Kayak Club, the Buddhist Council of New York and New York de Volunteers.

This new ritual for the city came about because Buddhists were left out, but Nakagaki doesn’t see the event as primarily Buddhist. Yes, he says, it is Buddhist. “But in this case, I am a Buddhist, but also a New Yorker.”

(Photo: Interfaith prayers at the ceremony on 11 Sept 2007)

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The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The author, Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, is Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and author of the novel A Delightful Compendium of Consolation.

(Photo: Muslim sheikh and Jewish rabbi address interfaith meeting in Brussels, 4 Jan 2005/Thierry Roge)

By Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky

Jewish-Muslim engagement in an international context is inevitably more than interreligious dialogue. Muslim representatives, for the most part, do not come from countries that have a separation of mosque and state. Practically speaking, these dialogues are a form of second-tier diplomacy. In the United States, this is made apparent by fact the State Department sponsors Muslim visitors through its Foreign Leadership Visitor Program.

Under the aegis of the State Department, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS, where I teach) has welcomed imams from Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Imam Shamsi Ali of the 96^th Street Mosque in New York has brought the heads of the Indonesian Muslim community to visit JTS. I have been privileged to visit Muslim colleagues in Cairo (2004), in Doha (2005) and Madrid (2008), the latter for the first Saudi Arabian interreligious dialogue, sponsored by King Abdullah and hosted by Spain’s King Juan Carlos.

As a representative of Judaism at these dialogues, I am often called upon to represent and/or defend the state of Israel. It has been my personal practice as a rabbi participating in such international dialogues to contact the Israeli Foreign Ministry either directly or indirectly in advance of my participation, so that I have the opportunity to hear their views on these conferences (which may not have invited any Israeli representatives). This sometimes leads me to feeling conflicted personally, when our views may diverge.

(Photo: Rabbi Visotzky and King Abdullah in Madrid, July 2009)

Jews reacted to September 11^th and its aftermath in complicated ways. I recall giving a public address in lower Manhattan on the first anniversary of the tragedy in which I suggested “we all live in Jerusalem now.” To me, the horror America experienced echoed the terror Israelis know daily. As a Jewish American, it is important to me to represent and advance Israel. On the other hand, my own dismay at the Israeli government’s overreaction in Gaza earlier this year and my personal disapproval of the impediments that the “settler movement” has created to a two-state solution have been a part of what pushes me to participate in international Jewish-Muslim dialogue. I do so in order to help, in whatever small way I am able, to move Israel and the Palestinians toward a mutually agreeable accord. I am, however, not naïve about the apparent intractability of the problem and the chasm between the narratives on each side in the dispute.

I also believe there is a genuine Jewish imperative for dialogue with our Muslim colleagues. From a religious perspective, we share much in common. For the past five years, I have represented the JTS in a variety of dialogue and social-action projects with the Muslim community in the U.S. as well as abroad. Locally, we joined with members of New York City’s 96^th Street Mosque for dialogue, exchanged mosque and synagogue visits and worked side-by-side in a soup kitchen run by a local Presbyterian Church.

Nationally, JTS has joined with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) on a number of projects, including matching Conservative synagogues with local mosques for dialogue. We have also surveyed the 1,200 Conservative Rabbis in the United States both to see what Jewish-Muslim projects they are engaged in and to encourage other congregations to participate.

(Photo: New York Islamic Cultural Center, 23 April 2008/Tom Heneghan)

Personally, as an American who disagrees with Bush-era policies, I want to demonstrate that there are U.S. citizens who are respectful of and eager to dialogue with Islam, despite that administration’s Manichaean world-view. One hopes that the more open face of the Obama administration toward the Muslim world is a harbinger for more productive dialogue and encounter.

Of late, there has been a marked increase on the part of Muslim, particularly Arab Muslim moderate countries, for interreligious engagement. This can be attributed to the horrific events of September 11^th, to a reaction to the Bush declarations against so-called “Islamo-fascism” and the perceived “clash of civilizations,” and as a response to Islamic extremism. It may also be a reaction to the influences of radical Islamic elements in Iran. But we must recognize that the move toward interreligious dialogue is also a genuine Islamic sentiment toward engagement with the “other,” particularly “religions of the Book.”

In the end, it is incumbent upon Islam to deal with its violent religious radicals, much as it is equally incumbent upon Judaism to deal with its violent religious radicals. For those of us who consider ourselves moderates or progressives, it is a religious obligation to continue the Jewish-Muslim engagement on the local, national, and international levels.

(For a fuller account of the JTS participation in Jewish-Muslim engagement, see the inaugural issue of The Journal of InterReligious Dialogue, www.irdialogue.org )

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. Rev. Bud Heckman is Director for External Relations at Religions for Peace and editor of InterActive Faith: The Essential Interreligious Community-Building Handbook (SkyLight, 2008).

By Matthew Weiner and Rev. Bud Heckman

Mary Rosenblatt grew up Jewish, she married a Catholic and her children are “exposed to both faiths.” In her adult life, she has become particularly drawn to meditation as practiced by a local Buddhist circle. If she participated in a survey about religious identity, how might she be portrayed?  And what about her kids?

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has just released a survey entitled “Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.” that attempts to map changes in religious affiliation in the U.S.  It follows on the coattails of the important “U.S Religious Landscape Survey” conducted by the Pew Forum in 2007.  If read in cross-tension with the “American Religious Identification Survey 2008″ released by Trinity College in Hartford, one can begin to see a complex and diverse picture of faith affiliation for Americans, as well as some patterns of change.

One key result is that perhaps as many as six in ten American adults have changed their faith tradition. Nationwide surveys are certainly important, and getting statistics about changing religion is also important. But thinking about the problems with this survey is perhaps as important as the information that it provides.

The first important problem with both surveys is that they do not allow for the likes of Mary Rosenblatt. Is she Jewish, Buddhist, Unaffiliated or Other?  The survey questions assume that she is only one of these, and so asks “What is your religion?” in the singular. Of course, Buddhists, Baha’is, Sikhs and others who think of their “religion” as a faith or those who view themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” might not make it through the early stages of the questions gauntlet either.

(Photo: A Tibetan Buddhist monk at Washington’s National Cathedral, 19 Oct 2007/Jim Young)

Others who because of life circumstance, e.g. inter-marriage, geographic transplantation, or cultural expectations, may think of themselves as being multireligious or somewhere in-between, are equally off the grid. In the ARIS study an unusually high number of Asians were unwilling to identify their religious identification, perhaps because of the imposition of Western presuppositions and categories.

If the first problem is a misunderstanding about how religion is lived out by many Americans, the second problem is that not all religious Americans speak sophisticated English.  In fact, many of those attempted to be questioned for the Pew study were dropped out of the interviewing because there was a language barrier or they “did not confirm their religion.” Scholars of religion and immigration have detected the increase of religiosity amongst new immigrant groups in America: religion serves as an organizing force, houses of worship as community centers, often across religious lines. Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim newcomers, not to mention Latino Christians and Russian Jews, find themselves increasingly identified with their faith tradition when they come here. Yet this segment of the population is largely left out of the Pew survey because of language.

Mentioning these other faiths leads to the third major problem. The survey claims to speak for American religious trends, but focuses on Christians. Researchers set aside another 4% before the survey started because they belonged to small groups, other world religions, other faiths, or because they merely moved around within the broad stroke of the unaffiliated.  What would happen if Orthodox Jews, Muslims and Hindus were included in this survey with equal numbers?

(Photo: Mosque in Atlanta, 25 Feb 2007/Tami Chappell)

As the ARIS study is more apt to lead one to discover, after sifting through the weight of the data, there may be more yet hidden from our maps of knowing than heretofore realized.  It shows that the number of people refusing to answer the survey or declaring no religion (atheist, agnostic, or searching) has more than doubled since the 1990’s.  These two categories of people now account for one in five Americans.  And the geographic breakdown shows that this phenomenon, while concentrated in the West and Northeast, is widespread and now is evident even in the deep South.

With President Obama recently joining an interfaith prayer service the morning after his inauguration, and with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships claiming that they will work with all faiths, national surveys conducted by organizations like the Pew Forum must at least acknowledge that their surveys are about Christian Americans, or reconfigure how they approach their sample audience.

(Photo: Woman attends Mass by Pope Benedict in Washington, 17 April 2008/Jason Reed)

What else can we see in these set of surveys? The growth in unaffiliated respondents is the overriding story.  According to Pew, four of every five becoming unaffiliated reported that they were raised in a religion as a child. But of the former Catholics and former Protestants - where Pew concentrated its analysis of research - few of those who became unaffiliated reported a strong faith as a child.  Further, three-fourths of them cite both the view that “religious people as being hypocritical, judgmental, and insincere” and the view that “many religions as being partly true, but none completely true” as factors at play.  And half of them give this outlook as an important reason for having become unaffiliated.

But much remains unknown. Perhaps the most important missing factors are the changes one makes within a faith -say from Jewish Reform to Orthodoxy. These changes are substantial, in terms of how one dresses, who one lives and communicates with and how one lives ones life in both public and private. While the change between a liberal Christian and a liberal Buddhist may go unseen by anyone, the move from Jewish Reform to Jewish Orthodoxy could not be missed by anyone.

Likewise, a person changing from being a Methodist to a Presbyterian because they have moved or married may be captured by the way these surveys are structured, but these moves are often uneventful and give false impressions of the “churn.”

(Phoito: Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis meeting in New York, 21 Nov 2008/Chip East)

In fact, allowing for a picture of the pluralism that may be within the individual and, in some ways, within a tradition is not in the cards yet for the designs of these surveys.  It is a little like looking at a puzzle table in its very early stages.  The pieces are there, and perhaps there are some connections, but it is not clear that they will fit together.  Worse yet, the box cover is not to be found, and whether it provides a picture worth looking at once it is put together is still unclear.

The new Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan lived up to his reputation as an extrovert at his first news conference in New York, cracking a string of jokes at his own expense and telling reporters “You’re going to have to shut me up.” 

Even before he took the podium, while chatting to a monsignor about a visit to a New York food pantry later in the day, he glanced at his own moderate paunch and quipped: “I’m an expert in alleviating hunger.” 

When a reporter asked a question about overworked priests, Dolan said he thought he’d heard “overweight priests.” 

When another addressed him as “your excellency,” he said: “My Mom is the only one who calls me your excellency.” 

Asked if he was holding his breath to be named a cardinal — an appointment widely expected to follow his installation to the most high profile position in the U.S. Catholic Church — he made a joke about his hometown baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals: “I’m holding my breath for those Cardinals to come to town,” he said.  

At the end he said he hoped the reporters were all coming to Mass, adding: “I’ll see the collection basket doesn’t go to the press.” 

The Archdiocese of New York was streaming the Installation Mass live on its web site.

PICTURE: Archbishop Timothy Dolan participates in a Solemn Vespers ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York April 14, 2009. REUTERS/Kathy Willens/Pool

(Photo: Brooklyn, with Manhattan in the background, 21 Sept 2008/Ray Stubblebine)

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Matthew Weiner is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York and Raffaele Timarchi is the Interfaith Center’s education director.

By Matthew Weiner and Raffaele Timarchi

Why should students in urban high schools learn about religion?

The Interfaith Center of New York recently received a call from Penny Kapanika, a social studies teacher at Nazareth Regional High School in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. Canarsie lies on the eastern edge of Brooklyn, next to Jamaica Bay. To get to the school, you take the number 4 subway train to the end of the line, hop on a bus down Utica Avenue and finally walk to a sparsely populated neighborhood that was once an Italian and Jewish hold out against white flight.

Nazareth, a Roman Catholic school, is now ethnically African American and Caribbean. In the old days, students came from the neighborhood, but now most of them take the bus from Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant. Only 51% of the kids are Catholic, but most are Christian. The kids, though, live amongst Hasidic Jews  in Crown Heights, where a history of racial conflict still looms large, and Muslims in “Bed Stuy,” one of New York’s poorest neighborhoods.

“I found my students asking me questions that I could not answer,” Kapanika explained. “They don’t understand why the Jews dress like this, or won’t talk with them. And honestly, I don’t know too much about it either. There are stereotypes and we need to address them.”

Kapanika found the Interfaith Center, which was interested in her case. The Interfaith Center, a secular non-profit that educates religious communities about one another, worked with Nazareth to locate religious leaders from these communities who could come in and talk with the students. They also worked with the New York Police Department’s community affairs bureau. Detective Michael Theogine, whose job is religious outreach, invited other Catholic educators to see how a school-based interfaith project could work. Theogine himself is African American and went to Nazareth in the 1980s, when he was one of the very few people of color. “It was sure different then,” he says with a smile.

The Interfaith Center’s goal was not to invite top-tier leadership but rather grassroots workers who could show a human face to the students. “Most of these kids, maybe none of them, have talked to a Hasidic Jewish person,” Kapanika said.

(Photo: Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, 28 Nov 2008/Brendan McDermid)

But now they have. The meeting took place in the school’s library with about forty students. Rabbi Avi Lesches spoke about growing up in Crown Heights with his five brothers and sisters. Lesches is in his mid-twenties, has a reddish beard, dresses in dark slacks and a blazer and wears a yarmulke. He became a chaplain for the 88^th Brigade of the US Army.

“Why do you wear the hat on your head?” one student asked.

“First, to acknowledge that we are a different from the larger community,” the rabbi said. “But also we wear it to remind ourselves that we are not the final authority. There is someone above us, and that someone is God.”

Another student was more daring: “I understand you don’t believe in Jesus, and that ya’ll still waiting for the messiah?”

That’s right, Lesches said. “There are still a lot of problems on the Earth. The messiah hasn’t come yet.” But he went on to say that Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher, praised Islam and Christianity for their monotheistic orientation.

Hesham El-Meligy is an Egyptian-born Muslim who moved to New York. “Egypt is on the Horn of Africa, so now I am an African-American,” he says to laughter from the class. Soon after he arrived in New York, he married an Italian-American. “Her family understands that I don’t drink, and they try not to drink around me,” he explained. Why is he serious about his faith? “When I was a kid, around your age, I began asking myself, ‘who am I?’ But I also noticed some people who saw the world as us vs. them, and I didn’t like it.”

Shaykh T.A. Bashir is an African American Muslim who grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a neighborhood known for its confrontational climate.  ”I’m from the ‘vill’, never ran, never will,” says Bashir with a tinge of pride. He is a tall strong man in his sixties, with a reddish beard and a wide smile. He wears a blue jean vest and a black Vietnam Veterans baseball hat. Bashir explained that his primary concern was preventing domestic violence, because violence in the family creates violence the community.

Besides guests from the Interfaith Center, Kapanika had invited several other speakers: an alumnus who grew up Catholic and is now a member of a megachurch called Christian Cultural Council, and three students: two Muslims and a Hindu. One of the Muslims, Sharear Kabir from Gyana, said it was hard being Muslim in a majority community. He said he was supposed to pray five times a day, but couldn’t when he was in school.

To this, Shaykh Bashir said that it was important to pray, and that the school should let him. “That’s one of my jobs, making sure that there is religious accommodation. So I will speak to your teachers here,” he said. The teachers all smiled.

The Hindu student, Umaysha Samlall, a shy but articulate girl, explained that her family was part of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement that emphasizes the oneness of God and the promotion of social justice. Other students seemed to know that she and the Muslim student were a couple. Many students giggled when she said, “No one wants us to continue, because what are the kids gonna be?”

(Photo: Brooklyn Bridge with lower Manhattan in background, 23 May 2008/Lucas Jackson)

Difficult questions can come from unexpected quarters, but the discussion was open and answers were honest. When the program was over, students spoke with the panelists. The guests wished they had more time to talk with each other as well. The chance meeting at a Catholic school, it seems, was a good opportunity for interfaith dialogue. El-Meligy the Muslim said of Lesches the Jew: “He seemed like a good man, and I hope we have time to talk more in the future.”

Kapanika talked with them as well. She was interested in learning more, but also wanted to have local contacts in case one of her kids had a problem in their community. “We are a Catholic school, but we don’t necessarily know those around us,” she explained.

For her the program was educational, but also an act of civic participation. It can lead to networks that create trust in times of trouble. Sometimes thought of as spiritual exploration, interfaith in this case was a teaching tool.

Ever since the mid 1800’s, when New York Bishop John Hughes argued that Catholics needed their own schools  to insure a social, moral, and spiritual identity distinct from the Protestant majority, the Catholic Church has made good on its emphasis of education. But how to develop a Catholic identity in an increasingly diverse setting while maintaining a positive relationship with others remains the question? This is the question that all of the participants at this program, all New Yorkers, and indeed all citizens are struggling with. It begins with learning about each other: through their stories and a conversation.

“For me, the worst thing in the world is ignorance,” Lesches told me the following day on the phone. “This is an opportunity to undo some of that.”

Rabbi Marc Schneier, a New York Jewish leader who has helped to build bridges with American Muslims, is planning to bring his campaign to Europe to help ease the anger fed by bloodshed in Gaza. “In the light of the recent conflict in Gaza, Jewish-Muslim tensions have been exacerbated,” Schneier, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, told Reuters during a recent visit to London. “We have seen a rise, I would say an exponential growth in anti-Semitic attacks, rhetoric coming from the Muslim world. We cannot allow for Islamic fundamentalism to grow.”

(Photo: Rabbi Marc Schneier/FFEU)

Schneier helped to bring together thousands of Jews and Muslims across America last November in an initiative in which 50 mosques were twinned with 50 synagogues over a weekend. Jews and Muslims worked together in community projects, formed study groups and got a better understanding of each other’s faith. They publicised this in the short video below and a full-page ad in the New York Times available here in PDF.

An eloquent and persuasive speaker, Schneier has advocated closer links between Jewish and Afro-American communities through the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, where he has worked with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons.

Schneier feels there is a need for action at the grass-roots level to help heal the rift between Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe.  He is planning to repeat his ”Weekend of Twinning” this November and wants to extend it to Britain from North America.  “Jewish-Muslim relations are a great concern here in Europe, so we wanted to bring this programme across the Atlantic,” he said.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews told me they were very interested in the project and wanted to develop it here, building on their own linking programme. However, the climate is not easy.  Israel’s invasion of Gaza in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed has sparked fresh tensions between the two groups in Europe.

An umbrella group of French Jewish groups last week asked French President Nicolas Sarkozy to ensure that authorities do more to stem a rise in anti-Jewish crime. Britain has also seen protests over Israel’s campaign.

(Photo: Pro-Palestinian protesters in Paris, 24 Jan 2009/Gonzalo Fuentes)

Schneier dismissed concerns that members of close-knit Muslim communities in European countries such as Britain and France would be harder to reach than their counterparts in the United States, who tend to be better integrated into U.S. life.

“The challenge here is more of a language barrier than a social or cultural barrier. What we did in North America wasn’t an easy task either. There was much hesitation on both sides,” he said. “I see around the world there are pockets of moderation emerging within Islam. We cannot spurn the hands of the moderates in the Muslim world.”

Schneier’s initiative seems to be working in the United States, but can it be transplanted to Europe? We’d like to hear your comments here.

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. The author is Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. He is writing a book about Interfaith and Civil Society.

By Matthew Weiner

The last day of 2008 was a bad day for interfaith relations in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had his annual Prayer Breakfast at the New York Public Library, where several hundred religious leaders gathered (see video here). As usual there were prayers offered from many faiths. The Hindus were miffed, because a Sikh got their usual slot. Instead of praying, the Sikh explained Sikhism for a bit too long. The Buddhist monk also prayed too long, and the translation took forever. But poor staging was not the reason for the dark cloud that hung over us all.

(Photo: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, 3 Nov 2008/Lucas Jackson)

Instead, it was the bombing of Gaza. Or rather it was the Mayor’s response the day before that created  tension in the audience. The night before, Bloomberg had sided with Israel in the conflict. “I feel very strongly that Israel really does have a right …to defend itself,” he said. The mayor said nothing about the loss of innocent life on the Palestinian side.

For him, the current situation is not a story with two sides. While he is the mayor for all of New York, and while there are more or less as many Muslims as Jews here these days, on this day he spoke for one side of his city.

This, anyway, is the way the Muslim leaders in New York who I spoke to see it. Their frustration is not that Bloomberg criticized Hamas, but rather that he took sides instead of calling for peace or a cease fire. The many Muslims who came to the breakfast were ready for battle.

“I thought not to come,” said one leader. “Then I was reading Gandhi on Non Violence, and I realized that I could not let his one sided political response stop me from joining a public forum.” Another Imam added, “If he had repeated what he said last night, I would have had to stand and walk out.”

Every Muslim I spoke to agreed. They also did not stand when the mayor got an otherwise standing ovation. Nor did not laugh at his jokes, the way others were. When I asked a rabbi afterwards if he noticed this silent protest, he had not.

In further quiet protest, the Muslim Consultative Network handed out a protest statement to participants. It was eloquent: “While one generally agrees with his simple point about self defense…it ignores the Palestinians, who have been dying in great numbers.” It goes on to say that there is a need to acknowledge the common humanity of both Jews and Arabs.

Bloomberg did not repeat his comments in front of this interfaith audience, and one can only guess that he was astute to the tension in the air. Perhaps this is a good thing.

(Photo: New York Public Library, 14 Dec 2004/Mike Segar)

But there is, I think, a serious problem here. It is not one of life and death, but one of perception and honesty when it comes to the public sphere. Interfaith events are intended to serve two basic purposes: to create a symbol of unity (call it the unity model), or to discuss and debate a problem at hand (call it the discourse model). In the unity model, religiously different groups stand together to condemn something, call for peace, you name it. It is a symbolic act, but a powerful one, and one done with a shared conviction of its power.

In the discourse model, interfaith can serve as a venue for debate and discussion. Interfaith is a part of civil society, and therefore a kind of public sphere. It’s what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls communicative action, where rational people debate an issue with the goal of a shared better understanding of the truth and the potential for shared action. Both kinds of interfaith happen in New York City and around the world every day. Every day, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and others join together successfully in this kind of public interfaith. It makes for a better democracy.

And Bloomberg has been good on interfaith in many ways. He was the first mayor to hold regular interfaith services and work with leaders from every faith. The problem with Bloomberg’s interfaith service this particular time around is not his own opinion (he is entitled to one) but that he held an interfaith event, while skipping both legitimate reasons for having one. He talked about the good work of his administration and the economic crises. Yes, this is indeed a shared issue for all, but it totally ignored the issue at hand, and (most importantly) his opinion on it. It left one side of his citizenry very angry- not because he did not take their side, but because the moral reasons for joining interfaith — to make a symbolic statement, or to discuss truth and shared action — were ignored.

Jewish groups may be happy with the mayor’s strategy, but what do we lose in the process?  Many mainline Jewish groups will not even discuss the conflict with their Muslim colleagues who they work with on so many other issues. As one rabbi who works for a Jewish agency said during breakfast, “My hands are tied.” This means that regardless of what he thinks (and I cannot pretend to know what he thinks), his agency will not let him work on a shared statement about the current crises. And yet he is mandated to work with Muslims on other issues.

While interfaith appears to go on as normal here, the tension and frustration run deep. It at least must lead us to ask the question of which public sphere we want interfaith to help create? Maybe this is a New Year’s question, as opposed to a contrite resolution, to hold onto.

The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. Matthew Weiner, the author, is the Program Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. He is writing a book about Interfaith and Civil Society.

When terror attacks like those in Mumbai occur, many people of faith want to stand together despite their differences to condemn them with one voice. Faith leaders in New York, having seen their own city targetted in 2001, quickly responded with a show of support for their sister city in India. Their news conference on the steps of New York’s City Hall on Monday was an example of how faith communities in the world’s most religiously diverse metropolis can join hands to speak out against such violence.

(Photo: New York interfaith meeting, 1 Dec 2008/Edwin E. Bobrow)

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, senior vice-president of the New York Board of Rabbis, Mo Razvi, a Pakistani-American Muslim and community organizer, and the Interfaith Center of New York organized the meeting while Councilman John Liu got the green light to use City Hall as the venue. Potasnick worked through Thanksgiving weekend to make it happen and insisted on having representatives from every faith. “It is very important to condemn the attacks…but it is imperative we stand together with one voice,” he said.

Indeed almost everyone was there. Imam Shamsi Ali of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York spoke condemned the attacks by Muslim extremists as un-Islamic. Jaspreet Singh of the United Sikhs spoke on behalf of a community rooted in the Indian Subcontinent. Imam Syed Sayeed, a Muslim from India and longtime New Yorker, recalled his homeland has been a religiously plural place for thousands of years. Ven. Kondannya of the New York Buddhist Council called for a non-violent response to the attacks, as did Jain community representative Naresh Jain, who lost a friend in the killing. Members of Chabad, the Brooklyn-based Hasidic community who lost a rabbi in the attacks, were also present.

Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, said she had trained in a Mumbai hospital that treated many victims and remembered the discussions that students of different faiths used to have there. “In Mumbai now, they are getting back to work,” she said. “This is all we can do. It is what the terrorists want to stop us from doing.” Dr. Mysorekar had held a prayer service with Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn just hours after the attack and prayers have continued at her temple in Queens ever since.

(Photo: Taj Mahal hotel, Mumbai, 27 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)

“We know how hard it is to build relationships across difference in times of crisis, and our hearts go out to Mumbai,” Said Rev. Chloe Breyer, the Executive Director at the Interfaith Center of New York. In fact, it was not easy to assemble members of all the main religions represented in Mumbai; in the rush to arrange the meeting, we could not contact the Zoroastrians in time. But how often do Hindu, Ultra Orthodox Jewish and Muslim leaders get together?

Actually, they get together more often than one would think. Potasnik and Mysorekar first met at an Interfaith Center news conference two days after 9/11. It was there that Mysoekar witnessed the courage of a dozen Muslim leaders denouncing those attacks and realized how interfaith contacts could help keep the peace. She invited a Muslim speaker to her Hindu program in Queens, which did not go over all too well among some of her more conservative members.

In the years since then, many of these faith leaders have met regularly despite reservations in their own communities. Monday’s press conference was not be held at Mysorekar’s temple in part from fear the Orthodox Jews would be uncomfortable. Many Muslim leaders were invited but there are serious tensions among some of them and the Jewish leadership in this city, tensions that will not go away with this small victory. But the day-to-day ties forged since 9/11 helped assemble this interfaith group quickly to respond to the Mumbai violence. To date 13 different local Muslim organizations have condemned the Mumbai attacks.

(Photo: World Trade Center, New York, 11 Sept 2001/Brad Rickerby)

On Wednesday, the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Interfaith Center plan a program in Queens with mostly Hindu and Jewish groups (including an Indian Jewish congregation). Dr. Mysorekar wants to hold another program at her temple and all will be invited. The work of interfaith dialogue in the world’s most religiously diverse city goes on.

The two-day hostage drama at Mumbai’s Jewish centre ended tragically on Friday when Indian anti-terrorist forces stormed Chabad House, the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish community center, only to find Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg and three other hostages had been killed by Islamist gunmen.

The Israeli-born rabbi, who grew up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in New York, arrived in Mumbai in 2003 with his Israeli wife to serve the small Jewish community there, running a synagogue and Torah classes, and assisting Jewish tourists in the seaside city.

(Photo: Indian anti-terrorist commando lowered down to Mumbai’s Nariman House, where Chabad House was located, 28 Nov 2008/stringer)

We have been filing the story from Mumbai and New York, but inevitably the rest of the Mumbai drama — the clearing of the Trident-Oberoi hotel and the continued fighting at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel — has competed with space in our updates. If you’re looking for more information, the Holtzbergs’ Chabad Lubavitch communities in Crown Heights and in Mumbai have been posting extensive information on their websites:

– Mumbai-Based Rabbi and Wife Killed in Terrorist Attacks - chabad.org

– Press Conference on Mumbai Tragedy -chabadindia.org

Here are the New York Daily News, New York Times, Jerusalem Post and Jewish Telegraphic Agency stories on the Holtzbergs.

(Photo: Indian commandos break window after explosion on fourth floor of Nariman House, 28 Nov 2008/Punit Paranjpe)