In my professional meeting with Avital Moshe, the director of youth and young adult programs at the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, I started thinking a lot about what are the ultimate goals of getting different types of peoples together. When we are raised from such a young age to believe certain things about a particular type of person, is it actually meaningful to have an encounter program? What impact will it really have? Or is the goal, like Avital put it for the ICCI, for Jews and Arabs to see that they are capable of working together to create something? While I think this goal is the most practical and optimistic, I would really like to see someday what, if any, impact their efforts have. How closely do they stay in touch with their participants following the program? It doesn't seem like they really do. While there is so much working against the ICCI and other groups like it, it's admirable that they try so hard.
This issue made me think about the program I'd like to create. My initial "social action" issue was really the low state of Jewish literacy among American Jews. I initially thought about doing an interfaith program because I thought Jews (and Muslims probably too) would be attracted to such an environment out of curiosity and they would be more likely to absorb more information because they are looking at Judaism and Islam in contexts of each other and zooming in on certain issues within the faiths. Less useful I think is a goal that these Muslim and Jewish teenagers in America see that they can work together. While that is important in any context (and they will co-teach at the end of the program), cooperation and coexistence are much more applicable in Israel where it's literally a life or death situation if Arabs and Jews don't figure out how to live together.
Avital recommended I really think about and get plenty of advice on how to handle text study with Muslims and Jews. From her experience--they do some text study with young adult groups at the ICCI--Muslims and Jews approach their texts in very different ways. While Jews, she says, are comfortable with the chevrutah model and with debating and questioning what they are reading, Muslims are less familiar with this style. Believing Muslims hold steadfastly to the idea that the Qur'an is the direct word from G-d to the angel Gabriel as told to and transcribed by the Prophet Muhammad. The Qur'an is unchanging throughout history. This philosophy is in contrast to the way many Jews approach Torah. While some Jews believe the Torah is unchanging, divine word, many believe it to be divinely inspired or written by human beings over different periods of time who have edited the text.
For this very crucial point, it is essential that the Muslim co-facilitator and Jewish co-facilitator take the program and make sure text study is done in a comfortable or at least non-offensive way for both Muslims and Jews.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi Rachel -
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate that you conversation with Avital prompted you to think deeply about the core and actual reason we engage in these programs. There are so many deep and superficial reasons why we engage in various types of programming and when things are in vogue, we often lose sight of the things that are important and matter to us the most. The purpose of working with a logic model is to remind us to stop, slow down, be reflective and consider deeply the questions you raise which boil down to: why do we want to do this work? what do we hope to achieve through it?
You raise the issue of Jewish literacy as an issue of social action. The way you describe the program is spot on for JSL pedagogy - use a common social issue to rally program participants and help motivate them to learn more about their own tradition in the process. I would suggest, however, that you would need to build a careful and strong case for why increasing Jewish literacy is itself an issue of social action. For example, how will society directly benefit from Jewish high school students having increased understanding of their traditions and texts? I believe that most people working in the fields of social justice and social action would view increased Jewish literacy as a benefit of participating in a program like the one you're building but would not see it as the end goal.
Your last substantial point about Jews and Muslims approaching text in different ways is probably the most important piece of this reflection. It is the ultimate example of building community partnership. If you present texts in a well meaning but unaccessible way you will lose your audience and will achieve neither the goal of increasing text literacy nor the work around hunger. These are important things to realize BEFORE you get into the program and exactly the reason that maintaining professional dialog and relationships with trustworthy community partners is critical to the success of your program.
Jenni