Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey everyone. Assalamu alaikum. This is Yunus Mirza and I wanted to welcome you to A Common Word podcast. So this is a new podcast. This is starting through the Maidan Network and Maidan is an amazing platform I've been using for the last several years. I've published several blogs. I've been listening to their podcast and also been following them on social media. The new Common Word podcast focuses on Islam and Inter religious studies. It is inspired by The Quranic verse 364, which calls the people of the book to A Common Word, and the A Common Word initiative which was held in 2007 in Amman, Jordan. It interviews scholars, activists and practitioners in the realm of bridge building, peace studies and social justice. That Common Word podcast is also a sister to the Islamic Mary podcast. As many of you know, I've been writing a book called on the Islamic Mary for the last couple years, a book that should be coming out in fall 2025. And this new A Common Word podcast will be part of the Maidan Network and be featured on the Islamic Mary podcast as well.
So one of the reasons I've been interested in the Islamic Mary and Abraham Ibrahim before is the idea of a common figure, someone who speaks to the different religions, whether that be Judaism, Christ, Christianity and Islam. And that has drawn me further to Inter Religious Studies, a new field which is trying to study the relationship between the different religious traditions. As I became more involved and interested in Inter religious studies, I was drawn to Rachel McQuid's book Inter religious Studies An Introduction. Rachel is someone I know for a long time. We both contributed to the edited volume Hearing Vocation Differently. We both serve on the Steering Committee for Inter Religious Studies at the American Academy of Religion. And we're both going to contribute to the Silver Orbach Lecture Chair through the Institute for Christian, Jewish and Muslim Studies in Baltimore. I had the opportunity to sit down with Rachel to talk about her new book and ask her questions on the definition of interreligious studies, the structure of her book, and specifically Muslim and Jewish relations. Here's my interview. All right, so. Hello, Rachel. Welcome to the Islamic Mary podcast.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on the podcast. Of course, we've worked together in many different spheres. We've contributed to edited volume together. We're both on the Steering Committee for Interreligious Studies at the American Academy of Religion. And I got opportunity to see and read your recent book on interreligious studies, an Introduction. So please, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself, your spiritual autobiography, and how you came to write this book.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Sure. I think I'll start a little ways back. I'm a reformed rabbi and I was a congregational rabbi for 13 years beginning in 1990. So I'm showing my age. That meant that In September of 2001, I was standing before the congregation on Rosh Hashanah as we came to the communal confession. It's a litany of ways in which we as human beings continue to miss the mark.
And it's customary to take your fist and softly strike your chest as you begin each phrase for the sin that we've committed against you. And that's, you know, it's not a violent movement, but this kind of ancient breast beating still strikes some people as odd in our day. I was taught to think of it as knocking at our hearts like a gentle rap at the door, know, asking your heart to open.
So I found myself standing there thinking about who was knocking on my heart that day, a week after the attacks of September 11th. And it was certainly members of my New York congregation, many of whom had lost friends in the World Trade center when the buildings collapsed. My city was which was traumatized by the death toll and the suddenly empty sky. And it was kind of etched with this immeasurable sorrow and my nation, which was shuddering suddenly in its vulnerability despite the vast military might and the oceans of protection.
But most insistently I discovered that the knocking that felt most distant on my heart were those that were made other by association, meaning the Muslims.
So I had become a Congregational rabbi because I wanted to share the joy in Jewish living and learning and the inspiration it provides to engage in tikkun olam in world repair.
But then I became an interfaith leader because real self understanding emerges in our encounters with difference.
So eventually I left the Congregational Rabbinate and I went to go earn a doctorate with a focus on comparative exegesis. Right. How do we understand our sacred texts? And I began teaching at Chicago Theological Seminary, which at that time was a primarily Protestant seminary.
I was hired to teach Jewish studies because that was my area of expertise and because the seminary believed that in order to be a religious leader today, you need to know something about a tradition other than own.
So I discovered that my students, while learning around about Jewish traditions and Jewish thought and learning with me even more impactfully, they were learning a great deal about themselves and about their own faith. So I was drawn to this newly emerging field of inter religious studies. So that's the spiritual biography that got me into this field where we explore how we engage religious difference and what kind of impact that really does have. So I taught lots of courses that examined these questions, but didn't find the resources that I wanted to be able to provide for my students. So eventually I wrote the book that I wanted to have for my main course in Inter Religious studies, and that's.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: This book, 911 was also very impactful for me. I was a student at Georgetown University when that occurred. And I was actually studying Arabic when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked. So it was a pivotal moment. And I think for a lot of us in this field, that was a moment where we became more interested in interfaith understanding and cross cultural understanding as well.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: They are classic stories. There were many of us who were moved in that way by 9 11.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So maybe you could speak now more about the title of the book. And as we both know, this has been a discussion in our field. What should we call it?
Is it Interfaith Studies? Is it Inter Religious Studies? Is it both, like a slash between them? So why did you pick Interreligious studies? And could you take us behind this debate and brainstorming around the title?
[00:07:26] Speaker B: So the unit which we are on, the steering committee at AAR, chose the slash version, the Interfaith Interreligious Studies approach.
Some of the early shapers of that choice and of the field, like Jennifer Peace, felt strongly that they wanted to signal that it was both for the academic approach, which generally chooses the term interreligious studies, and those out in the field doing sort of field work, engagement, where you often find the word interfaith, and that these sources of learning, sources of knowledge, are mutually informing and they're both necessary in the understanding of engagement and of encounter. And so let's signal that we are including both.
So I went ahead and defined the field because that's also something that we continue to debate. How do we understand or think about or define our field? And I gave this kind of elaborate sentence, right? I said the field of interreligious studies entails critical analysis of the dynamic encounters, historical and contemporary, intentional and unintentional, embodied and imagined, congenial and conflictual, of individuals and communities who orient around religion differently. That last phrase is one that many of us have borrowed from you, Patel, another early shaper of the field. And then I added, it investigates the complex of personal, interpersonal, institutional and societal implications. So that's a mouthful. And I can unpack it if you want.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that'd Be great.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: So I talk about critical analysis, right? The field of interreligious studies entails critical analysis because we're not just eating hummus and telling stories. There is a value in academic study and taking theoretical analysis and lenses and stepping outside the confessional experience, or even the field experience, and bringing that knowledge into the sphere. But it also is. I mean, it's a study of dynamic encounters. These are about meaning, not comparison of ideas, right? There are fields that compare theologies or texts and their interpretation. Interreligious studies is about what happens when ideas and people and groups meet.
They're dynamic because encounter is not an artifact, right? It's not a fixed object. It's always changing.
I emphasize that the encounters are both historical and contemporary because sometimes people imagine that interfaith engagement's a modern phenomenon, right? It somehow started with the World Parliament, the Parliament of the world's religions at the end of the 19th century. But it's not. It's been going on for a long time. Other people sometimes imagine that historical encounter was only conflictual. So, you know, they think crusades or something like that. But there's always been the meeting of religious difference in ways that have been very instrumental in shaping the diverse lifestances, and that history is really important in understanding our world today.
So I also emphasize that they are both intentional and unintentional, because many people who work in inter religious or interfaith studies imagine that it's all about our programs, right? We run interfaith programs that are designed to bring folks together and to dignify their differences and cultivate the common ground, build real relationship that's essential to mutual understanding. But the vast majority of encounters with religious difference happen without any careful planning whatsoever, right? It's not our doing. They just happen in the public square, in workplaces and in the media, and frequently within extended families. So those encounters are worthy of study too, embodied and imagined. Often the way we portray difference serves to define ourselves. Our colleague Mariana Moyark has just written kind of a whole book on this in an oversimplified and ugly form. Some would say I am the true religion, and your religion thus stands for everything I stand against.
But even when we don't meet each other, we still imagine each other. Shakespeare wrote the Merchant of Venice with its compelling but very problematic, negatively stereotyped Jewish character of Shylock. 300 years after Jews were expelled from England. He'd likely never met a Jew. So the way we imagine each other also shapes encounter. So that matters congenial and conflictual.
Community Interfaith work sometimes suffers from what another colleague of ours, Kate McCarthy, calls the overly ironic impulse. We like to look how much we have in common, look at all the good that religious people do together.
But religion is also a source of conflict, and that needs to be examined as well. So all those different kinds of encounters of individuals and communities who orient around religion differently, I think it's important to emphasize that religion is not only what institutions say it is. We need to understand how individuals actually live it. Right. Religious studies has this same kind of set of issues in thinking and writing about religion in general. Encounter is much more about the meeting of persons than it is the meeting of religions. So, and I talk about orienting around religion differently because it's important to include people who might not even define themselves as religious or don't fit into a tidy box when it comes to religion. I actually, in the book teach the word lifestance, which I think is more encompassing, and then I use that much more often than I talk about religious, because I also don't want to define people of humanist lifestances, for instance, by what they're not, by calling them non religious. So that still privileges religious as kind of the norm and then makes those people the people who aren't that. And the last sentence of the definition, which talks about the complex of personal and interpersonal and institutional and societal implications is, I want to state at the outset in the definition that encounters with religious difference matter. They have an impact on all these levels. We recognize that when we see religious discrimination, a personal animus that props a person to yank off a woman's hijab or to walk into a synagogue and murder Jews in prayer, or institutional discrimination. We can also see the Trump administration's Muslim ban or the legal system's continuing unwillingness to accord indigenous lifestyles equal protection.
We see political and societal implications of Christian nationalism, or more broadly, how Christian culture in the US has shaped American forms of multiple lifestances. Right. There's kind of an American Judaism that's different than it looks in other places in the world. And things happen within Jewish life in America largely because Christianity kinds of influences.
There are also positive aspects of this complex, of course, like the multi faith movement that was instrumental in the fight for civil rights, or others that have facilitated peaceful resolution of violent conflicts or provided essential social services, or working to address the climate crisis. Or we could explore something like how encounter with Eastern traditions helped rekindle interest in the spiritual dimensions of Christianity and Judaism, which some had set aside due to the influence of The Enlightenment. I think also we could name the wisdom from indigenous traditions that has been so significant in providing tools for thinking about restorative justice in a bunch of different faiths and reimagine what criminal justice means. Anyway, that's kind of unpacking it. So you can see why it's such a lengthy definition in order to pack all that in.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: No, I agree. And what I found interesting about this definition is this emphasis on interreligious studies. As you mentioned, an academic field, a critical analysis. And I agree that from my understanding interfaith studies has this conception more confessional, community oriented. Maybe there is a sense you mentioned of like Kumbaya, like everyone discussed to get along and you seem like you're interested in both the positive and negative interactions. Would you say that's accurate or how would you describe it?
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Absolutely, definitely. By the way, I got. I don't think it was me, but I was present when somebody was critiqued for using the word Kumbaya to describe what we all understand, right, as this overly ironic impulse, because. And they knew a lot about what the.
The roots of Kumbaya, you know, as a deep philosophical and social value. And so that we shouldn't use it in this way of sort of minimizing the rigor of interreligious studies. And I said, and I logged that. But it is the shorthand that we all have. We're talking about this overly ironic impulse.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: No, you're right. Yeah, I did more research on that, on that term.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I was fascinated by it because I didn't know enough about it.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: And one of the things I found interesting in your introduction is how you speak about interreligious studies or IRS as being interdisciplinary, inclusive, intersectional and relational. So interreligious studies is different than interfaith studies or interview. There's. There seems to be a move last couple of years to distinguish them. And it's also different than other fields that maybe are focusing on one discipline or more theoretical. They're not interested in the relational. They're not necessarily looking at different identities as intersectional, and maybe they're even exclusive on who can be part of it. So, yeah, could you speak about these interesting terms of how IRS is interdisciplinary, inclusive, intersectional, relational?
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Sure. By the way, I do use IRS in the book because to talk about interreligious studies is such a mouthful all the time and big words. Right. But I always think somebody that's just going to flag people worrying about their taxes every time they see the letters. In any event, since we're looking at a broad range of encounters with difference and their impact. We need lots of different lenses. So that's why I think it's important that it be interdisciplinary. What happens if we are reading about religious others in literature, or we're seeing religious others depicted in art, or the way television and movies portray people, et cetera. We can't just use the tools of religious studies or theology. Right? We need actually to understand something about the mediums, the media, and the methodologies of those places in which they're appearing. Or if we want to understand even why certain times and places offer relative peace and cooperation among people who oriented around religion differently while others erupt into conflict, then we need tools of history and economics and sociology, especially because so many things that manifest with religious dimensions aren't necessarily at their root about religious difference. But religion is not an innocent bystander either, right? So it gets inserted into that interdisciplinary intersectional thing, inclusive, because we can't study encounters with difference in honest and faithful ways.
If we render lots of people invisible, who gets to speak for a particular life stance remains a very potent question. And so we want to recognize the diversity that's within traditions. And we also then need to integrate perspectives that have been obscured by historical bias, especially indigenous and pagan traditions, but also minoritized or heretical sub traditions within particular lifestances. And again, people who don't fit in tidy boxes. There are a lot of folks at Chicago Theological Seminary who have come to CTS because we are striving to make room for interspiritual people and humanists who, you know, who want to do theological education because they see how religion matters in society. But setting an inclusive table takes a lot of work. It's intersectional because we don't show up as only one thing. So encounters among different life stances also means encounters among different genders and races and ages, nationalities and politics and sexual orientation and class. And the list can go on.
So some of these other differences actually have prominent histories within religion, certainly around gender and sexuality, also race. And that makes those intersections all the more significant. And there's another aspect of intersectionality highlighted by civil rights advocate and legal scholar Kimberly Crenshaw, who's given us some the language and analytical tools. And she pointed out that intersections change meaning. Right. So being a Christian in the west, that's a position of power, but being a part of the Christian minority in China, you know, the religion might be the same, but the experience of living as a Christian is totally different. It's a very vulnerable position.
So we need to look at those intersections too, and relational in every way. You talked about some of them. Jennifer Halpis, I thought, spelled this out really nicely early on, and I cite her work in the book. The object of the study is relational because we're not studying one particular tradition, but the relationship between them. The method of study is relational because we're drawing from multiple disciplines as well as knowledge that emerges from critical study and from experience of practitioners. Relational that way. The interreligious and interfaith, the ethics are relational because we're trying to be attentive to power dynamics and visibility and equity and learn how to be accountable to one another. Other. The pedagogy is relational because ideally we are learning with and from folks who orient around religion differently. They are our partners, not our objects of study. The objectives are relational because we're teaching folks not just about interreligious encounter. We're also providing skills, developing capacities to do it well. So in all of those ways, it's relational.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Yeah, all those terms. I think relational is one of the reasons why I've been drawn to irs, because there is this sense that when I was in religious studies, it was more theoretical. And I graduated from a very textual program focusing on the ancient Near East. So it was all about text and theory. And I felt I wasn't interacting with people and helping build institutions and trying to implement the values that I believe in. So I think you kind of spelled it out for me. I was one of the reasons why I think I'm personally attracted to irs. Yeah, I also come from a very.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Strong textual doctoral training, and I love feeling like a strong reader of texts. But it's interesting that we've both drifted into this. Not drifted, directed ourselves into this space without abandoning the textual work that we do.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: No, that's a good point. That I think understand the connection between texts and communities and lived realities is both part of our work. And yeah, there are programs where you're just focusing on the text within a historical context, but not really thinking about how is this relevant today or how does it affect religious people or people who have different life stances as. As you know. Could you speak a little bit more about how IRS is different than other fields? So I just mentioned religious studies. There's also theology, comparative religion used, I think, earlier on comparative scripture. There's comparative theology. We discussed a little bit about interface studies.
So there are a lot of different fields out there. We've also are kind of both in the Abrahamic traditions. So.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: How does IRS does it fit in any of these? Is it overlap? Is it distinct?
[00:25:01] Speaker B: So this is also a question for debate in the field, right. Are we really a distinct subfield or not? But I think it's different. I did mention one of the core differences between interreligious studies and comparative religion or comparative theology is the focus on encounter as opposed to comparing ideas. Right. So we're looking at what's the impact when we meet one another in whatever ways, as opposed to these ideas. However, there are some people working in comparative theology who do the work for the ways that the ideas of the other traditions may impact them. So if you do that work in faithful relationship with people who stand inside those traditions, which is one of the more responsible ways to learn about them? Right. And you are partners with and for each other, then there is some of that encounter going on as well. I think one of the important efforts in religious studies is to move beyond the Abrahamic, so called Abrahamic traditions because again, in its effort to be inclusive, there are so many other traditions. And that's tricky work for me because my areas of expertise are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. That's the textual work that I, you know, that I did. So I tried really hard in the book to include lots of other traditions, but I really had to go hunting and talking to people to find the cases and other examples that I thought would illuminate and make them, those life stances come to life as well. But I think that's really important that interreligious studies can move the focus. I think interfaith work still often does end up being Jews, Christians and Muslims kind of getting together. But that also is changing.
Your partners depend on where you live too. Right? Who's there?
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. This is really interesting for me because I've engaged your previous work, Dangerous Religious Ideas. For instance, your previous book had this kind of Abrahamic background. Right. You're looking at these ideas within Judaism, Christianity, Islam. So do you see yourself evolving in some ways? Are you developing your ideas or is it just building off each other's? Do you still do Abrahamic studies and inter religious studies or now you're using inter religious studies or how would you.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: So when I do deep comparative textual work, I still can only do, you know, with any level of, of expertise, duties. And Christianity and Islamic. When I'm writing specifically about interreligious studies, then I have a broader lens, but I just don't have the deep theological ideational historical expertise for many of the others. So I talk to lots of people who have those Expertises, but I still wouldn't dare write a deep analytical, textual, ideational work on, on Hindu traditions or indigenous traditions in the US or. I couldn't do it. I'd love to.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: No. Yeah, I couldn't do it either, unfortunately. So I, as you speak it, it reminds me of some of the work in the field, like Kevin Minister is one of them, who's written about this idea of world religions, that it's not simply about studying the different religions and then placing them in these different geograph geographical locations, but how do we navigate social difference? So would you say like your work kind of is in the similar vein or later?
[00:28:43] Speaker B: Well, I do both these things. So, you know, I, and I think you do too, right? You're still publishing sort of in the vein, doing research and publishing in the vein of the work that you were trained to do in your doctoral studies. That's part of your ongoing scholarship. And this is interrelated, but it's also distinct.
But I do think that Kevin Minister's point, Well, I mean, he's made many good points, but the one that your comments made me think of is when he basically said it's a more responsible thing to do. If you want to give students a fundamental set of tools for navigating religious diversity in the world, it's not to learn, you know, the five pillars of Islam and the theology of the Reformation, you know, it's. It's to learn and focus on the meeting of religious individuals and communities and how that shapes our world.
So I think that's a compelling point. I think it's a. Both and. Right. If you're only going to get one course with undergraduates, then I, I buy his argument that this, you know, it might be a better idea to teach interreligious engagement studies and engagement than world religions, if you've got one course. But in terms of the body of knowledge and scholarship, and I, I think we need to go down both tracks.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense and I agree. And, and on that point, about teaching students or giving them the tools to navigate religious difference or cultural similarities or differences, your book has this kind of component, Right? So it's not just a theoretical book, it's not simply a textbook of these different religions, but it has case studies and examples of how to interact with people and ways historically people have interacted with one another. So in the book you have part one mapping the field, you have part two meeting spaces and part three modes of engagement. So could you speak about how you structure the book and these three different parts and how they build off or complement each other.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: So mapping the field is kind of an orientation. It offers the understanding of what IRS is and language that I or we use and what these terms mean and why. It's an overview of interreligious encounter through history to help them sort of see this is a much bigger, longer picture. It also introduces a theologies of religion framework so that readers can think about what they think about. People who orient around religion differently than they do, because we should all be self reflexive about what we believe and how that impacts our meeting. With religious difference in meeting spaces, I introduce context in which we meet religious difference generally without being planned or guided by interreligious experts.
Again, workplaces, public schools, higher ed, families, media, public policy, public spaces, public discourse.
This section is where one of my favorite aspects of the book, and you alluded to it, really shines, I think. And that's the case summaries, real world cases that make the unique challenges and opportunities in these contexts really clear. And each case is followed by a few questions for the reader, and it invites the readers to step inside the shoes of the stakeholders in the case. Because even when everyone comes to the table with the desire to get along, there are bumps in the road. Religious difference makes a difference. So I also have a chapter on antisemitism and Islamophobia, because it isn't always the case that everybody comes to the table with the desire to get along. And these dangerous hatreds also shape our meeting spaces. So it's important to be aware of the dynamics at work. And then that third section is about modes of engagement. And that's where I introduce the diverse strategies for interreligious engagement. Programs with examples and best practices. And I move through different approaches. Dialogue, study, spiritual encounter, community based service, organizing, advocacy, and the arts, which I think is an understudied dimension, but increasingly I think more in the field than in the economy.
It's being recognized as a very fruitful place for interreligious encounter. I also include in that section a chapter on conflict transformation because it helps when we do pop into trouble.
So these sections represent that broad array of understanding and insight and capacities that I want my graduate students, students to develop when they take my courses. So it works also for undergraduates, but I have my students in mind when I'm writing it. But it's very accessible kind of language and framing. So that works for undergraduates too.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Yes, and I think the case studies really, or case summaries really stood out to me. And I teach a course on the Quran and Bible and comparative scripture and historically I would just focus on the text. But more recently since I've been involved with irs, I'm introducing more case summaries and trying to have the students focus on not just what the different texts say, but how do you navigate religious difference. So I'm looking forward to implementing some of your case summaries in my classes. So could you speak about that chapter, Chapter eight? As someone who is in Islamic studies and teaches on Islam in America, I was really fascinated on chapter eight, anti Semitism and Islamophobia. So we already spoke about 911 and the reactions towards 9 11, the rise of Islamophobia. And I found this chapter really interesting because oftentimes in the general public there's this idea that Jews and Muslims are intrinsically antagonistic towards one another and there's nothing really in common. And there's always these political whole issues that divide them. But you show that, yes, there, there is this conflict, you know, at the same time there is sometimes this congenial relationship to go back to your definition. So could you speak more about that chapter and how it may be relevant today?
[00:35:30] Speaker B: So in the book I talk about how the places where we meet religious difference aren't empty lots, right? They're full of history. And that shapes encounter. And antisemitism and Islamophobia are both long standing. Some people think Islamophobia started in 2001 and that's not the case. Antisemitism has long been recognized as one of the longest hatreds, but they both continue to impact interreligious engagement, both the accidental and the program sort, including people who actively work to avoid them. Right? They're just, they're in the water. They shape, they shape our realities.
But as you say, there's a lot of common ground and experience which in inter religious engagement in quieter times really comes to the fore. So I'll focus on the US Muslims and Jews have a lot of shared experiences within American culture. There was a kind of trauma bonding really around Islamophobia and antisemitism. And groups of Jews and Muslims often showed up first for each other when the community was under attack or struggling. So Jews protecting mosques after 9 11, protesting the Muslim ban in huge numbers. Muslims speaking out against synagogue vandalism and violent attacks on Jews. Even the experience of our holy days, right, our holy days are largely invisible in the broader culture. And more of my Muslim friends send me greetings on my holy days than do my Christian friends because they're aware that Somebody else's calendar is different and Jews are more likely to acknowledge theirs. I mean, those are built on anecdotal evidence. Not something I've ever studied, but from my own experience.
And then studying together, when we do have that opportunity, then unlocks these deep reservoirs of common ground. Thick relationship with texts, religious life that's animated by daily practices. There's just so much general and specific where you can see these traditions in their long relationship and influence and similarities. That said, obviously, the current conflict in the Middle east, particularly in Gaza, is sorely testing these relationships that have been really formed in, in the last decades in really beautiful and compelling ways. But right now those relationships are being tested. So even though some of the dynamics remain the same, right. Antisemitism and Islamophobia still rise and fall together. So both anti Muslim and anti Jewish attacks and hate speech skyrocketed after October 7th. Right. Both of them went up.
And it's important to acknowledge. Well, this is going to take it a little off topic for a second, but it will come back. I think it's important to acknowledge that the brutality of the October 7th attack and the subsequent devastation of Gaza and the expansion of the violence into Lebanon and beyond west bank, these are not the only traumas circulating in our society. There's the trauma, polarization in U.S. politics, military conflicts around the world, Sudan, Congo, Russia and Ukraine, police violence and other racialized trauma, mass shootings, the enduring impact of COVID 19, particularly what I consider the long Covid effect of loneliness that so many of us who even if we didn't have Covid, it's somehow embedding itself. Homelessness and food insecurity and political and physical assaults on transgender individuals, and sexual assaults and destruction rot in recent hurricanes and displacement from famine and other climate driven trauma. And I think it's important to acknowledge that, not to lessen our focus and our concerns about, about Gaza, but because extended social crisis will always exact a toll on minoritized populations.
And also because trauma can be compounded when you feel that your experience has become invisible. And so especially on college campuses, I think it's important to recognize that people are dealing with a variety of traumas, but a large portion of our students are dealing with some kind of trauma. But so when you feel like your experience has been upstaged or you have an invisibilized identity, like Arab Christians feel invisibilized a lot in the current conflict, or African American Jews and other Jews of color, or if you don't fit into the sides that have been drawn in the conflict. The folks who claim to speak for you don't in fact speak for you. So I also feel that the broader context of multiple traumas alongside some old wounds has shaped in the worst possible way how we've imported this conflict and the impact it's having on Muslim and Jewish relations.
Words are wielded to wound and people demonize those who disagree not by religion, but by their stance on this conflict. And it's just where are people falling? Majority of people by their religion falling in particular camps. But I see people wanting to cause more pain as if there wasn't enough to go around. And the proclaimed solutions are kind of all or nothing battles.
So interreligious studies has often tried to emphasize that empathy is not a zero sum game.
We can and we should care about the suffering of everybody who's impacted.
Two thirds of American Jews don't support the actions of the Netanyahu government. Two thirds.
So we could be speaking with a common voice about the urgency of a ceasefire, about attaching conditions to military aid and other actions that the US could take to exert its influence more effectively to establish justice for all the peoples of the land. But, and here I clearly speak as a stakeholder, a Jew with more family in Israel than I have here in the us, all of whom don't support Netanyahu. That potentially powerful coalition that could change the way U.S. does business in the Middle east is not going to happen when the loudest supporters, the loudest voices supporting Palestinians are calling for an end to the state of Israel.
The vast majority of Jews view the establishment of Israel as a national liberation project, not a settler colonial one. And they believe that establishing political autonomy in our historical homeland is that story of national liberation. And it was called in the vein by international resolution. And it's where almost half the Jews in the world live. And so they're not going. Most Jews will not ally with people who want to see an end to the state of Israel, even if they are also concerned about Palestinian rights.
So it's a lost opportunity for what I think could be a transformational coalition.
I am a laudik of Israeli policies and I've worked for decades to support justice for Palestinians. And I don't believe all criticism of Israel is anti Semitic. But I too am struggling with my longtime Muslim partners as we have struggled, not all of them, but as we try to understand each other's perspectives around. Not only we all agree that the destruction of Gaza is immoral, we also agree that it has to stop. But the language that we want to use or the strategies we want to use different. It's work. You already have to be invested in the relationship to want to understand.
Again, I don't think empathy is a zero sum game. If you don't care about the fate of the Jews who live there, that is anti Semitic. And if you don't care about the fate of the Palestinians, no matter what their religion, whether they're Muslim or Christian, that's anti Palestinian.
Our friend and colleague Najiba Said often asks who is human?
If we're not being kept up at night by the death of tens of thousands of Palestinians, then they haven't, in our imaginations, become fully human. There just can't be that much death without us.
So similarly, the demonization of all Zionists as settler colonialists or all Palestinians as terrorists also dehumanizes. And that's whether they live in the land or live on a US University campus. They're all human. And I think interreligious studies tries very hard to establish that as a foundational commitment. But the world intrudes.
There are efforts to humanize.
Go on. And then I'll talk about some of the bright spots.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I just wanted to emphasize what you said, and it speaks earlier to the definition of irs, of congenial and conflictual. So I've seen that also in my interaction that Muslims often look to Jews as models as a minority, another minority in the United States that's been here longer, even though, as you know, Muslims have been here since the time of slavery. There's also this understanding that Muslim Jews face hate crimes, anti Semitism, Islamophobia, that they often partner on different social issues, such as refugees. My local community here, there is a Friday prayer space in a local synagogue that's been very opening and welcome. But at the same time, there's this kind of conflictual relationship when it comes to international politics and the war on Gaza and the destruction that we're seeing currently. So it is a good example of interreligious studies and how it could potentially benefit us. I think one of the frustrations that a lot of folks in American society is like, what is the purpose of higher education? What's the purpose of religious studies? And I think IRS has the potential to show, hey, we're contributing to society. We're finding solutions to problems that people care about. So, yeah, what are your thoughts on that? And maybe you could also give us some bright spots that we can reflect upon.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: Well, gosh, you bring up so many interesting points. For some Reason Your comments take me also to the way that IRS grapples with complexity.
So it's complicated, right? So one example would be in Israel. There are thousands of protesters, and sometimes hundreds of thousands who turn out every day to stand against the war, right? And they post photos of the hostages to emphasize the value of human life over the instinct for vengeance. But context matters.
This is one of the complications we haven't talked about yet. But in the us, posting photos of the Israeli hostages is seen as taking Israel's side. And they're often torn down by people who are protesting for Palestinian life. Also, some of these early protesters represent groups that have long labored to end Palestinian suffering and were vocal about the devastating destruction of Gaza. But the public message of the protests in Israel is about bringing home the hostages, because that's where the issue can get the majority of Israelis to support a ceasefire. So it's a strategic move to which Israel's critics barely say, what about the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza? Don't you care about genocide? Do you care only about your own people?
Why is that the focus of the protest? And then you have that complexity, comes home, comes here to us in different ways. On American college campuses, there are a lot of people in the protesters, among the protesters who actually support a two state solution, although that's not the language of a lot of the vocal part of the protest. But they're present and they may recognize a two state solution as increasingly impossible. Or they'll talk about some locally negotiated resolution, meaning it's their decision. Potter to shared sovereignty and dual autonomy, some resolution that pursues justice for all the peoples of the land. But the media message is from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Which sounds to people who care about Israel like a formula for its end or its eradication. So.
So it's complicated. They don't know in which camp to sit or they'll be present, but they're uncomfortable.
So there are groups, here's a bright spot, that have found a way to meet across profound difference. And I find most of them to be groups who live in Israel and Palestine because they've been each other's reality for a long, long time. And there's been conflict and death and devastation and an unfair balance of power for a long, long time. So they've decided they're going to affirm each other's humanity. One of my favorite examples is the Parent Circle Family Forum. These are people in Palestine and Israel who have been brought together by nightmare.
They've had a family member who was killed either by nightmare, you know, Israeli Jews whose family member was killed by Palestinians or Palestinians whose family member was killed by usually the idf, but it could be settlers or other acts of violence.
So I mean, just imagine the, how emotionally risky that is, opening yourself up to the pain of the other side when your pain is so deep. Or even imagine them having to tell their communities where they're going when they go to a meeting or they're coming to give a talk. Right. That they would likely face a shower of accusations that they're not. That they're being traitors to their own people or they're being hopelessly naive. And yet they do it and they tour and they tell their stories, their painful stories. And they model empathy rather than hatred and anger and trouble, even amidst trauma, they're modeling empathy. So I think it shows how compassion for all peoples is the moral high ground and that it doesn't compromise commitment to your own community.
And their efforts, I think reveal another really important insight and that's that finding work you can do together, a shared purpose is both healing from trauma and powerful glue and building bridges. And I think that, that, you know, for, for Muslims and Jews in the US who are still trying to salvage relationship in, in this myth, finding work that we can do together will help secure that relationship through the difficulties. We can continue to disagree where we do continue to use language that helps us understand that there is likely common ground and we could perhaps even work on this issue together. But there's still work that we could do.
[00:51:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think you said it like empathy, the relationships, those are things that really draw me to irs. And oftentimes we talk about religion. It's very theoretical, it's sometimes very textual. But if we can actually understand each other's pain and listen, have that capacity not just to lecture as educators, but also to listen to other people and how they experience the world. So yeah, that's beautiful. And maybe to conclude, you could speak a little bit about your future work.
Where are you moving now after writing this textbook?
What opportunities? What doors are opening up? How are you building upon it? What are you currently writing? What's your next project?
[00:52:26] Speaker B: So I continue to teach courses on the subject and to do consulting, mostly in higher ed and speaking, and to advance the field through the work of the steering committee which you serve with me.
But my co chairship is ending, so that work will be up to you soon. CTS is a wonderful place to be doing this work. We have a reputation for this broad embrace of diverse spiritual life. Stances and our partnership with Bayan Islamic Graduate School. So we have this wonderful living laboratory just doing theological education together. We're now about 40% various sorts of Christian and 40% Muslim and the rest an amazing assortment of inter spiritual and humanist and Buddhist and Jewish and Hindu and pagan and other folks.
But I'm currently working on a project about what it means to be human. So this goes back to the tube of seeds question, but less political in this sense and sort of foundationally moral and more theological. Right. So as framed by the teachings and here I rely back on my three areas of relative expertise. Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
So I was originally intrigued by the difference between Christian notions of original sin and Judaism's teachings teaching that we have both a good inclination and an evil one. And we are forever choosing between them and the Islamic idea that we're all born with fitra, this innate ability to discern goodness and to recognize God and be drawn toward God. So I wondered, in an inter religious sense, right. How are these not just ideas, but how have they shaped? How do they shape our thinking, our society?
These traditions also have diverse notions of free will and divine providence, body and soul, and what personhood is and our relationship to creation.
I'm trying to explore what all these diverse notions of the human mean for our daily lives and our communities and our body politic. As you know, I'm going to present some of this work publicly for the Silver Oprecht Lecture at the Institute of Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in the spring because you're the respondent and I really look forward to that. It's also going to then get shaped into a book for Georgetown University Press. So I've got some work cut out for me and I've made some work for you.
But I'm excited about this project.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: Thanks so much, Rachel, for your contributions, sharing your knowledge and expertise with us, and thanks for being on the Sonic Mary podcast.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:55:09] Speaker A: And that was my interview with Rachel Mikva. So many things spoke to me in that interview. First, the idea that interreligious studies is relational and academic. When I was in religious studies and continued to contribute to that field, I felt it was theoretical and abstract. And also during my graduate times, I focused on text within their historical context, but we didn't always look at how they were connected to real life communities. We also see that interreligious studies is trying to move in an academic direction, not just focusing on confessional communities and trying to get along, but also to study the history and how it's relevant contemporary times, as well as the congenial and conflictual how religious traditions can work for the common good, but how oftentimes they also lead to conflict.
I'm also happy that the conversation moved from the theoretical to the practical. We began talking about the definition of interreligious studies, how it's different and similar to other disciplines, but then Rachel spoke specifically about Muslim Jewish relationships, whether that be regarding antisemitism and Islamophobia, and then spoke about the current crisis in the Middle East. Muslim Jewish relations is something that I thought a lot about and worked a great deal on. And there's so many commonalities, whether that be Muslims and Jews both being minorities here in the United States, to a focus on Scripture to that of monotheism. Personally, I do not have a clear solution to the current crisis, but I do believe that empathy, hearing each other and trying to work towards the common good is part of the solution. Also, through my work through the Brzezinji Institute for Global Virtual Learning, I'm keen to uplift the voices of the Palestinian people. Whatever the solution is, Palestinians need to be at the table, have their voices heard, and be front and center of any potential solution.
In conclusion, I would encourage you to subscribe to the Commonwealth Podcast, which is available on all major podcast streaming services such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Visit the May Dan website for more podcasts, blogs and videos. You can also visit my website to learn more about my bio, research and blogs and join my listserv to be updated on my research, speaking and publications, especially my forthcoming book on the Islamic Mary thanks once again for listening to a Common Word podcast.
