Landmark Cincinnati Exhibit to Be Displayed Permanently in Krakow Poland

by James Buchanan, Xavier University

“A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II and the Jewish People” was conceived, built and premiered in Cincinnati. The 2300 square foot, multimedia exhibit was the result of a unique relationship between the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati and Xavier University. A relationship that has flourished through the years since the exhibit.The exhibit was conceived and built by people and organizations all over the world led by Dr. James Buchanan and Rabbi Abie Ingber of Xavier University and Dr. William Madges, who taught at Xavier at the time but now teaches at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. It opened at Xavier on May 19, 2005 on the occasion of what would have been Pope John Paul II’s 85thbirthday. The exhibit went on to tour the United States for the next 9 years in 18 venues from coast to coast where it was experienced by over a million people. In 2015 the exhibit traveled to Europe where it opened at the Vatican Museum on July 28th to great acclaim. At the closing ceremony at the Vatican in September of 2015, the exhibit was presented as a gift for permanent display at the new Saint John Paul II Center being built in Krakow Poland.

The message of the exhibit concerns the importance of interfaith dialogue and the role that Saint John Paul II played throughout his Papacy in fostering dialogue between all the world’s religions but particularly between the Catholic Church and Judaism. What is unique about Saint John Paul’s story as told in the exhibit is that all of the interfaith “firsts” he did as Pope were not decisions he made when he became Pope but the lessons he learned as a child growing up with Jewish friends such as Jerzy Kluger in Wadowice, Poland. Those firsts include the fact that Jerzy Kluger was his first private audience as Pope; that he was the first Pope to visit a Synagogue; the first Pope to make an official visit to Israel where he visited not only Christian sites but Jewish sites such as Yad Vashem and the Western Wall; and he was the first Pope to recognize the state of Israel. What Saint John Paul II did with Judaism extended to all of the world’s religions as made a point to meet with and listen to leaders of all faith traditions and as he twice sponsored interfaith celebrations of peace in Assisi, Italy.     

On November 21, 2016, Executive Director, James Buchanan and Robert Shelton, the site engineer, traveled to Krakow to do the initial stages of the installation in a space in the new museum that has been specially prepared for the exhibit. The museum will open sometime in 2017 where it will not only carry its message of the importance of interfaith dialogue and collaboration to the millions of pilgrims who will visit the site but will also be an important voice for the future generations of Poles and people from around the world about the dangers of anti-Semitism or prejudice against those of other faith traditions than our own. 

Read more about the Exhibit at www.blessingexhibit.org

On November 16th, the AJC Cincinnati hosted their 16th Annual Thanksgiving Diversity Lunch.  This event welcomed local ethnic, religious and international communities to celebrate our unique roots and shared values.   Special guest speaker and musician, Eddy Kwon, spoke about the value and personal transformation of music in the daily lives of the youth in Price Hill. Eddy Kwon is the Director MYCincinnati (Music for Youth in Cincinnati).  This is a free Orchestra that is offered to the children of Price Hill.  MyCincinnati started in 2011 with just 11 students and through perseverance, it has to over 120 students. He spends each day teaching music to middle school and high school students.  They use music as a means to express their story of their lives living in Price Hill.  MyCincinnati finds itself taking a more active role and recently hosted its first annual Price Hill Creative Community Festival.  Some highlights of their collaboration include Swedish Grammy-nominated songwriter Jens Lekman, pianist Awadagin Pratt, and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. They are continuing to explore new ways of sharing their art to the greater community.  Look for them!

Religious Diversity in the Workplace and in Schools- Whose Job is it?

by Judie Kuhlman 

In our changing cultural landscape and the rise of tensions throughout our country, a group of diverse Women of Faith have recognized that we can no longer play the silence card when it comes to our religious diversity.  So then, what role can we play?  They identified the need to dialogue with one another and create safe places in order to discuss our diversity.  On November 3rd the Women of Faith hosted their second annual event addressing the Women’s Role in our Changing Faith Community.  This event focused on the impact women can play in educating our community about Religious Diversity in our Schools and at Workplace. The Women of Faith hosted Deborah J. Levine who is an award-winning author and speaker of religious literacy.  She has written books including Religious Diversity in Our Schools  and Religious Diversity at Work: Guide to Religious Diversity in the US Workplace.

Through Levine’s experience, the majority of schools and workplaces do not know how to handle various religious practices, food, dress and holy days.  Levine advocates that our schools and work places “skillfully facilitate dialogues where participants can share key aspects of their beliefs…this can work wonders in debunking myths and stereotypes, build trust, and lessen the potential conflicts based on religion.”

By learning more about one another, we actually bring the “other” closer to us uncovering a holiness and truth about our uniqueness.  Abraham Joshua Heschel remarks, “No Religion is and Island…We are all involved with one another.  Views adopted in one community have an impact on other communities.”  We need to allow for these impacts to be fruitful and not harmful. Levine teaches us to “harmonize” and not to “homogenize.”   Often times, it is as easy as not putting pepperoni on that pizza or making a space for prayer at work. Through her books and workshops, Levine offers guidelines that can help employers and schools work through common religious questions.

We do need to recognize our responsibility as people of faith to help our schools and employers through this process of understanding.  We can each look at our own faith teachings as a source of why we should.  From the Roman Catholic document Nostra Aetate,  “We cannot truly call on God the Father of all if refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God.”

For additional information, please read Deborah Levine’s article in the Huffington Post. 

This event was partnered with American Jewish Committee, The Edward B. Brueggeman Center for Dialogue, Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati, Jewish Community Relations Council and generous support from Xavier University.

Bridges of Faith Trialogue writes an Open Letter to President-Elect Trump

A local Cincinnati group composed of Christians, Muslims, and Jews called Bridges of Faith Trialogue urges faithful citizens to endorse an open letter to presidential-elect Trump to become more inclusive in his thoughts, words, and actions.  The purpose is to uphold the American way and not to fall back on fear and anxiety.  The fabric of our country was built on immigration, diversity and strong leaders willing to stand up for the right vision for America.  For more on this group and the open letter, Cincinnati Enquirer recently featured this group and their work toward peace. Click Here for more details.

 If you are interested in supporting this open letter, please contact Chip Harrod at [email protected]

I find myself thinking a lot about valuable life lessons I can continue to teach my kids. As a society, we are constantly surrounded by the various voices in the media, political analysts, political speeches, dramatic news events, and the ever-so-fascinating social media. In the process of trying to make sense of it all, I decided to focus on the topic of hope. 

We are all driven by hope. There is no life without hope. Recently, we had a tragic event in our school district. A high school student, who many described as the funniest person they knew, decided to take his own life. It is difficult to imagine the sense of hopelessness a person this young could have felt to take such a step. School, students, teachers, friends, family, church, social media, tv, music, movies, video games, sports- not one of these provided even a glimpse of hope to this child to continue to live his life. 

For the past couple of years, heartbreaking images of Syrian refugees have been displayed on our screens. Families with young children risked their lives to abandon a place of complete hopelessness and set out on a dangerous journey to the other side of the ocean. Risking death only for the tiniest glimpse of hope they see across the ocean. 

 Someone once told me, the common man is the same in every country. Regardless of race and religion the common man has the same wants and needs. We work hard everyday, in the hope of providing our children with a good education, hoping they will pick the right career and settle down. Then we hope to have time to enjoy our retirement years doing the things we have always wanted to do. This life cycle must be radically different for people in power. The question is will our leaders fill us with hope for a better future for our children or fulfill their own set of hopes and dreams?

We are heading towards the most important election in the world. The phrase I keep hearing is the “transparency of the two candidates” and how people have issues trusting both of these candidates. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out and time will tell if we as the greatest country in the world, picked the right candidate. Our greatest responsibility will be to choose “hope” but the tricky part is trying to figure out if there is a sense of false hope or if there is even the slightest chance of real hope.

Nostra Aetate: Beyond Interfaith Dialogue to Interfaith Collaboration

by James Buchanan, Executive Director

Xavier University, The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue

            In 2015 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate. This is not only one of the foundational documents of the post Vatican II Catholic Church but of all interfaith relations. In fact, it is considered by many as the most significant interfaith document ever written. Nostra Aetate was a paradigm shift for the Catholic Church which has become a paradigm shift for all of the religions because it paved the way for 50 years of interfaith dialogue. The document itself is disarmingly simple. It consists of five short sections which together total only 1054 words. But it is 1054 words that would slowly but surely begin to change the course of the Church, of the interfaith world, and of our local communities. It opens with the following statement:  “In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.” What we have in common religiously are the deep questions about life: “What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what is sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?”

            Theologically within a generation a multitude of interfaith dialogues had emerged around the world. Christian-Jewish, Christian-Buddhist, Christian-Muslim, Christian-Hindu, and Christian-Confucian dialogues became the one of the new directions for theological reflection. A new generation of scholars such as Mircea Eliade, Huston Smith, Willian Cantwell Smith and others became influential as History of Religions and the study of Comparative Religions emerged as serious disciplines in our universities. Writers such as Paul Knitter, Raimon Pannikar, David Tracy and others began to incorporate interfaith dialogue into their theological work. Institutions such as the Center for the Study of the World’s Religions and the Pluralism Project emerged with a new emphasis upon interfaith dialogue and understanding. National and global organizations such as the Council on Christian Jewish Relations, the International Council on Christians and Jews, The Parliament of the World’s Religions and many others now bring together thousands of leaders from the world’s religions to foster dialogue and understanding. Important documents such as Dabru Emet and A Common Word are calling the other Abrahamic traditions to dialogue in new ways. Interfaith dialogue and understanding is now an integral part of much of the theological education worldwide and is present in a variety of ways and forms in many of our communities. All of these and more trace back directly or indirectly to Nostra Aetate. 

            The challenge that Nostra Aetate presents in our time is that we build on the fifty years of dialogue with a shift to yet another new paradigm. It is critical that we, not only as faith communities, but as interfaith communities begin to work together to systemically change the fragmented, dis-integrating fabric of the communities we share. It is critical that the faith communities work together to provide a new interconnective tissue that binds us together and begin to shape a common good that challenges the forces of individualism, hyper-consumption, environmental degradation and social and economic inequity that plague our communities. The new paradigm is one that builds on dialogue but moves to actual, fully engaged interfaith collaboration. Interfaith collaboration can become a new and powerful form of social capital that works to transform our communities in ways that working as individual faith communities we would never be able to achieve. We need to provide a new foundation that can become the “guiding hand” that renews our communities. The challenge of the next 50 years is that we move beyond interfaith dialogue to interfaith collaboration. 

            Dialogue is and always will be the foundation upon which we must build community. Religiously, the hard truth is that no matter how long we continue engaging in interfaith dialogue we will never settle issues of covenant and new covenant, succession of prophets, trinity, soteriology, monotheism and polytheism, birth and rebirth and so on. Does that mean we should not continue to engage in dialogue? Of course not. We need to not only continue but to deepen our understanding and acceptance of the other.

There are so many issues in our communities about which we agree and which need our combined effort to address. There is strength in numbers and there is strength in people of faith who can overcome their theological differences to work for a common good. All of our faith communities are touched by issues such as the struggles of the refugee and asylee population among us. We are all touched by the bigotry of Islamophobia highlighted in a previous issue of the InterfaithCincy newsletter. We are all touched by the social and economic inequity that continues to spread among our marginalized communities like an epidemic. We are all touched by the environmental challenges which, while impacting our lives, will have dramatically more dire impacts on the lives of our children.

We have more issues in common and more values in common than those things that divide and separate us. Our hope for this website and the projects that it might help to spawn is that it will enable us to build on the existing dialogue and collaboration such that the interfaith community might become a foundational part of the social capital that shapes our future. Regional organizations such as the Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati and the AMOS project have led the way but the challenges that face our region far exceed their ability to address. Cincinnati is uniquely positioned to become a model city in terms of interfaith collaboration. We have vibrant faith communities and we have faith-based universities and colleges all of whom are poised to work together toward a greater common good.   

Dialogue in itself is not sufficient. Celebration as a form of acceptance of the other is not sufficient. Civility and tolerance in-themselves are not sufficient.  We can only truly test the strength of dialogue and build upon it through the hard work of interfaith collaboration