Leaders of three different faith communities are collectively teaching a course in the Milwaukee area. It examines the Jewish, Islamic and Christian concepts of issues like justice and forgiveness. The sessions grew from a deepening relationship between a Milwaukee synagogue and the Turkish American Society of Wisconsin.
To explain how it all started, a rabbi, a professor of Islam, and a priest walk into a synagogue ahead of one of the sessions. If that sounds similar to the opening of a joke, WUWM asks, "Is there a punchline?"
“They order vegetarian?” laughs Rabbi David Cohen, flanked in his study by shelves and shelves of books.
“Yeah, food, I would say some kind of food,” says Professor Fatih Harpci of Carthage College. “Because that’s how it all started. It started with the food, actually.”
Harpci is a scholar of Islam and a member of the Turkish American Society of Wisconsin. A few years ago, he got a call from the society’s director. Would he share the Muslim perspective at some interfaith events at Sinai? “Sure!” Harpci said.
“So, the event was about the Jewish food and the Muslim food, quote, unquote, whatever the Jewish food, whatever the Muslim food was,” says Harpci. “We also talked about the dietary restrictions from the Jewish tradition and Islamic tradition. So, this is where I met, actually, Rabbi Cohen, the very first time in this event. So that’s what I meant. ‘It all started with the food.’ Literally.”
“Fatih actually did a demonstration of how to make Turkish coffee,” says Rabbi Cohen. “And watching someone from Turkey make Turkish coffee is everything you would expect it to be, in a positive sense. It was great.”
After that food event, there was another one, and another one. “And then we started talking about this. You know, can we have some formal classes for the communities? I think that was the starting point,” recalls Professor Harpci.
The next thing they knew, Rabbi Cohen and Professor Harpci were teaching a six-session class on the topic of ‘how do Muslims and Jews read the book of Genesis.’ The next year’s six sessions focused on rites of passage like birth, death, and marriage. A mix of participants—from the Jewish and Turkish Muslim communities—received the course very positively, with a little constructive feedback.
“When Fatih and I finished the class last year, there were a number of participants who said, ‘You know, it would be really fabulous if we could find someone to represent the Christian viewpoint,’ to which I said, ‘It would be,’” says Cohen.
So, this year, there’s another teacher: Father Silas Henderson, a Catholic priest with a long résumé in interfaith dialogue. And this year’s course focuses on big questions like: Who is God? How do people come to know God? As well as big themes like “love and justice,” and “sin and forgiveness.”
“All of that is being approached from the perspective of: What does it mean to live righteously? Because righteousness is a value in each of our traditions. So what does it mean to live in a right relationship with God? What does it mean to live in a right relationship with one another, a right relationship with the world?” says Father Henderson.
How did the teachers settle on these themes for this year? “It was also over food,” says Father Henderson. “Lunch,” Professor Harpci interjects. “Food makes the world go round,” notes Rabbi Cohen.
The search for understanding has become even more crucial in the last 14 months. After the Hamas attack on Israel last year and the subsequent Israeli retaliation in Gaza—Rabbi Cohen asked Professor Harpci if it was the right time to teach an interfaith class like this.
Professor Harpci said there was no better time. “This is my job as a bridge builder,” he explains. “I am going to build the bridges between the communities, and it’s up to the congregants, it’s up to the communities, to cross the bridge, you know, the back and forth, and to understand the other side. So this is my task as an individual living in this part of the world.”
Father Henderson says the three teachers discuss the beauty of the three faiths. But he also says they talk about their messiness. “But while we recognize that [messiness], it's as a celebration,” he says. “And so I think that what we’re able to model in this experience is an antidote to othering, by recognizing the dignity of one another and these traditions.”
The teachers also don’t overlook distinctions between the three faiths, says Henderson. “I think it’s very easy to focus on the things we have in common, but I think by celebrating our differences, that’s also a way to honor the other traditions, as well as an invitation for us to go deeper into our own.”
The class takes place in different locations as the sessions go on, moving from the synagogue to a church and then the Turkish American Society. Each session unfolds in about an hour and a half, once a week for six weeks. The three teachers have a short time to speak and take questions at the end. Professor Harpci says the time limit is tough.
“We had 15 or 20 minutes each of us,” he laments. “How can you talk about God in 15 minutes?”
“How can you talk about the letter G in that amount of time?” empathizes Rabbi Cohen.
“And there were people who wanted to ask questions during my presentation,” laughs Professor Harpci. “I just had to shush them, right? Just let me finish my time!”
On top of the presentations, Rabbi Cohen says some of the most interesting movement happens during the question-and-answer period. “People have really interesting questions, and they’re not just surface basic questions. Once they’ve gotten a little bit of a framework of our respective faiths, they’re in a position to dive down and ask a more probing kind of question, and that’s been, I think, where a lot of the learning, a lot of the engagement has come in through the process.”
And if you’re not religious? Can you participate? Curiosity is all you need, says Father Henderson. “Give yourself permission to experience the curiosity, and then also to go and seek out the answers to those questions, because our neighbors aren’t going to go away, these other faith traditions, these other ways of life, other cultures are not going to go away. And if we want to have the world that I think the vast majority of us want, which is a world where fraternity and life are celebrated, then curiosity is fundamental for that.”
It also helps to have snacks.
