Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Category: Muslim

A Post Shabbat Update from Jerusalem

April 18, 2015 /

Shalom!
Our Congregation B’nai Shalom Israel trip is off to a great start. It is hard to believe that we have only been here since Friday evening – we have already seen and experienced so much!
We had very smooth and straightforward flights. Once we’d met our tour guides we were taken straight to Jerusalem. The first thing that we notice is that one truly ascends to Jerusalem – the bus began to climb the winding road about 2/3rds into our 1 hour ride to the capital city. Entering from the west of the city, we were taken to the Tayelet for our first amazing view. There we had our own brief Kabbalat Shabbat service as the afternoon began to transition to dusk.

After checking in to our hotel in the heart of downtown Jerusalem we had a short walk to a delicious, muti-course meal – an opportunity to taste some of the best that Jerusalem has to offer and a wonderful time for our group to really start to connect with each other.

Today – Shabbat – we started off the day after an incredible breakfast spread with another amazing view – this time from the Mount of Olives. This gave us an opportunity to drive through some of the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. From our viewing point we could see the gravestones of all those buried on the sides of the Mount, and we learned about the location of the original City of David and how the current walled Old City came into being and slowly took shape.  Our wonderful lead guide, Noam, engages us all every step of the way with the help of Ben and Lily – the two youngest members of our tour – renacting a biblical scene between the Jebusite King and King David when David acquired the land to begin to build his city.

From there we entered the Old City via the Damascus Gate into the Muslim quarter and we immediately had all our senses bombarded with the sounds, smells and colors of the market. The city was bustling with energy – while the Jewish quarter remains quiet on Shabbat the rest of the city is open for business.  Traveling by foot from the Muslim quarter to the Jewish quarter our group began to get a true sense of the geography and what it truly means when people speak of dividing the city – a task that seems quite impossible as one narrow, winding street in one quarter leads directly in the narrow streets of the next.

We arrived at the Kotel – the Western Wall. We took a little time in the area of the wall divided for men and women and prayer notes were placed in the cracks. Then we walked over to the continuation of the wall in the excavated Robinson’s arch area – an area now designated for egalitarian prayer services. We were there alone and took the opportunity to have a short morning service together. Both on Friday night and Shabbat morning, our melodies, poems and readings highlighted the Jerusalem we were experiencing right before us through our liturgy.

Lunch brought us back to the Muslim quarter for some of the best falafel and hummous that Jerusalem has to offer.  Then a tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – by far the most crowded site we visited all day, reminding us Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land is an enormous source of tourism to Israel, far outscaling Jewish travel by dint of being such a large world population.

In the afternoon, some of us stayed with Noam to explore more of the old city and some of us headed over for some time at the Israel museum. Both groups had an amazing experience – some wonderful exhibits at the museum, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and findings from the Cairo Geniza.  In the old city we took in more views, and had a chance meeting and conversation with a Jewish Israeli of Yemenite descent and a Palestinian Arab from Haifa who were making a documentary about their friendship and the challenges of identity and who were gracious in sharing some of this with us. With this exchange, as with so much of what we saw today, the complexity and many faces of Israel were brought to us in very real and concrete ways. We also stopped in at a 200 year old functioning tehina factory – the smell of sesame for several hundred feet around was incredible!

Perhaps no clearer example of this was our closing program, which we shared with member of St Stephen’s Church who are also traveling from Westborough. Two members of Seeds for Peace – a Jewish Israeli and an Arab Muslim from East Jerusalem – took us through a very intense experience of the challenges of truly listening to each others’ narratives. They left us with a sense of great sadness at how few Israelis and Palestinians have these opportunities and how remarkable their friendship is. There is still much to debrief from this experience, not only for our group but also, I hope, with the church group back in Westborough. Pictured below is Father Jesse Abell of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and Micali Morin, who is in Israel for a High School Semester program with NFTY -it was wonderful to have her join us for the evening (and I had an opportunity for a catch-up over an early dinner before the program).

All this… just one day!  And as I finish typing this update, the downtown streets below my window are still buzzing with people who come out to eat, drink and socialize once Shabbat ends – and it is now 1 am!  Time to get some shut-eye before we launch into the next full day that lies ahead.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Blessings beyond Borders – an interfaith tale

June 13, 2012 /

Last Saturday evening I was given an opportunity to be part of a truly wonderful celebration – the Sweet 16 party of a very special young woman.  As I explained to the guests gathered there that evening, this was an evening of firsts for me.  We don’t really make much of the 16th birthday in the UK, probably because 18 is not so far away.  In the UK, 18 takes on greater significance as it is the legal drinking age.  So last Saturday was my first ever Sweet Sixteen party.  Another new and special part of the experience for me was that this Sweet 16 was celebrated Puerto Rican style.  As I learned in preparing for the event, there are variations on the rituals that have become associated with this celebration – Brazilians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and other Latin American countries all utilize slightly different symbolic acts and objects to represent the transition into womanhood.  Traditionally, these events took place at the age of 15, and so the celebration would be called a Quinceanera.  In North America, the celebration has often shifted to the age of 16, influenced by North American Sweet Sixteen celebrations.  At the celebration I attended, two key ritual moments involved replacing a ribbon in the young woman’s hair with a tiara, and a pair of flat shoes with high heels.  Another part of the tradition is for a priest to offer a blessing, often presenting a bible and a crucifix necklace.  And this is where I came in.
Cinderella's shoes
The young woman in question is Muslim.  Desiring to celebrate her Puerto Rican cultural roots, but minus the religious traditions of Catholicism, it might have been challenging to involve either a Priest or an Imam.  Much of the family was practicing Catholic, and many of the women from the Islamic community were present for the celebration too.  It was a wonderful interfaith and intercultural gathering in and of itself.  But why add a Rabbi to the mix?

I was invited to offer a blessing at this particular Sweet 16 after getting to know this young woman these past two years through our Tent of Abraham interfaith activities.  We had met on several occasions – adult and teen discussion programs, Rosh Hodesh group and Muslim women’s study and celebration gatherings, and Iftar (evening break fast) during Ramadan.   And so it was that, in the week leading up to the celebration we spoke on the phone.  In preparing some words of blessing, I asked her to reflect on significant moments in her life up until now that seemed to her to have shaped her life and her faith.  She spoke of her father’s death at an early age, and later reflecting more deeply on taking responsibility in the world during a time that her mother was unwell.  She spoke of the values that were most important to her – trust, loyalty, compassion, friendship.  She spoke of her belief in one God, who could be addressed and experienced directly by every person.  These words and more were the sentiments that I reflected back to her.  In the mix, as per a request from her and her mother, I explained how the rituals and the celebration compared with Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies.  Just as the evening was filled with many firsts for me (I even began with a few sentences of Spanish – a language I have never studied or spoken before – thanks to the assistance of one of our Puerto Rican staff at the synagogue!), I explained that I was sure that the presence of a Rabbi to offer the blessing was a first for everyone there.  It became an opportunity to learn from and about each other.

In the mix was the Priestly Blessing, an English interpretative rendition by Debbie Friedman, a Rashi interpretation on the blessing, and a blessing over the food sung in Aramaic and English. In just 5 minutes I had the opportunity to share some rich Jewish traditions and prayers with many who may never or rarely had any direct experience of Judaism before.  This was taking Jewish wisdom public in a whole new context.  These were blessings beyond borders.  It certainly was a blessing for me to attend and participate in this wonderful young woman’s special evening.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

‘Today I am a Muslim Too’ – A Rabbi at the Times Square Rally

March 7, 2011 /

Equipped with a rain jacket and umbrella in anticipation of the damp afternoon forecast, I headed down to Stamford yesterday lunchtime to take a bus into New York City with members of the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Studies.  This is a diverse and wonderful Muslim community that draws members from across Fairfield County.  Members from this community were the first Muslims to partner with our Fairfield County ‘Tent of Abraham’ interfaith dialog group when we started our three-faith community programs 5 years ago.  We have since partnered with them many times, and their teenagers participate with our teenagers in an annual Teen Interfaith-Interaction program every Spring.

Why was I spending my afternoon with this community on a trip into New York City?  At relatively short notice, a multi-faith coalition had come together for a rally yesterday afternoon near Times Square to protest the congressional inquiry due to start this week, chaired by House Homeland Security Chair, Peter King, looking into Radicalized Islam in the USA.  King has claimed that Muslims within the USA are an increasing threat because they are being radicalized on our home turf, and Muslim communities are not cooperating sufficiently to identify and root out these radicalized elements.  It is important to know that these claims have been challenged by government departments who work with Muslim communities on a regular basis.  For a balanced article on this inquiry and the lead-up to it, a good piece in the Washington Post last week is worth reading.

As residents of Connecticut, in the wake of a fringe evangelical group parading outside a Bridgeport mosque shortly before Ramadan last year with placards declaring that ‘Islam is the Devil’, and a mosque in Hamden being vandalized last week for the third time in a year, the concern that Muslim American citizens are being targeted and victimized solely on the basis of their faith is something that should be of concern to everyone, but especially to other minority groups, faith-based or otherwise.  As Jews, we should always be especially concerned when we see anything that looks like government-sponsored stirring up of popular opinion and fear toward one group of citizens.  And King’s inquiry certainly looks like that to many people of faith.

The rally organized in New York City yesterday was an interfaith effort, with Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Buddhist speakers (apologies for any omissions).  Rabbis for Human Rights was one of the supporting organizations who tried to help get the word out at what was short notice to pull a rally together.  Nevertheless, despite the short time-frame and the appalling weather, about 500 people attended the rally.

My bus-ride down to the city was a wonderful opportunity to listen and hear about many of the experiences of the men, women and children who were attending the rally.  Mothers coming with their children because they don’t want their American-born children to grow up hearing from their government that they are somehow less American or more suspect because of the faith that they practice; friends who have reduced their international traveling because of the scrutiny and treatment they have experienced at the airports; debates that Muslims have among themselves about profiling (we were all of the opinion that one should profile for violent fanatics, and there are ways of better identifying potentially dangerous individuals, but faith or ethnicity were not very good indicators of these traits).  We also talked about what it was like for one Egyptian-born woman who just happened to have gone home to visit her sister when the Revolution happened; we talked about the ethical components of the Halal food industry (our Kashrut agencies could learn a lot from our Muslim colleagues on this issue).  And then we helped each other figure out what statements we wanted to put on the placards that our coordinator, Dolores, had brought, and what images would accompany them.

The placards turned out to be a wonderful idea, especially as the youth who were with us produced some beautiful and moving statements, simply put.  When we reached the rally we ended up in the front of a second area that had been partitioned off on the side of the road where the rally was taking place.  With their placards hanging over the barriers, a number of news channels and photographers came by to capture our group.  The ethnic backgrounds of the members enabled them to do interviews with the press in English, Spanish and Urdu.  Calmly we expressed our love for all peoples, and our objections to an inquiry that is divisive and detrimental to the safety of millions of American Muslims who are peace-loving; people we are proud to call our friends and neighbors.

The vibe was very positive, and we found ourselves engaged in conversations with others who had come to the rally; Muslim, Quaker, Christian, Jew.  There had been a very small group that identified themselves as tea-party connected who had intended to counter-demonstrate but they seemed to disperse quickly.  We found ourselves being greeted by one woman who was very concerned that we knew the Truth about Jesus and was not satisfied to hear Muslims tell her that they loved Jesus and the love that Jesus taught; our lack of belief in her particular understanding of Jesus was something that troubled her greatly.  We politely took her literature and were able to continue with our main purpose for being there when the wonderful police officer stationed at the front of our section politely suggested she move on.

A couple of hours later, the rally almost over, we made our way out.  The rally made but a small dent in the rhetoric that I am afraid we will have to listen to in the coming week.  Realizing that they could not stop the inquiry, many Muslims are now trying to participate so that they can communicate the message that they want to be heard; it is too dangerous to leave this inquiry in the hands of those who have already drawn dangerous conclusions devoid of factual information and seemingly unaware (or, God forbid, uncaring) about the potential consequences of their words to spur more violence against Muslim communities in the USA.

I urge all people of faith to speak out against King’s inquiry.  It is a misplaced and misguided response to the real, ongoing concerns about terrorism, fundamentalists and fanatics.  Targeting the entire American Muslim community is wrong, and dangerously so.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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