Faiths talk on suffering

SUSAN J. KATZ

“I can remain wholly Jewish, and I believe my work and learning is enhanced by learning with others,” said Rabbi Dr. Robert Daum, director of Iona Pacific Inter-religious Centre, in an interview with the Independent. Daum spoke at a Vancouver School of Theology (VST) and Iona Pacific trialogue on spirituality and suffering earlier this month.

Hosted by VST/Iona Pacific instructor Rev. Dr. Sharon Betcher, the program was a free public event held at St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church. The talk brought together Betcher and Daum with religious leaders from three faiths, Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan of Or Shalom, Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls of VST and Hanif Virani, a Muslim religious educator. The basis of discussion was the 2009 film A Serious Man, a Coen brothers’ film, considered by some to be a contemporary reading of the biblical Book of Job.

Each speaker presented his/her faith’s reading of the story of Job and the problem of suffering, then students and members of the public engaged in reflection, with the instructors and among themselves, on the challenges of traversing the issue of suffering.

Duhan Kaplan remarked that she grew up in a similar environment to the one the film portrays and talked about the era out of which the characters in A Serious Man emerge. “Many of our spiritual tools for confronting pain seemed to have died in Europe when our spiritual teachers died,” she said. “Philosophical thought did not help. The 1950s and 1960s produced the philosophy of existentialism – a cry of pain from a destroyed continent reminding us that life often seems meaningless…. We, who have come of age exactly two decades after the Holocaust, like [main character] Larry Gopnik, must pick up the pieces of our civilization. We are deeply engaged in studying traditional texts about suffering, like the Book of Job. And we are reaching out in many directions to craft a spirituality we can be passionate about. Of course, we don’t all agree on what this spirituality should look like, but we do all agree that suffering takes time, and so does healing. Both are changing the Jewish world and the larger world in ways we could not have imagined.”

In her presentation, Dutcher-Walls proposed that the task of the trialogue was “an interpretation of three texts, if you will, and their interpretive interactions: Job, A Serious Man and suffering.

“Interpretation is about our assumptions, commitments, backgrounds and social locations…. As [the film character] Larry is teaching his mathematics class and has filled the board with a vast array of equations, he turns to the class, just as the bell rings and says, ‘So there is the Uncertainty Principle – we can’t ever really know what’s going on. But you will be responsible for it on the midterm,’” she said.

Virani moved away from both the Book of Job and the film in his remarks, drawing upon Muslim traditions around pain and suffering from the Koran and from the 13th-century Muslim poet-philosopher and mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. Giving Rumi’s example of a chickpea, which must be cooked in order to be eaten by a human, Virani said, “It is by means of afflictions and suffering that man can mature, when he sees that all friends leave him, and he is left to God alone…. Suffering for Rumi is also a means of purification.

“Most importantly, however, in the case of Job, is the koranic explanation that suffering draws man closer to God. Job certainly must have had an intuitive understanding of this. It was his suffering that made his plea so eloquent and sincere that God had to appear before him.”

According to Daum, the event fulfils Iona Pacific’s objectives in a number of ways, one being that the centre is “dialogical,” he said, “with each other and in conversation, as the best learning is in dialogue. Also, we hope to develop a common vocabulary at [the] VST campus. Tonight was an exemplary of the value and importance of sharing our wisdom together.”

Susan J. Katz is a student in the VST course Opening the Hurt Locker: Religious and Spiritual Pedagogies for Pain, and is a freelance writer/editor/educator living in Vancouver.

Getting to the heart

A two-day conference titled Getting to the Heart of Interfaith Dialogue was presented by the Diocese of New Westminster in cooperation with Canadian Jewish Congress – Pacific Region, the Iona Pacific Centre for Inter-Religious Dialogue and the Muslim Canadian Federation, earlier this month. The event brought the Interfaith Amigos – a pastor, a sheikh and a rabbi from Seattle – to Vancouver.

Pastor Don Mackenzie, Rabbi Ted Falcon and Sheikh Jamal Rahman were brought together after the events of 9/11 and have since worked to strengthen interfaith understanding around the world. They have collaborated on a radio broadcast program, they blog regularly and tour for speaking engagements, and have written a book, Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-Opening, Hope-Filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi and a Sheikh, published in 2009.

The Interfaith Amigos presented a public seminar at Christ Church Cathedral on the evening of Saturday, Nov 13, to a diverse group of participants. Each offered prayers from their respective religion and then offered prayers together. In a presentation interspersed with humor and a bit of song, the Interfaith Amigos emphasized the commonalities in each of their religions, accentuating common themes that underpin the practices of each faith: love, compassion and peace.

Mackenzie, Falcon and Rahman did not shy away from the more difficult passages of each faith, emphasizing the importance of discussing not only commonalities, but also differences. As they wrote in their book, “While we might not talk about it much, we usually interact each day with those of different cultures and different religions…. What we have found is that not talking about our differences really does not help. Even if we differ, even if we disagree, it is crucial for us to deepen the conversation.”

The following afternoon, the Interfaith Amigos facilitated an interactive workshop at Temple Sholom Synagogue, whereby they used the themes of the previous evening’s seminar presentation in a hands-on approach. They discussed and debated about best practices, and reiterated the importance of handling the more difficult-to-reconcile aspects of their faiths, in order to facilitate a deeper bond and understanding among individuals. Workshop participants were encouraged to be open about their own experiences and relationships with their faiths, as a way to foster stronger dialogue. The Interfaith Amigos stressed the importance of listening, in order to ensure the other is heard, another central theme of the day.

All participants and co-sponsoring groups reiterated the need to foster dialogue through public events, while ensuring that exchanges and dialogues are occurring at a grassroots, individual level as well.

More information can be found at interfaithamigos.com.

– Courtesy of Canadian Jewish Congress-Pacific Region

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