New Forthcoming Publication in Muslim-Jewish Relations

Routledge Publishers have commissioned Intertwined Worlds Editor Dr Yousef Meri to edit The Routledge Handbook of Muslim-Jewish Relations, a new major reference work in the academic study of Muslim-Jewish Relations. The work will include 23 chapters co-authored by leading international experts. Further details about the Routledge Handbook series are available here.

New E-learning Course on 27 August 2012: Bridging the Great Divide: The Jewish-Muslim Encounter

The Woolf Institute has been international in its outlook since its inception. Its e-learning courses have attracted students from around the world for over 10 years. The Woolf Institute and the School of International Service at the American University in Washington are delighted to offer their e-learning course for the second year running. Bridging the Great Divide: The Jewish–Muslim Encounter was conceived by Dr Edward Kessler and Professor Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies.

This 15-week e-learning course will start on 27 August 2012. (Deadline for application submission is 6 August 2012.) The application form can be downloaded here.

The normal course fee for the American University award is £2500 but Woolf Institute students will be able to apply either for one of the 5 full scholarships or 5 bursaries (resulting in a reduction of fees to £450 each).

For more information please contact Emma Harris or +44 (0)1223 741038.

COURSE SUMMARY

No two religions are closer together than Judaism and Islam, yet today, ironically, no two religions are further apart. This course will explore the history, culture and theology of Muslims and Jews, reflecting both on similarities and differences as well as the major challenges. Assisted by leading scholars in Europe and the US with a wealth of experience in this field, the course will also offer strategies for building bridges between the communities.

While there has been notable interfaith activity in Europe and the United States in recent decades, the Jewish-Muslim dialogue and understanding are far from satisfactorily developed. Too often, there is neither space, nor indeed the necessary trust, which are prerequisites to the proper understanding of the two faiths. Experience has shown that when subjects like the Israeli-Palestinian relationship or antisemitism and Islamophobia are discussed, the dialogue too often becomes embittered or breaks down.

Because this course is committed to the highest levels of scholarly integrity, it will provide a space for the discussion of the entire range, in the broadest sense, of the Jewish-Muslim encounter which does not preclude even the most controversial issues between them.

Interview: Padraic O’hare

Padraic O'Hare

We recently caught up with Padraic O’hare, who is Professor of Religious and Theological Studies at Merrimack College, and one of the eminent advisers for Intertwined Worlds. In this poignant interview, Prof O’hare tells us about a lifetime of work encouraging cross-religious understanding, and how he believes contemplation practice is a powerful catalyst for this crossing of religious divides.

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Intertwined Worlds: How did you hear of Intertwined Worlds?

Padraic O’hare: I first heard of Intertwined Worlds when Yousef Meri invited me to participate.

IW: What attracted you to serve as an Intertwined Worlds adviser?

PO: I’ve spent most of my professional life seeking to nurture and cultivate reverence among peoples in different religions, and so the invitation was most welcome. To engage in common enterprise with such distinguished people was also a great draw. (Asma, Mark, Ed and Mohamed are known to me personally as well, and are in every instance persons whom I admire and like).

IW: Can you tell us about your own background as an academic and your particular interests?

PO: I have been writing, publishing, and teaching about interfaith relations, especially between Jews and Christians, for about 35 years; I also write and publish about contemplation practice, and this for me is the principal lever of spiritual companionship across religious boundaries. And then, finally, I write about religious education and insist such practice must transcend denominational initiation and nourishment and always teach – the children, the adults – as well that “There is enough love in God to choose again and again and again” – Rabbi Yitz Greenberg. The highlight of my professional life, to date, was to nurture the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian- Muslim Relations ,which I founded in 1993, to expand and embrace Islam and Muslim people, something we began accomplishing in 2008.

IW: Why is interfaith work so important in the present context?

PO: The importance of the project is captured in Hans Kungs’ statement “There can be no peace in the world until there is peace among religions.” But beyond this most crucial of pragmatic accounts, there is Ibn Arabi’s “I follow the religion of love. Whatever way Love’s camel takes, that is my religion and my faith.” And Rabbi Heschel commenting on the principal reason to engage one another across religious differences: “…to search in the wilderness [together] for wellsprings of devotion, for treasures of stillness, for the power of love and care….”

IW: What drew you to the field?

PO: I was drawn to the field by being born and raised a New Yorker, a gentile New Yorker, who began, quietly, to be pulled into the Jewish heart. This lay dormant till my transplantation to Boston where I was invited by Elizabeth Corbin, Krister Stendahl, Murray Rothman, Bob Bullock, Michael MC Garry , Phil Perlmutter and others to become engaged explicitly. And this engagement was expanded when I began encountering remarkable Muslim people: Mary Lahaj, Salma Kazmi, Mohammed Khusro, Mohamed Lazzouni and others.

IW: What’s your current project? What’s next?

PO:I am close to completing a third, and final, book on contemplation practice and education: Lions in the Desert: Contemplation and the Young Adult.

Interview: Harvey E. Goldberg

We recently caught up with Emeritus Professor Harvey E. Goldberg, who is the Sarah Allen Shaine Chair in Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus. In this interview, Prof Goldberg talks about his research interests and history, and reflects on his recent article for Intertwined Worlds and why it is important to reflect on everyday interactions between Muslims and Jews.

Intertwined Worlds: How did you hear of Intertwined Worlds?

Harvey E. Goldberg: Through Dr. Josef Meri, the editor, whom I met many years ago.

IW: What attracted you to contribute to Intertwined Worlds?

HEG: The opportunity to interview  Jews who had life experiences in Muslim lands before they emigrated is rapidly diminishing as the years pass. Intertwined Worlds seemed to be a natural “stage” upon which to present results of research that partially stemmed from interviews with people reporting their personal knowledge and experience.

IW: Can you tell us about your own background as an academic and your particular interests?

HEG: My first field research, from 1963-65, was in an Israeli agricultural village settled by Jewish immigrants hailing from the mountainous Gharian region south of the city of Tripoli in Libya.  Most research at the time was focused on how immigrants adjusted to their new society, but as I got to know the people of the community I became more and more interested in learning about their past as a small minority in a Arab Muslim environment.

IW: What is your Intertwined Worlds article about?

HEG: In the 1960s, after the countries of North Africa had recently gained independence, some anthropologists from America and Britain began to conduct fieldwork there in rural regions and in small towns. They discovered the importance of patron-client relationships as a key to understanding the local social structures.  Israeli anthropologists could not conduct fieldwork in Muslim countries, but they were stimulated by the findings from North Africa that helped them understand the social history of immigrants to Israel from that region.  The article review and assesses the impact of the notion of patron-client relations on understanding the intricate forms of interaction linking Muslims and Jews in North Africa.

IW: Why is the subject so important for a non-specialist who may be interested in your topic?

HEG: There is so much stereotyping about the topic  of Muslims or Arabs and their relations with Jews, that it is important to have some idea of everyday interaction between members of these  broad categories when many of them lived side by side up to about 50 years ago.

 IW: What drew you to the field?

HEG: I have always been interested in variety in Jewish life, but growing up in the United States I was mostly conscious of Jewish life over the centuries in European settings.  When, upon a first trip to Israel, I met Jews who came from Muslim territories, it grabbed my curiosity to learn more about this subject.

IW: What’s your current project? What’s next?

HEG: Together with a colleague, Hagar Salamon, I am now conducting interviews among people who came from rural areas of Tripolitania and also from southern Tunisia.  We have discovered that in some of these communities, Muslims would come to the synagogue to hear the ritual reading of a translation into Arabic of the 10-commandments section of the Torah (in the Book of Exodus) on the Jewish festival of Shavuot (Pentecost). The exact details of how this took place seem to vary from community to community, and we seek to document in as much depth as possible this unusual expression of a Jewish-Muslim “congregation.”

Jewish-Muslim Coexistence in the Middle Ages

Mark R. Cohen

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Cascia Hall, 7:30-9:00 p.m.

Prof. Mark R. Cohen

Prof. Cohen, winner of the 2010 Goldziher Prize for Jewish-Muslim Relations, is The Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.

A well known historian of the Jews in Arab lands in the Middle Ages, his publications include over 100 articles and reviews and several books, including  ”Under Crescent and Cross:  The Jews in the Middle Ages” (1994, new edition 2008), which has been translated into Hebrew, Turkish, German, Arabic, French, and Romanian (Spanish forthcoming).

Made possible by a generous grant from the William and Mary Greve Foundation, the Goldziher Prize is a $25,000 cash award named for the great 19th century Islamicist Ignac Goldziher, a Hungarian Jew who revered Islam and Muslim people and validated Islamic studies in the 19th century European university context.

Upon learning he was to receive the first Goldziher Prize, Prof. Cohen said, ”The mission of the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations comes at a critical time as we witness the clash of civilizations and the conflict between the east and west.  The similarity of Jews and Muslims is woefully forgotten and we need to realize their commonalities such as their monotheism, the practice of daily prayers, dietary laws and charity in their daily lives.  Being awarded the Goldziher Prize is both an honor and a challenge, to write about the past without being tainted by the exigencies of the present.”

We will announce the winner of the Goldziher Prize 2012 before the lecture at 7:30 p.m.

 

Made possible by a generous grant from the 

William and Mary Greve Foundation

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the program.

Refreshments will be served

Prayer space will be available in the Sakowich Campus Center

Please visit our website at

www.merrimack.edu/JCM for more information