New classes aim to bring Jews, Muslims together for study

Thursday, January 21, 2010 | by stacey palevsky

The core of any Jewish text study is chevrutah, or learning in pairs — and the goal of two upcoming classes is to have those pairs composed of one Jew and one Muslim.

The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley will offer Madrasa-Midrasha, a 10-week class — open to the public as well as GTU students — that will explore texts from Jewish and Islamic sources, including the Torah, the Koran and commentaries on both. It starts Feb. 2.

Six weeks later, the Tauber Jewish Studies Program at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, in conjunction with a Turkish-American Muslim group, will begin offering an eight-week class comparing and contrasting the central messages and themes of the Torah and Koran.

Each class will bring together Jews and Muslims in an intercultural and interfaith environment.

The first class, Madrasa-Midrasha, is a partnership between GTU, two Jewish groups (Lehrhaus Judaica and the Progressive Jewish Alliance) and two Islamic groups (the Islamic Networks Group and the Zaytuna Institute). It is named for the Islamic and Hebrew words for a learning center or seminary.

“People want to be able to have an honest conversation and study together and learn more about each other,” said Rachel Biale, Bay Area director of PJA. “It’s a first step toward building more productive models for relationships between Jewish and Muslim communities.”

Each class session will feature both a Jewish and Muslim guest speaker, with topics such as social justice, gender, sacred space, art, music, Jerusalem and business ethics.

The class grew out of two elements: a similar course that PJA in Los Angeles organized with USC, and a one-time community class in Berkeley called Kosher/Halal that was billed as a “gastro-theological” event on GTU’s September 2009 calendar. An eye-opening total of nearly 60 people attended.

“It was an incredibly rich and sweet evening,” said Naomi Seidman, a professor at GTU’s Center for Jewish Studies. “The format of this class will be the same, but the idea is that over time we’ll get to know each other as learning partners. The idea is as much as possible to have Jews and Muslims studying together and delving into the text.”

Congregation Emanu-El’s course will be co-taught by Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe of Emanu-El and Yusuf Toprak of the Pacifica Institute, a Turkish-American group that focuses on cross-cultural awareness and dialogue.

Starting March 16, the class will meet Tuesdays at either Emanu-El in San Francisco or the Pacifica Institute in Burlingame. Already, 25 people have signed up, Jaffe said.

“Rather than focus solely on our differences, we hope to highlight the many fundamental aspects which connect these two great religions,” he added.

The course will explore theology, religious laws, rituals, gender and war and peace, among other topics.

The class evolved out of a pulpit exchange between Emanu-El and the Islamic Society of San Francisco. If all goes well, Jaffe would like to offer a similar class in the fall that brings together Christians and Jews.

Seidman is also hopeful that Madrasa-Midrasha will spark future learning opportunities, especially after this summer when she goes to Israel with her co-teacher, professor Munir Jiwa, who is the director of GTU’s Center for Islamic Studies. They hope to learn about interreligious academics in Israel.

Seidman would like a diverse enrollment in the GTU class, and said that the content will be appropriate for interfaith novices and experts.

“The expectation is that we are all beginners in our own tradition,” Seidman said. “The assumption is that we all have areas we know and areas we don’t. We’re all in conversation with sources in which we’re struggling, and we all have something to contribute.”

Madrasa-Midrasha: Islamic and Jewish Text Study, 7-9 p.m. Tuesdays, Feb. 2 to April 6, Graduate Theological Union library, 2400 Le Conte Ave., Berkeley. $75 for public. Register at catalog.lehrhaus.org.

Muslims and Jews Study Their Religious Texts Together, 7-9 p.m. Tuesdays, March 16 to May 11, Congregation Emanu-El, 2 Lake St., S.F., and Pacifica Institute, 1310 Bayshore Highway, Burlingame. $36. Call Mary Jane Eisenberg at (415) 751-2541 ext. 162 or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to register.