Dear WISDOM Subscribers:
Here is an update of WISDOM activities for November, 2007. This is a reminder that The Faith Club authors will present on Tuesday, November 13th at 7:00 PM at the Book Fair at the West Bloomfield Jewish Community Center - 6600 W. Maple. Gail Katz, president of WISDOM, will be introducing the three authors and Brenda Rosenberg from Pathways to Peace and a new WISDOM board member will be giving the closing remarks. The authors will be signing books following their presentation. At the end of this e-mail is a copy of the article that appeared in today’s Detroit News about The Faith Club authors and WISDOM.
Upcoming events include the following:
1) WISDOM women are invited to attend an Interfaith Thanksgiving Celebration on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 7:30 PM at the Sikh Gurdwara Sahib, 40600 Schoolcraft R. in Plymouth, MI. For more information call 734-420-1718.
2) WISDOM’s next event “Soul Sanctuary – Exploring the African American Spiritual Experience” will be on Sunday, January 20th, 2008. From 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM we are invited to attend services at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church at 18700 James Couzens Freeway in Detroit (313-861-1300). From 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM we will share a soul food dinner at the Charles Wright African American Museum. From 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM we will view the photography exhibit called “Soul Sanctuary” and the permanent exhibit entitled “And Still We Rise” at the museum, followed by discussion. Mark your calendars. More details will be forthcoming!!
3) On Sunday, January 27th, 2008 from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM at Christ Church Cranbrook, 470 Church Rd. in Bloomfield Hills, the Ninth Annual World Sabbath for Religious Reconciliation will take place. This annual call for prayers for peace in different faith traditions will feature our youth from different religious institutions in the area, and the Children of Peace will be displaying their peace banners which will be woven into a peace quilt to be displayed at various religious institutions around Metro Detroit. Please mark your calendars for this very spiritual and uplifting event.
4) On Sunday, March 30th, 2008 the Sisterhood of Congregation Beth Shalom, 14601 Lincoln in Oak Park, will put together a day of learning about Judaism and invite WISDOM women to come to the synagogue to take part in their educational and inspirational event.
Here is the article that appeared in the Monday, November 12th edition of the Detroit News.
Interfaith book shatters barriers, fosters dialogueGregg Krupa / The Detroit News
After the national trauma of Sept. 11, 2001, three women decided to write a children's book about similarities among their faiths -- Judaism, Islam and Christianity. But Priscilla Warner, Ranya Idliby and Suzanne Oliver say they discovered they needed to fight about some things before they could work together. "Who's going to go to heaven? What does it mean to be in a temple, a church or a mosque? Does God care what faith institution you belong to?" said Oliver, recalling some of the simpler issues in their early debates. "We are not about editing ourselves; we are about engaging each other. That can only happen when we get out of our comfort zone and go to those sometimes difficult places." The women ended up writing a different sort of book, and "The Faith Club" has been a best-seller for 17 weeks. It is a hot paperback for several Metro Detroit reading clubs associated with faith institutions. While religions struggle toward a greater understanding of each other, some of the faithful in the pews, on prayer rugs and in temples throughout Metro Detroit are taking matters into their own hands. Reaching across barriers, the desire to know "the other" is leading Christians, Jews and Muslims and others to explore other religions as a matter of practicing their own. When Idliby, a Muslim; Oliver, a Catholic who became an Episcopalian; and Warner, a Jew, appear Tuesday at the 56th annual Jewish Book Fair, some 60 members of a reading group at the First United Methodist Church in Birmingham will climb into their church vans to go hear the authors. "It's probably one of the most thought-provoking books we have read in a while," said Phyllis Holmes of Bloomfield Township, a member of the group. "It deals with our different prejudices and the faiths. Mostly, though, it is really a challenge to rethink your own beliefs."
Discovering other faiths"The women in our group range in age from their 40s to their 80s, and there are a number of us who grew up in Metro Detroit who can even remember when Birmingham had housing developments with signs that said, 'No Jews,' said Margaret Valade, also of Bloomfield Township. "If we can find a book like this that really raises questions and really stretches us, it is valuable for us from a Christian point of view." Members of Women's Interfaith Solutions for Dialogue and Outreach in MetroDetroit (WISDOM) say the book has driven new members to their group. Established by four women, WISDOM now claims 250 members. " I was invited to speak at St. John's Episcopal Church in Royal Oak, because a group of women there were reading the book in their book club and they wanted my input as a Jewish woman," said Gail Katz of West Bloomfield, one of the founders of WISDOM. "Because of 'The Faith Club,' I organized my own interfaith Passover Seder at my home with the co-founders of WISDOM. As the book shows, coming together is really a learning experience," Katz said. "The book refers to religious rituals in a way in which we can discover why we all do the things that we do, and the meaning behind them. Religious rituals are actions that perhaps we don't normally stop to think about." As people of faith start out on the path of discovering other religions, the experience of the three authors provides a road map to lower barriers and foster dialogue. Many of the faithful realize that such efforts are not only fundamental in making peace, but also a requirement of their religions.
'A common call'"The three Abrahamic faiths -- all faiths, really -- have a common call: to be compassionate toward the other, which brings with it a responsibility to know and authentically and to value the other," said Daniel Krichbaum, president of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity & Inclusion. There is, in Judaism, a mandate to welcome "the stranger." The Bible commands the loving of neighbor, and is replete with stories about embracing those who are different. The Quran says that God, Allah in Arabic, created different tribes and nations so that people would come to know each other. What the authors' experiences reveal is that while there is both "a call" and the ideals of faith, the process of answering God's summons and achieving often creates an intimate awareness of human failure.
"We are not theologians. We are not experts, and that is precisely the point," Idliby said. "When change happens, it happens from the bottom up. This is the very dialogue we need to stop vilifying people of other faiths, to stop vilifying people of other cultures."
You can reach Gregg Krupa at (313) 222-2359 or
gkrupa@detnews.com.
If you go
Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner, authors of "The Faith Club," will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit, 6600 W. Maple at Drake, in West Bloomfield.
For information on the event, visit
www.jccdet.orgFor information on interfaith activity in Metro Detroit, visit
www.interfaithwisdom.org and
www.miroundtable.orgFor information about the book and to join or find Metro Detroit faith clubs, visit
www.thefaithclub.com
