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READER COMMENTARY: JAM aimed to balance interfaith talk
Letters to the Editor | 4/21/09
Posted online at 9:46 PM EST on 4/20/09
/ Last updated at 5:24 AM EST on 4/20/09
In response to your article "Jews and Muslims talk at JAM" (April 7 issue): The event was publicized widely, but it was also not an obvious campaign. We wanted the campus community to be aware of the event and to come-in fact, there were several non-Jewish and non-Muslims participants! That being said, we were appreciative of the phenomenal support we received from the Muslim Student Association, Hillel, the Ethics Center and the Brandeis Pluralism Alliance, but the amount of money we raised was not enough to accommodate a large group. Moreover, one of the main reasons to keep it small was to try to keep the number of Jews and Muslims somewhat balanced-we did not want 50 Jews and 5 Muslims to show up. Merely based on numbers, we knew that there are many members of the Jewish and broader Brandeis community who are interested in interfaith, and we wanted to ensure that the Muslim voices were present.
All too often in interfaith work, the minority voices are clumped together. One of our main goals was to illustrate the diversity within each faith to members of the other faith group in order to lessen the feeling of "me versus them."
-Jessica Kent '09
All too often in interfaith work, the minority voices are clumped together. One of our main goals was to illustrate the diversity within each faith to members of the other faith group in order to lessen the feeling of "me versus them."
-Jessica Kent '09
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