Tag: interfaith relations

Seeing the divine in others

I recently participated in a conference panel on hope in a time of divisive politics. A friend in the Jewish community couldn’t do it, so she asked me to help instead. I won’t lie, I felt nervous.

I worried that I wouldn’t measure up to some of the speakers, who had big job titles, awards and experience. This was compounded by a few missteps that left me feeling embarrassed and humbled. First, my friend’s name was left on the conference program and mine wasn’t listed, even though organizers had ample time to update the panelists’ names. Second, social media amplified the panel on Facebook and Instagram, but listed my name with incorrect, made-up undergraduate degrees. I’d provided my graduate degrees in religious studies and education because I felt they were relevant. Somehow, five years of education went away due to clerical errors.

The weird part was that my brief talk, and my presence at the panel, was to elevate Jewish experience and Jewish hope in an approachable way. Two academics spoke, using big concepts and bigger words, while minimizing their personal approach to the issues. Then, an amazing African Canadian legal professional spoke of her family’s journey and deep roots in Canada – it was personal, compelling and important. I was up next.

I’d prepared my notes in advance. I spoke from them, but, first, I changed gears. The night before the panel, held at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights, I encountered members of the Persian community, holding up their lion flags to represent the Iranian people and their opposition to the Islamic Republic. I stopped to tell a young woman holding the flag that our hearts were with her, and we were thinking of her, and hoping the people of Iran were safe. She seemed shocked. Surprised that I saw her, knew what she represented, and embraced this message against extremism and violence of the Islamic Republic of Iran. She asked where I was from, I smiled and only said, “Winnipeg.” 

The day of the panel, I struggled with a parking meter. Then I crossed a street, sharing a warm smile with an Indigenous man on a bicycle who passed by. My heart thumped hard. Though I’ve done plenty of public events and teaching, I felt on edge. Maybe it was because I was one of the only representatives of the Jewish community in that multi-faith gathering. Maybe it was because I’d been checking on where the Iranian missiles were landing in Israel right before I came. I worried about repercussions following me into the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Pretending to check if the microphone was on, I said, “Welcome. Thank you for coming …” and, looking at the crowd, I greeted everyone with a “Hello y’all!” After that informal start, I made sure to mention the Jewish concept of the world as a broken pot, in which the vessel’s shards, our souls, are in each of us. I talked about tikkun olam, repairing the world, and putting those shards back together, as an act of hope that we work towards, as an act of ongoing creation – a human and divine partnership. Throughout the morning, I took time to look at people, greet them and try to see G-d in each of them. I decided that the way to confront my feelings of embarrassment, and the erasure of my name and credentials, was to fully see others the way I would want to be treated.

At this conference, there were many references to reconciliation. An Anglican bishop who is also a residential school survivor spoke during our panel question period. When I recounted all this later to my family, we recognized an important theme.

As a professor, my husband often attends events with a land acknowledgement. Working with a group of Indigenous students last year, he asked them how they feel about the “workshopped” statement the university uses. They said it was often done by rote and perhaps lost its meaning as a result. They didn’t feel seen by it. 

Almost immediately, I recalled that our congregation had changed its Prayer for Canada. The new one feels genuine to me. It includes aspects of a land acknowledgement by mentioning by name the first inhabitants of the land. It also includes the current Canadian political infrastructure. It’s a prayer to maintain our diversity, so that never again will Canada say, “None is too many,” in reference to the antisemitic exclusion of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe during the Second World War.

My husband will meet again this summer with a new group of Indigenous students. He’s considering a different discussion. What does it mean when society suggests that some people’s innate connection to the land must be acknowledged, but others don’t deserve a similar acknowledgement of their homeland? This issue isn’t “just” about Israel, either. What about the Kurds? What about the Druze? The dispossessed list is a long one.

When we moved to Winnipeg 16 years ago, celebrations for Canada Day included enormous festivals and bombastic firework displays. Over time, due to the pandemic and to a change in how we perceive the day, this has changed. Many Indigenous Canadians don’t celebrate Canada Day. 

Having my name left out and hard-earned credentials jumbled was difficult, but it reminded me of how acknowledgement works. We can choose, as Canadians, to look up from our phones and really see one another. We all deserve to take up space and be here, recognized for our special contributions, in this land of plenty. We may not be able to control the huge geopolitical events around us, but we can see one another and pray for our loved ones and our neighbours, too, both here and elsewhere. Recognizing the divine, individual spark in each person is crucial.

I’m hoping for a family cookout at home this Canada Day. We might talk about how we connect to Canada, and how we fit in the Jewish diaspora and homeland. It’s a complicated equation, worth talking about during a war. We should also choose to see, greet and value all those we walk with on this land and in the world. Let’s recognize everyone’s names, identities – and souls – as meaningful, too. 

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Saying goodbye to a friend

Left to right: Rabbi Philip Bregman, Archbishop Michael Miller and Rabbi Jonathan Infeld. (photo by Pat Johnson)

A lesson from a Jewish professor decades ago has remained with Archbishop Michael Miller all his life.

Miller retired last month as archbishop of Vancouver – head of the region’s nearly half a million Catholics. During his last week in office, he spoke with the Independent about his relationship with the Jewish community. 

The new head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV, has emphasized the need for dialogue between Catholics and Jews, and spoke almost immediately after his election as pontiff about how close the issue is to his heart. But Miller didn’t need a nudge from the Vatican. According to several Vancouver rabbis, Miller has been a stalwart friend to the community since he arrived in the city more than a decade-and-a-half ago. 

When Miller was a student, he and a group of other young Catholics were in a professional setting with noted medieval scholar Julian Wasserman, who was Jewish. Someone made a comment that was antisemitic. Miller doesn’t remember the exact context, but he does remember what happened next. No one in the meeting had contested the antisemitic remark and the professor challenged them on it afterwards.

“I remember Julian expressed to us his disappointment,” said Miller. “And that stung, because it was true.”

It wasn’t as though Jews were unfamiliar to Miller. He grew up in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood in Ottawa and attended friends’ bar mitzvahs. At university and in seminary, he had several Jewish professors and he has always had an interest in Jewish topics.

As a member of the clergy, he sees interfaith dialogue as central to his role. “And the first place of dialogue, of course, is with the Jewish community,” he said, “which preexisted Christianity by at least 1,500 years, maybe 1,800 years.”

Miller was named archbishop of Vancouver in 2009. In the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, an archbishop is a bishop who leads an archdiocese. Above them are the cardinals who, among other roles, come together to elect a new pope, as they did last month. 

Rabbi Philip Bregman, who leads an interfaith group called the Other People and is rabbi emeritus of Temple Sholom, has been in the city since 1980.

“It wasn’t until I met Archbishop Miller that I actually had a relationship with an archbishop,” Bregman told the Independent. “Even though Pope John XXIII [in the 1960s] had really opened the door of dialogue between Christians and Jews previously closed, it still took time before that concept actually trickled down. Archbishop Miller was the one who really walked the walk and not simply talked a talk.” 

Bregman noted that he had heard the new pope speak about the necessity of Catholics renewing relationships with Jews.

“Archbishop Miller has been there for many, many years and we are tremendously grateful,” he said. “This is an incredible man, who has reached out to the Jewish community and has been there in the most open fashion, for dialogue, for consultation, for support.”

Rabbi Jonathan Infeld of Congregation Beth Israel had equally enthusiastic praise. 

“His spiritual leadership, because of his forward thinking and his intelligence, goes well beyond the Catholic community and has truly touched the hearts and souls of all religious people in the city, which is really due to his leadership, his insight and his intelligence and we wish him the best of luck in retirement but are sad to see him leave,” said Infeld, who wandered the dozen or so blocks from the synagogue to the archbishop’s office to bid Miller farewell.

The archbishop’s relationship with the Jewish community was strong before Oct. 7, 2023, but has only strengthened since then. Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, Bregman’s successor as senior rabbi at Temple Sholom, has spoken publicly in appreciation of Miller’s support in the days after the terror attacks. 

The lesson Miller learned from Prof. Wasserman decades earlier may have ensured he did not remain silent about what happened on Oct. 7.

“The history of the Jews in Germany before the Second World War, before there was blatant antisemitism, there was a lot of silence,” he said. “Even though we now know that a lot of people were uneasy, they were not uneasy enough to say anything. That silence is often very damning. That’s true, certainly, today as well [about antisemitism], but also on other issues where we are not so willing to speak up, [where] we are a little cowardly and we can find reasons to justify it.”

Before being appointed a bishop, Miller was a professor and later president at the University of St. Thomas, in Houston, Tex. In 2003, Pope John Paul II appointed him secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, in the Vatican. He came to Vancouver in 2007 as coadjutor – effectively, the assistant to the archbishop and the apparent successor.

Fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian, Miller has authored several books on Catholic education and the papacy. He is succeeded by Archbishop Richard W. Smith, who previously served as archbishop of Edmonton. 

Miller credits his team at the archdiocese office for their commitment to Catholic-Jewish dialogue, and he and Bregman both praised Ann Marie McGrath, who serves as the religion lead at St. Patrick Regional Secondary School in Vancouver. Bregman has connected McGrath with King David High School, and a new relationship is budding between those schools. 

Miller has now relocated to Houston. He does not like the term “retirement,” he said, and his first few weeks have been filled with speaking engagements and other responsibilities. He will be sharing his wisdom when invited to do so.

“I’ll probably read more – I look forward to that – and, God willing,” he said, “pray a little more because not every moment will be scheduled as it has been.”