Vancouver School of Theology

Dialogue across differences

Rabbi Dr. Ted Falcon will be joined by Imam Jamal Rahman in a keynote address called Healing at a Time of Polarization, which the public can watch online by registering at vst.edu. (photo from Ted Falcon)

When beginning interfaith or intercultural dialogue, how much emphasis should be placed on similarities and how much on differences? According to a rabbi with decades of experience in the topic, the question puts the cart before the horse.

When Rabbi Dr. Ted Falcon, a Seattle spiritual guide, author, teacher and therapist, leads such interactive processes, he starts with something far more general: the basic humanity of the participants.

“We encourage people to begin a dialogue, a conversation process, not by focusing on similarities or differences in their religious views or nonreligious views, whatever they might be, but begin by creating contexts in which they can meet each other as human beings, meet each other as persons, which essentially is done through sharing stories,” said Falcon.

He uses “a series of questions that people can respond to either in dyads or around tables that elicit stories about important events in their lives, stories about concerns in their lives, stories about important relationships in their lives, so that the dialogue begins by appreciating a common shared human condition. That has made a tremendous difference because only after that do we encourage people looking at more specifically their religious or nonreligious concerns.”

Falcon will be part of a keynote address at a fifth annual multi-religious, multidisciplinary conference presented by Vancouver School of Theology, May 24 to 26. Due to the pandemic, the conference, titled Religious, Spiritual, Secular: Living in a Pluralistic Culture, will take place online. To virtually attend the entire event, registration fees apply, but the keynote and a Monday night concert are open to the public at no cost, although pre-registration is required.

Falcon is a member of the Interfaith Amigos, made up of himself, Pastor Don Mackenzie, a Christian minister, and Imam Jamal Rahman, a Muslim clergyman of the Sufi tradition. The three have published books and present together frequently. Rahman will join Falcon at the conference for the keynote, titled Healing at a Time of Polarization: Reaching Beyond Difference to What We Share.

Once the framework for constructive dialogue is in place, Falcon said in a telephone interview with the Jewish Independent from his Seattle-area home, interfaith exploration can begin to approach similarities that transcend religious differences. Among their Jewish, Muslim and Christian values, the amigos acknowledge some fundamental principles.

“We identified three basic core teachings that our traditions share,” said Falcon. “A core teaching of oneness, a core teaching of unconditional love and a core teaching of compassion. We can utilize those core teachings to then look at our texts, our traditions and our lives and evaluate how does this reflect in my life, how am I not living up to this, what do I need to do to live up to this more authentically? And it’s only after that discussion that we encourage people to engage in more difficult conversations, whether it’s conversations about Israel-Palestine, whether it’s conversations about desire to convert other people, whether it’s conversations about feeling your way is somehow better than other ways, whether it’s conversations about somehow being wary of allowing ourselves to truly appreciate the spiritual wisdom in another’s tradition.”

He admitted that interfaith dialogue is not always possible. But, even among people who acknowledge that they believe their theology to be unerring and people who may not be open to difference, there can still be dialogue, he said.

“In other words, if our conversation is based on my need to get you to change, there is no conversation.” But, he continued, if people recognize that neither they nor their interlocutor will change their minds, there is still a means and a purpose to engaging.

“We share the essential aspect of walking around in a human body with all its frailties and all its challenges and all its wonders,” said Falcon. “We have so much in common that that changes the energetic environment and allows a different kind of conversation to take place. Will you ever convince me that Jesus is the only way? No. But can I truly appreciate that that is your way and authentically support that? Yes, I can do that.”

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, director of interreligious studies and a professor of Jewish studies at Vancouver School of Theology, is conference director. She acknowledged that the online, virtual format for the conference changes its nature, but with the drawbacks come benefits.

“We are well aware that people can experience Zoom fatigue and computer fatigue and perhaps don’t want to sit in front of the computer for two full days, no matter how much they are fascinated by the content,” Duhan-Kaplan said. As a result, all of the sessions will be recorded and participants can watch and join the conversation on message boards for 10 days after the conference weekend. This means that, unlike most in-person conferences where participants have to choose between breakout sessions, it is possible to virtually attend all of them.

While the event is an academic conference and it will naturally attract clergypeople, Duhan-Kaplan said it is appropriate for anyone who cares about the role of religion in the public sphere.

“One of the objectives, when it was an in-person conference, was, of course, to get people interested in religion and spirituality from different sectors of our community, to meet each other in person and network,” she said. “The dynamic may be very different online, so, aside from that goal, I’m really hoping that people will come away with a sense of the complexity of creating a community that has room for religious diversity.

“But I also want them to be able to see what some of the components of that complexity are, so that no one throws up their hands and says it can’t be done, but has a sense that by doing acts, whether it’s a group of multifaith chaplains supporting a prison population or whether it’s a group of people getting together to work on the Downtown Eastside or even religious communities twice a year doing outreach to someone of a different faith, I want people to get a sense of understanding that they are part of a larger project and what kind of difference what they do makes.”

For information, to register for the entire conference ($100/$50 students) or sign up to attend the keynote and concert (free), go to vst.edu by May 21.

On death and dying

Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at Vancouver School of Theology. (photo from Laura Duhan Kaplan)

“Most of the world’s religions speak of dying to self,” said Dr. Eloecea, a Christian psychotherapist speaking at the Inter-Religious Conference on Spiritual Perspectives on Death and Dying at the Vancouver School of Theology May 22-24. “If we can do this before the time death approaches, suffering is greatly diminished for ourselves and for those around us.”

“Dying to self” refers to giving up egotism and self-centred attachments. Eloecea’s words echoed a theme that appeared in many of the sessions I attended, which was that of a holistic spiritual path of surrender and humility that unites life and death.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan, formerly of Or Shalom Synagogue and now director of inter-religious studies at VST, discussed how she had been spurred by reading Plato to take a closer examination of Jewish views of death and the afterlife. “Plato said living well is preparing for death. But what is death?” she asked.

Duhan Kaplan explained how the texts of kabbalah offer accounts of a soul’s journey after death. The soul travels through stages of physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual purification, she said. According to Duhan Kaplan, this account of the afterlife is based both in kabbalistic theories of the soul’s development and glimpses of higher consciousness by current spiritual seekers. As Duhan Kaplan presented them, these texts are a guide to a lifetime of self-reflection, humility and non-attachment.

The stages of the soul’s ascent after death are tied to the rituals and rhythms of the traditional Jewish year of mourning that follows the death of a loved one, she said. “When I decided I would research Jewish views of the afterlife I had no idea I would discover what I did.”

Duhan Kaplan spoke of the dreams and spiritual experiences she had after the deaths of her father, mother and mother-in-law. She said the stages of her parents’ journeys offered particular gifts that related to their stages of spiritual ascent in the next worlds. The movement from the shivah period through the year of saying Kaddish to the yahrzeit and Yizkor corresponds to the soul’s difficulty in letting go, the emotional purification, the visit to the lower Gan Eden, the “paradise of understanding and good deeds,” and then the return to the storehouse of souls to merge with the divine. This description captures just one thread in the rich tapestry of connections Duhan Kaplan wove.

Other teachers at the conference presented different lenses through which spirituality relates to death. Acharya S.P. Dwivedi, poet and interfaith activist, presented the traditional Hindu view of karma, reincarnation and freedom from rebirth through non-attachment and identification with the transcendent self (atman). Dwivedi described how in the Hindu view the jiva (individual soul) moves from birth to death, experiencing happiness or suffering in accordance with the good and bad actions it commits, until finally it finds its true identity with the atman – the innermost self that is one with all of existence – and lets go, returning to its source and not again being reborn.

Syed Nasir Zaidi, Muslim chaplain at the University of British Columbia, discussed the importance in Islam of confronting and making peace with death. “Death should be our strength, not our weakness,” Zaidi said, emphasizing how thoroughly internalizing the reality of our own death and ceasing to fear it can enrich our spiritual path. Zaidi pointed out that, according Rumi, it is death that gives value to life, making it precious. Zaidi also explained that, in Islam, peace with death is accomplished through confident submission to God’s will in a life of virtue and acceptance of life’s unfolding as an expression of God. “Abraham told his children they should not die before becoming Muslims,” Zaidi said. “Obviously, this doesn’t refer to being members of the religion of Islam, but rather to having submitted to God, which is what being a muslim [submitted one] means.”

Some presenters offered specific practices. Eloecea shared a series of meditations aimed at producing positive thoughts to change the state of the brain, to shift from the egotistical self and its entrapping habits. Lynn Mills, a PhD student at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, Skyped in to present a liturgy for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, which consisted of psalms and prayers to be recited in their presence. This had two parts: the first was a morning liturgy for every day, the second a way to celebrate the person’s life before memory loss prevents them from knowing friends and family and remembering the stories they share.

A variety of other topics were covered. Mark Stein, a Jewish chaplain, tackled the issue of what to do when non-Christians (or anabaptists, who only baptize believing adults) are called upon to give baptisms for sick or stillborn children. Can a Jew baptize a child? Should they? Stein spoke of the need for chaplains to support people in these extreme situations. He spoke of the transformation this could cause in a chaplain, leading them not only to embrace a pragmatic flexibility but to an openness – seeing God’s work as something also happening beyond one’s own religion.

One recurrent issue was medical assistance in dying, about which there was a panel discussion moderated by Duhan Kaplan on the opening night of the conference. Rabbi Adam Rubin of Congregation Beth Tikvah spoke as a member of the panel. He noted the lack of a consensus about medically assisted dying across Jewish traditions, but affirmed a few core teachings. “First, because of the infinite preciousness of every life, we’re commanded to do everything we can to preserve life,” Rubin told the Independent. “Second, we must do everything we can to attenuate suffering. Some traditional rabbinic authorities hold that this imperative means that one can give a level of pain-killing medicine (morphine, for example) that might even endanger the life of a patient, in order to reduce the patient’s suffering. In addition, some authorities allow the removal of life-sustaining machines or apparatuses if they extend suffering, in order to allow the normal course of physical decline to take place. This is a tricky and controversial subject within Jewish tradition,” he said, “but the general idea is that there’s a place for ‘allowing nature to take its course’ if it is likely to reduce suffering. All of that said, there is a (rare for Judaism!) consensus in traditional Jewish law that it is absolutely forbidden to take one’s own life or to assist in taking someone else’s life.”

Rubin warned of the dangers of simplistic notions of consent or decision-making that don’t take into account the full range of pressures and emotional factors that might influence a person’s decision. “People are not robots, making ‘clean,’ rational decisions in a vacuum,” he said. “So, my approach, and my take on Jewish tradition, is that we must fight the things that might lead to someone wishing to end their life.”

In addition to the talks and panels, there was an afternoon session for musical and meditative reflections on the first day of the conference. Jewish music ensemble Sulam (which contains both Duhan Kaplan and her husband Charles Kaplan) performed, as did the Threshold Singers; the music was followed by Zen priest Myoshin Kate McCandless giving a presentation on meditation and chant in support of end-of-life care.

The keynote event of the conference, which was open to the public, was called We Die Alone and Yet We Don’t. It was a conversation with Dr. David Kuhl, facilitated by Duhan Kaplan. Kuhl is a professor in the department of family practice in the faculty of medicine at UBC. He helped design and develop the palliative care program at St. Paul’s Hospital, and is known for his 2011 book What Dying People Want: Lessons for Living from People Who Are Dying.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Gathering in solidarity

Attendees spoke to one another at their tables, following a list of questions to guide discussion. (photo from Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan)

A small group of Jews and Christians gathered at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on April 4.

After the first bomb threat at the JCC, Richard Topping, principal of Vancouver School of Theology, reached out to the Jewish community. He approached Laura Duhan Kaplan, director of Inter-Religious Studies at VST and rabbi emerita of Congregation Or Shalom. Yael Levin of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and JCCGV executive director Eldad Goldfarb then organized the dialogue, at which members of the United, Anglican and Presbyterian churches were present.

The evening opened with the singing of an egalitarian version of “Hinei Mah Tov” – “How good it is when brothers dwell together as one,” with achim, brothers, changed to kulanu, everyone. Topping then took the podium.

“When the first bomb threat was made at the JCC,” he said, “people at VST began asking is there anything we can do to show our solidarity with the Jewish community? We understand that a hoax like this is scary and it makes our friends feel vulnerable. In a post-Holocaust world, we don’t want to wait and see how a threat turns out. We want to assure you that we stand in solidarity with you against antisemitism. We are here to assure you that we stand with you against violence and against threats of violence.”

Sharon Dweck, development director of the JCCGV, gave an overview of the JCCGV’s activities within the Jewish community and beyond. She then shared her recollections of the first threat. “I broke my rule about keeping my nose out of daycare and rushed to hug my child,” she said. “Days after, as ‘manager on call’ after the bomb threat, I felt afraid and vulnerable, as well as a great sense of responsibility. ‘Would another threat come on my watch?’”

In total, the JCC received two threats, both of which were hoaxes.

Attendees spoke to one another at their tables, following a list of questions to guide discussion. People talked about everything from the importance of tikkun olam to Jewish humour, people they knew in common, their Jewish or Christian upbringings, and concerns over the then-upcoming vote to support the boycott, divest from and sanction Israel movement at the University of British Columbia, which was defeated.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.