European Judaism

The year 2013 sees the fortieth anniversary of the Annual International Jewish- Christian-Muslim Student Conference (JCM) which has been co-sponsored and sustained from its beginning by Leo Baeck College. Created at the Hedwig Dransfeld Haus in Bendorf, then under the direction of Anneliese Debray, it moved to Wuppertal when the Haus closed. The partner organisations have included the Oekumenische Werkstatt (now United Evangelical Mission), Wuppertal, the Bendorfer Forum, the Deutsche Muslim-Liga, Bonn, and the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, University of Birmingham. Regular financial support has come from the German Ministry of the Interior.

This article challenges the view that religious tolerance is promoted by affirming what the respective faith communities have in common. Rather, it proposes that genuine interfaith dialogue acknowledges difference and celebrates our distinctive paths to the life of the spirit as refracting our shared humanity.

The proposed Standards for interreligious textbook research and development are the result of an interreligious and international process of consultation. In the tension between a 'clash of civilisations' and the 'dialogue among civilisations', school textbooks have an important task. In many countries they are practically the 'teacher of teachers'. Based on the research project, “the representation of Christianity in textbooks of countries with an Islamic tradition“, discussions between scholars in different countries have taken place. The standards are proposed as possible guidelines for author teams and publishers, for education authorities and curriculum planners. Issues and tasks are envisaged under eight headings: covering the questions of an authentic portrayal of religions, developing a dialogue-orientated interpretation of religion, portraying religions' importance in the life of real people, dealing carefully with religions' history, with their cultural heritage and their context and with the controversial issues of mission, religious freedom and tolerance. Mutual understanding in the field of ethics should also be reflected. Last but not least, the life conditions of the students and their relevance for religious learning are to be taken seriously. Pedagogical and media didactic approaches have to accept the students as independent partners in the learning processes.

The Social Media has become an important part of our (online) lives, in an incredibly short period of time. This paper will explore to what extent it contributes to fostering interfaith dialogue. Its impact depends on the people who use it - and how they use it. The Social Media challenges traditional hierarchies (including religious hierarchies) because control moves from website owners to users which means that “everyone is a publisher and everyone is a critic.“ Although the less personal nature of online communication makes it easier for information to be distorted, there are examples of good practice to promote interfaith dialogue. The Social Media can also overcome ignorant stereotypes and combat prejudice, (although it is also (ab)used to promote prejudice). In interfaith dialogue, the Social Media needs to provide a safe space for users, to facilitate trust and to help users feel a sense of connection with the 'other'. Although this can be more easily achieved in a face-to- face encounter because the 'virtual world' will only ever be virtual, the Social Media should be integrated into interfaith dialogue so that it not only contributes to positive political change but also to furthering inter- religious understanding.

Language has the potential to be used for good or for bad. Even at the best of times, when words are treated with care and respect for that potential, translating what a word means in one language into another is fraught with difficulty. When language is underpinned by darker concerns and motives, religious zeal, fanaticism and the like can turn potential into actual. Religions know how inadequate words can be to describe ultimate experience and have a particular responsibility to use language with great care. They have been at the receiving and giving ends of the ability of language to inflame passions, arouse anger which spills over into destructive action. Tsedakah, Charity and Sadaqa may not mean exactly the same thing - but exploring together what they mean helps us to build bridges between us.

Determining when religious language is being used or abused is notoriously difficult, not least because the orthodox line on usage may well have more to do with power politics and prejudice than truth. Ruth ventures to suggest the term 'God' is widely abused since people of faith try to pin down what it means when in reality it signifies that which is beyond understanding. She also notes that the desire for clear definitions may result from a need in an insecure world for simple security rather than complex truth. She discusses how the language of faith is more like the language of art rather than that of science and explores the power of imaginative language to convey truth. She concludes that religious language may well say more about our journeys as human beings than the reality we call 'God'.

The following broad-and admittedly rather superficial-survey of Jewish leadership types spans several millennia, from the biblical period to the present. A wide variety of positions with varying claims to authority will be reviewed: biblical charismatic 'judges', elders, priests, and prophets; rabbis and Exilarchs, emerging in late antiquity; wealthy laymen and courtiers in the Middle Ages; Hasidic rebbes and maskilim as new modes of leadership in the modern era. In each case the nature of leaders' claim to authority and the extent of their power within the Jewish community will be assessed. Different types of leaders often coexisted with a kind of division of labour, but cases of strong conflicts are of special interest.

First, I want to say thank you for the invitation to speak here to you on the ‘holy mountain’ from a Protestant perspective. With me, you get a reverend from the Protestant church in Rhineland. I live with my bicultural family in Cologne and I work for the section on theology, ecumenics and interreligious dialogue at the Melanchthon Academy, the place for Protestant adult education in Cologne. For a long time it has been a place for Christian-Jewish and Christian-Muslim dialogue, and sometimes we succeed to talk as all three together. For example at the evangelischen Kirchentag in Cologne we organised an Abraham center and we signed the Cologne Peace Declaration, signed by representatives from synagogues, mosques and the churches.

The article begins with an example of the significant impact of antireligious restrictions in the twentieth century, which led to an intellectual retreat of Muslim authorities and a change of traditional authority structures. It makes clear the negative role that was played, and continues to be played, by the dominant European perspective on Islam. The article tries to describe the systematic misunderstandings about the role of the Islam in the Muslim communities. How can Muslims or non-Muslims give an authoritative response to several questions posed to Islam? It then clarifies how early the caliphate lost its significance so that the schools of religious jurisprudence took on the decisive role for the religious life of Muslims. Theological conceptions and their historic backgrounds show us that Islam contains a lot of positive potential for interpretation, which can be used by Muslim communities to rebuild new, democratic authority structures. How relevant are the new western-christian influences, and what are the essential bases for a Muslim argumentation? In the German context the article deals with the importance of the mosque as a centre for the religious life for the individuals and the community. Finally it discusses the important question, how could a new formation of Muslim authorities within the communities be constructed, and what role might the interfaith experience play in this.

Judaism has long been a religion of particularity and universalism. The prophets of ancient Israel propounded universal messages of civilising influence for all Peoples and Nations. However emphasis on the particularity within Judaism has been prevalent in the modern era leaving it open to criticising voices who accuse religions in general of delusion and danger. How must Judaism and its relationship with other faiths become again a force for repair, for justice and for conscience in this fractured world? How can we get our particularistic religious faiths to be reflective of a world working towards a universal hope for the future?

Starting with the idea that individual concerns and agendas are based on personal life experiences the author expresses his view of social responsibility by describing some formative personal life experiences and encounters and formulating his findings. So the hermeneutic of life defines the effect on one's social responsibility. However this does not mean that aspects of social responsibility are an individual and arbitrarily matter, but instead are mainly based on encounter and dialogue: listening to and being aware of to the needs of people, and fortering and supporting a society which allows for and appreciates diversity and the exchange of views. Accordingly , a basic social responsibility is to advocate human rights and to support democratic structures - particularly for religious communities which have the power to shape society. Finally there is no special Christian or religious moral or value. But believers carry a hope and a power, not from this world, to seek dialogue and let society experience the love of God.

It is often thought that, with an appropriate spiritual foundation to work towards moral responsibility and social justice, it would be enough if individuals to follow, as Kant suggests, “the moral law within me“, doing away with outdated structures and with traditions that seem to have become an end in themselves. Yet social structures and philosophical concepts in today's complex world have deep roots in values that, in the past, were understood to be religious and that can be neither denied nor replaced at random. Besides, isn't that “moral law within me“ that was the driving force behind a prophet to “stand up for what is just“, even against social and religious authority. Here is the root out of which traditions grow like branches and structures are built according to necessity. The Qur'anic vision presented here is one of using the diversity of the branches for a constructive competition in producing fruits of balanced justice and peace.

This paper was written for the JCM interfaith conference in 2012. The theme of the conference was youth and religion, and the three keynote speakers of the three respective faiths were all young members of their communities, asked to talk about their personal experiences and views on growing up religiously in a changing world. Being the Jewish representative, I wrote about my own religious identity and the challenges that young Jews face in Hungary, comparing it to a Jewish upbringing in England. I set out to explore why atheism and antireligious views are so prevalent among young adults today and why established religions are judged so harshly. I then presented my own expectations towards my faith, and talked about how Jewish tradition can be reconciled with the values and lifestyles of young people in today's Western world. Finally, I looked at the importance of interfaith dialogue and open mindedness towards other cultures, and the essential role that these must play if religion is to prevail in future generations.

Whereas the word is that the congregations of the official Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church are shrinking and few people take part in the services, a clear increase can be seen in the area of popular esotericism and spirituality. In the double sense, the question arises here as to the relationship of 'word' and 'deed'. How do our traditions respond to the challenge to our ability to act in relation to the individual's search for spirituality and to responsibility for society? Anthropological ways of seeing modernity, secularisation and Christianity (1) indicate theories regarding developments in religion and Christianity, and these are illustrated by empirical examples of a spiritual society (2). This is discussed in terms of what it can mean to take on responsibility (3), and what the relationship is between this and piety's end in itself.

This paper for the JCM Conference 2012 is in the first part an attempt to explain how it is to grow up and live as a mixed-raced, Muslim girl in Germany. It brings many challenges and difficulties with it but also a lot of fun, excitement and very life enriching lessons, to discover all those cultural and religious differences, developing a very own view and understanding towards certain religious traditions. It then continues to discuss the importance and meaning of Islam in my life, how living according to what I understood the Islamic tradition requires, gave me peace and happiness as well as complications and rejections. And finally some thoughts about the expectations I have towards Islamic communities and how we could all contribute to a better understanding and ways of living together as a community

When speaking about Wendy Greengross at a memorial service shortly after her death, Rabbi Lionel Blue likened her to other exceptional British Jewish women, like the Hon Lily Montagu and Lady Henriques, who were deeply motivated by their religious beliefs and who undertook pioneering work within the Jewish and wider community.

Jewish Education in England, 1944–1988: between Integration and Separation.Daniel Mendelsson, Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2011

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