Common Ground

Jewish-Muslim study course grounds
interfaith dialogue in sacred texts.

Naomi Seidman explains the layout of a Torah page to a Muslim-Jewish text

study class in Berkeley while co-instructor Hatem Bazian looks on.

Sue Fishkoff
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Berkeley, Calif

udaism is a harsh, exacting
faith condemning rebellious
children to death by ston-
ing. Islam exhorts Muslims to kill
non-believers.
Neither statement, according to
many Jewish and Muslim scholars,
is true. But they are among the most
persistent charges laid at the feet of
Judaism and Islam by those who are
unfamiliar with the basic holy texts
of the other's faith.
Hampered by such ignorance, how
can Jews and Muslims engage in real
interfaith dialogue?
A new graduate-level course in
Berkeley, billed as the first of its
kind, aims to rectify this failing,
at least for the 40 or so students
enrolled.
"Madrasa/Midrasha: Muslim-
Jewish Text Study," a nine-week
course spearheaded by the
Progressive Jewish Alliance and run
by the Center for Jewish Studies

j

and the Center for Islamic Studies
of the Graduate Theological Union,
introduces students of both faiths to
the methodologies and foundational
content of the Koran, Torah and
Talmud.
Each session is co-taught by a
Jewish and a Muslim scholar. The
course also is open to the public.
The field of Jewish-Muslim dia-
logue and engagement is growing
fast. According to a not-yet-pub-
lished survey by the Center for
Muslim-Jewish Engagement in Los
Angeles, 13 of 18 groups involved in
this work were launched in the past
seven years, and six of them in the
past two years.
The new Berkeley program stands
out from the pack by its focus on
rigorous text study. While 50 percent
of the interfaith groups surveyed
indicated they would like to do
comparative study of sacred texts,
experts in the field say very few
actually engage in such work beyond
one workshop, and none do so at the
graduate level.

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