• The deceased former king of Saudi Arabia decided to break from Wahhabism and devote himself to interfaith dialogue…
• The leaders of the Palestinians still won’t recognize Israel even in closed door meetings…
• A relatively unknown country (Qatar) hosts an interfaith dialogue conference with rabbis, only to have those same rabbis boycott years later because of strong, negative remarks made towards them about Israel…
• Al-Jazeera broadcasted interviews of those same rabbis to over 50 million Arabs in the world…

This week we continue the theme of opening ourselves to the open and honest dialogue of nuance through our Adult Ed session on Christianity and Judaism. As Rabbi Visotzky mentioned last week, the history of Christianity and Judaism is a complex one. For many centuries Jews and Christians were at odds (to say the least), and only in the past century or so has there been a rapprochement, whereby Jews and Christians are not only more tolerant of one another, but actually learning from one another. There are still many points of disagreement, many conflicting ideas, and much ignorance. Yet, if we open ourselves to the dialogue of nuance we will realize that there are many points we share, many ideas that teach similar things in different ways, and most important of all we will remove some of the ignorance that divides us unnecessarily.

See you tomorrow!

Kol Tuv,

Rabbi Ari Saks