Changing the world — one conversation at a time

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: A Christian, a Muslim and a Jew sit down to talk about faith.

But the Buxton Initiative in Washington, D.C. is quite serious, and one Milwaukee native, Sarah Jacobson, has chosen to be the singular Jew in that three-way conversation.

Jacobson, 23, of Whitefish Bay, began her work in September as the 2009-2010 Jewish Buxton Fellow. Along with one Christian and one Muslim, she will facilitate and engage in frank discussions about religion and world issues.

The fellows, all recent college graduates, blog, organize events and work with the local communities of their respective religions to educate people about their own faiths, and teach them to understand others.

The Buxton Initiative was founded in the wake of 9/11, when two former ambassadors, one a Muslim and one a Christian, realized that open and honest discussions about religion were the only way to create interfaith understanding.

The educational journey that led her to the Buxton Initiative began in college, when she traveled around the world to different countries, including Argentina, Cambodia and Senegal.

“I started to learn more and more about how people use religion as a way to make conflict happen,” she said. “It’s such a powerful thing that can be manipulated.”

But her selection and success as a fellow transcends that education, her father, Richard Jacobson, said. It springs from her innate skills.

“Sarah is a real mediator and she’s a real leader in a lot of ways,” he said. “She’s very good at bringing people together and getting people to talk to each other.”

She maintains the rare balance of enjoying a strong identity and being passionately committed to learning about others, he said.

“She’s very religious,” said her mother, Lynn Jacobson. “She likes all things Jewish, and this is helping her learn about not only how to teach other people about her religion, but learning a lot about other people’s belief systems.”

Raised as an active member of Congregation Shalom, she has remained a committed Jew, but her interest in other religions has blossomed over time.

During college, Jacobson studied in Senegal and became interested in Islam. “Seeing Islam and terrorism, Islam and terrorism, Islam and terrorism all the time, that really shapes [other people’s] perceptions of Muslims,” she said.

Her work with the Buxton Initiative has only intensified her fascination with other religions.

“I think it definitely made me realize there are so many dimensions to every culture and it’s easy, no matter where you come from, to reduce other people’s identities to this, this, this and this,” she said.

“When you talk to people and you talk consciously about these things … I think you realize that so many different things affect their beliefs, and you shouldn’t take things at the surface level.”

Of course, a lot of what she’s learned about other faiths has come out of working with the Christian and Muslim fellows.

“I’ve learned a lot from them and when it comes down to it, when you’re working with a Christian, Muslim or whoever it is, you’re working with individuals,” she says, adding that a lot of the learning comes from “trying to understand where they’re coming from and figuring out, how different it is where I come from? How similar is it from where I come from?”

In turn, they’ve learned a lot from her.

“I’d say it’s been more about understanding who Sarah is, and less about what Judaism is,” said Christian fellow Teryn Oglesby. “Getting to know her better, I understand Shabbat and why she’s fasting on Yom Kippur. So it’s really been just living day to day that’s made a big difference.”

Jacobson believes that her experience with the Buxton Initiative has strengthened her own Jewish identity.

“It’s forced me to be able to explain to other people my beliefs,” she said, explaining that being surrounded by other Jews can lead to complacency.

“I didn’t have people questioning that because sometimes your beliefs are given if they know you’re Jewish. But really there is a lot more to talk about and to learn… It helps me articulate how I feel and it makes me more interested in wanting to learn about Judaism and its history.”

Though she’s not sure what her future will hold when her fellowship ends this summer, she knows she wants to continue her travels and that when she settles into a more permanent career, she wants Judaism to be a part of it.

“I definitely see Judaism as being a bigger part of my life in the future,” she said.

In the meantime, she’ll be working on changing the world one conversation at a time.

“I think it’s very small steps for improving the way that people interact with each other,” she says. “I think the work that we’re doing — small meetings with people asking honest questions about Islam and Judaism and Christianity, and how people’s beliefs intersect with politics and culture — I think getting that started in a very simple, small scale way is important.”

Her dad envisions people who’ve experienced the Buxton Initiative taking what they’ve learned and incorporating it into other aspects of their lives.

“If someone who goes through it goes out into the community and goes into things like international relations and law and business, and has a model for working with other cultures and other faiths, it’s just going to make the whole world more understanding,” he said.

Sarah agreed. “You never know how learning about somebody else can really make an impact,” she says. “It can lead to other actions that just make things better.”

Kiera Wiatrak is a former Chronicle intern and a communications specialist at University Communications at the University of%u2028 Wisconsin-Madison.