Three women – one Jewish, one Catholic and one Buddhist – sit down over a cup of coffee. What happens next?
“We realized we did not know much about each other’s faith,” said Bonnie Shafrin, a long-time Jewish educator. “We are learning about each other.”
In April 2014, Shafrin got together with Nancy O’Donnell and Val Spinner Banks to consider an idea that came to her on a recent flight to California. Shafrin had just left her job as director of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Nathan & Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center and was grappling with what to do next.
“I was thinking about what was important for me to continue,” said Shafrin, who has taught in public and Jewish schools as well as a number of other educational programs in the Jewish community.
The answer was to continue to find ways to help people of all faiths understand each other.
The vast majority of those Shafrin came in touch with at the Center were not Jewish, she said. Most knew little about Judaism, said Shafrin, who is also director of the Lux Center for Catholic Jewish Studies at the Sacred Heart School of Theology where she teaches Judaism to the men training for the Catholic priesthood.
Shafrin met O’Donnell, a Buddhist, and Banks, a Catholic, through a Holocaust study course. “We were connected but it wasn’t enough,” said Shafrin.
The women decided that they had much to learn from each other and as well as women of other faiths. They decided to form an interfaith group for women and call it Jewels. The first meeting was held in August 2014 and the group has been meeting almost monthly since. Members represent Reform and Orthodox Judaism; Catholicism; African Methodist Episcopalians; Lutherans; Sikhs; Muslims; Baha’is as well as other faiths.
“It’s a safe place where we can ask questions we cannot normally ask,” said Banks, a former theology teacher at Divine Savior Holy Angels and St. Thomas More, two Catholic high schools in Milwaukee. It’s not always easy to ask others questions about religion.
“I was in grad school and I asked a Muslim woman about her hijab,” said Banks. “She said I was a racist.”
At a group meeting a Muslim woman, Saba Ali, has explained what the hijab, or traditional scarf worn by Muslim women, means in her tradition as well as other practices of the religion, Shafrin said.
“It’s easy to believe that all Muslims want to kill us,” Shafrin said. “But it’s different when you know someone as a human being.”
Shafrin said the decision was made that this group would be for women – not clergy or academics. The primary ground rules are that those attending must show respect for one another, each other’s beliefs and opinions. Proselytizing is not acceptable.
O’Donnell, who was reared as a Catholic but now is a Buddhist, said she has long been interested in religion. She attended a number of interfaith gatherings, took a class at the Center and went to Israel with a group that included Shafrin.
“The greatest revelation to me is that we have so much more in common than I realized,” said O’Donnell.
O’Donnell, who went to a Catholic school, said she was distraught because she believed her Lutheran mother would not get into heaven. She grew up in a neighborhood where there were Jewish families and knew that they were different from her own. “I would sneak out and try to look into their homes,” she said, adding that recently she and her husband attended a Passover Seder. “It gave me almost a biblical understanding of Good Friday and Passover.”
Shafrin said the group is more than social. “The ultimate purpose is not to get together with one another but to go out and do good in the community,” she said, adding that the personal bonds that have been forged, as well as the mutual respect, will enable them to work on a project together.
“We’re not sure what it will be yet,” she said. “Maybe it will be working on voter registration or on a hunger program. We’ll make the decision soon.”
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· The first meeting was held in August 2014.
· The group has been meeting almost monthly.
· Members represent Reform and Orthodox Judaism; Catholicism; African Methodist Episcopalianism; Lutheranism; Sikhism; Islam; Baha’ism as well as other faiths.
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