Dear Brandeis community,

 

My childhood was, in some ways, defined by religious diversity. My parents were each closely connected to their spiritual lives, in the Jewish and Christian communities of the East Bay. At various times we lived with a Buddhist nun, members of a Rastafarian reggae band, and American Indian tribal elders (insert entirely accurate joke here about growing up in Berkeley), and my parents worked closely with our local rabbis, Catholic priests, and the black Baptist community in Oakland. The range of religious practice I witnessed and participated in through my childhood left me fascinated by spirituality, leading to my applying to college as a religious studies major, and in many ways setting me on the path to my work here at Brandeis.

 

I have recently had occasion to reflect that, while my religious education was a broad one, there was a major world religion missing. I did not, as a child, connect with Muslims. I knew of only one child in all my years of public school who was Muslim, and he wasn’t a close friend. It wasn’t until I studied abroad in Spain, during my junior year of college, that I became close to anyone who grew up in the Islamic tradition. Somewhere in the swirl of that year of new experiences, Omar Boukili joined our group of friends. Raised in Casablanca, Omar was studying in the pharmacy program at the University of Alcala, where I was studying literature, but his true passion was political science. That year he met a friend of mine from Cal, they fell in love and got married, and he ended up coming to the U.S. and pursuing his love of politics, now working in local and state government in Massachusetts.

 

I was thinking of Omar yesterday while visiting the San Francisco Islamic School. I had reached out to Kashif Abdullah, the school administrator, as part of my work following the election to think about how we as a school can work toward radical empathy, toward an “empathy undergirded by the ethics that bind our community, an ethics that tells us to put our lives and our hearts in service of a better tomorrow.” SFIS is small, only a few years old, and growing to serve its community—it made me think about Brandeis in its early years, as a small school just beginning. As Kashif took me around to meet some of the staff, I realized my own ignorance about their faith when I stuck my hand out to shake hands with one of the teachers, a woman, before awkwardly remembering that Islam restricts touching between opposite genders. The teacher gave me a warm smile, making me feel much better about my gaffe, and giving me an opportunity to think about the powerful learning in encountering difference.

 

But while those differences were there, Kashif and I spent much of our time together talking about our similarities: the work of guiding the spiritual development of young people; trying to pay teachers well and create meaningful opportunities for them to learn and grow; the role of character in nurturing good citizens; how to find enough classrooms, or offices, or desks, or projectors. Over lunch we shared our family stories, and imagined ways to bring our students and communities together—on the basketball court, through a service project, or over games. I know those are conversations we will continue.

 

As I prepared to leave, I noticed a sign on the door of a classroom, and was struck by how similar the expectations they hold for their students are to those we hold for ours—to be respectful, to be honest, to be kind. As I returned to school, I walked past the poster outside my office (Keshet’s Seven Jewish Values: Guidelines for Inclusive Jewish Community), and noticed the resonance between it and the poster from SFIS. The first value is kavod, or respect, and it says:

 

Judaism teaches us to treat ourselves and others with respect; even the stranger is to be treated with respect. Kavod is a feeling of regard for the rights, dignity, feelings, wishes, and abilities of others. Teasing and name-calling disrespect and hurt everyone, so learn to respect people’s differences.

 

What I would add to this definition is that kavod is also about empathy and a recognition of our fundamental similarities. The work ahead for all of us and our children, I believe, is to create safe spaces for encountering, learning from, and respecting difference, while also recognizing in those spaces the things we share.

 

I look forward to deepening my friendship with Kashif when he comes to visit Brandeis soon, and to finding more points of connection for our communities. In the meantime, I wish you all weekends full of learning and connecting, my friends.

 

Warmly,

 

Dan