In Boston, the Federation is known as the CJP (Combined Jewish Philanthropies). Earlier this month, the CJP's Young Adult Task Force asked Margie and me to present at their young leadership conference. We did, it was cool, the folks dug us. Good to know that the mainstream Jewish community -- at least at the young adult level -- recognizes some of the rocking out we're doing at the Moishe/Kavod House.
But later in the month, we took on a bigger challenge: trying to convince Barry Shrage, head of the CJP and a major mover-and-shaker in not only Boston's Jewish community but the Federation movement nationally, to support our interfaith work with Boston's Muslim community. Not to go into the gritty details, suffice it to say that our interfaith work is in direct opposition to The David Project, a conservative Jewish group with a lot more power in town than us. The bottom line is that they think our friends in the Muslim American Society are preaching hate and preparing to kill us, while we think they're pretty nice folks worth having over for Shabbat.
So anyway, Joe and Margie and me, along with a bunch of other community members, met with Barry the other day. He was very nice, but definitely noncommittal about our request to get on board with our efforts publicly. Nonetheless, it says something about what we've built here at the house that he was willing to meet with us at all, and we definitely felt that the meeting was a success in that we are at the very least helping to build a political pole diametrically opposite from what The David Project is pushing. And Barry said he'd come to one of our interfaith events...although he definitely said that cautiously. Going forward we shall see what happens, I suppose, but regardless we're gonna keep pushing for dialogue and relationship-building rather than demonizing and fear!
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