Last week, 86 participants gathered at the 26th Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer Retreat- Together in Service: Building Interfaith Partnerships for Social Action. Many of them are featured in this photo! We had the chance to hear about a range of exciting projects bringing together individuals and organizations that are bridging divides and working together, right here in New York City! These interfaith relationships are grounded in a faith-based commitment to social justice and are being harnessed to tackle the city’s and the world’s social problems, including hunger, disaster relief, environmental justice, immigration, HIV/AIDS, and hatred of religious and ethnic minorities, including Muslims, Sikhs, and Arabs and South Asians.
For those who were not present, you can learn more about our program by reviewing the agenda from the day. In addition to hearing about the partnerships, we also spent the afternoon discussing how to approach evaluation of our work—in order for our work to be sustainable long term, we must be able to demonstrate its effectiveness and convince donors and grant making foundations about its merit!
Throughout the day, we also shared reflections from three religious traditions. We opened the morning with a prayer read by Jonah Geffen, a Rabbinic Fellow at B’nai Jeshurun, and written by Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer. We went to lunch with a Sikh blessing offered by Navjyot Singh Parmar, an Intern at Sikh Coalition. Finally, we had a very lovely closing facilitated by Rev. T.K. Nakagaki- we stood around in a large circle holding hands and each person said a word that came to their mind. Some of the words and themes that people shared as their top-of-the-mind thoughts were: gratitude, kindness, hope, love, and peace. After the Retreat, we visited Union Seminary’s Edible Church Yard and St. Mary’s White House Interfaith Partnership Urban Farm!
We encourage you to complete the evaluation form linked here if you did not already do so—even those who did not attend can fill out some questions about your interfaith partnership work. The form can be downloaded and filled out as a Microsoft Word document and emailed back to Sarah Sayeed at ssayeed@interfaithcenter.org
As a final note, the Marshall Meyer Retreats have offered opportunities for religious leaders to network and share noteworthy information and news with each other. In that spirit, we are including a few events and advocacy initiatives that religious leaders may consider signing.
Thank you again for your ongoing interest, participation and support of the Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer Retreats, the longest running program of the Interfaith Center of New York. Your involvement over the years has helped create “New York City’s oldest and principal concourse for interfaith education and dialogue on important, local social justice issues!”
