Euro-Mediterranean Abrahamic Forum
The second gathering of the Euro-Mediterranean Abrahamic Forum was opened on the afternoon of Thursday 12 may, in the Grand Hotel Lublinianka, in the City of Lublin, Poland. A preparation team arrived one day before, in order to finalize the program and its venues and in order to prepare the hotel to accommodate people who keep Kosher or Halal. This included both detailed instructions to the kitchen, as well as making all the pots, pans etc. kosher. Participants in the conference were Christians, Muslims, Jews and Druze – coming from Egypt,Israel,Jordan,Lebanon,Morocco and the Palestinian Authority in theMiddle East, and fromAlbania,Bulgaria,Denmark,Germany,Italy,Poland,Spain and theUK inEurope. Regrets came from:Iran,Syria andTunisia in theMiddle East, and fromFinland,Greece,Lithuania andSweden inEurope.
In the opening session, Dr. Yehuda Stolov welcomed participants and explained the ideas and objectives of the Forum, geared to the consolidation of a network of activists who use different forms of interfaith interaction as a tool to improve society. The Forum intends to support and empower their work, allow them to learn from each other and encourage them to network for additional joint projects. The Forum is organized by the Interfaith Encounter Association and its four partners – Polish Peacemakers Community, YouthSpiritCenter (Jordan),HopeFlowersSchool (Palestinian Authority) and Via Dialoog (Belgium) – and is supported by the Anna Lindh Foundation. Apart from the partners, we received a lot of help and support from the city ofLublin, through the work of Fr. Tomasz Dostatni, who also welcomed us.
After Dr. Maciej Ziemba gave us brief introduction to Lublin, so we will know where we are, we went through the program and went around the circle to briefly introduce ourselves to each other.
This was the time when we were honored by the visit of Dr. Wlodzimierz Wysocki, the Mayor of Lublin, who welcomed us with very warm words of true happiness for choosing Lublin for our conference, as part of the tendency to makeLublin a truly multi-cultural city. Dr. Wysocki also invited all of us for dinner on Saturday evening. We thanked him and wished him and the city ofLublin success in the competition for the Cultural Capital of Europe.
After the Mayor’s warm welcome we turned to some social games that helped us both “break the ice” and divide into our conversation groups. The groups set together and had the first round of self-introduction. After dinner the groups met again, for a second round of deeper introduction through the sharing of an experience they had of social responsibility.
The next morning began with a short presentation by Rabbi Dr. Alan Brill, a Professor at SeatonHallUniversity in theUS. He presented two approaches in the Jewish sources for the need of social responsibility. One derives from the Jewish experience as slaves inEgypt, therefore the care for the week and needy. The other approach is derived from the demand of the human to be holy, as God is holy. Therefore – as God cures the sick – you should too, as God feeds the hungry – you should too, etc.
Following the presentations – participants went to the conversation groups for an hour and a half, then gathered again and shared the highlights of their conversations.
This structure repeated also in the session dedicated to the Muslim perspective in that afternoon. The presentation for this session was written by Mr. Abdullah Ramadan of Egypt, who unfortunately did not receive the visa on time and could not join us. Therefore it was read by Mr. Anas Alabbadi, who also added his own comments.
The session dedicated to the Christian view, in the following morning, had again the same structure. In this session Christianity was represented by three points of view: an Anglican one, presented by Canon Dr. Andrew Wingate from the UK, an Orthodox view, presented by Mr. Petar Gramatikoff fromBulgaria and a Catholic view presented by Fr. Jacek Prusak fromPoland.
At Friday mid-day we help the Muslim Jumaa prayer, which included the Khutba (=sermon) given by the Sufi teacher Andrzej Saramowicz, who stressed that the whole of humanity is one family and that the main task of the religious work is to overcome the illusion of separateness.
Before sun-set of that day we held the Jewish prayer for the receiving of the Shabbat.
Both prayers were prayed by those who usually pray them, in the way they are usually prayed, and accompanied with explanations for the others who were invited to watch.
On Friday evening we went to the “Teatr NN (=Theatre of No Name)” dedicated to the memory of the Lublin Jewish community that comprised half of the city and was destroyed in the Holocaust. The participants from each of the countries represented in the conference prepared songs, dances etc. from their culture and presented them – which was a lot of fun.
Saturday afternoon was dedicated to regional planning for the future. In Open Space style, participants took some time to propose ideas for projects. Each person who proposed a project was joined by other participants who were interested in this project. Finally seven projects were presented to the plenary:
- Interfaith sports with “Fair Play” approach;
- Women’s sub-forum
- Media approach
- Forum website
- Reaching out to extremists
- UK-Sweden-Jordan coopearation
- Road trip with a peace flag created in the Holy Land and finally hanged in the tallest building inDubai
In addition: one of the Moroccan participants took upon herself to explore an invitation from the King of Morocco for the 2012 conference of the forum.
After that hard and effective work, we all went to the nice restaurant where we enjoyed the hospitality of the Mayor of Lublin.
The last morning was the culmination of the conference and a moving manifestation of the togetherness built within the forum. The whole group of participants, most probably the most diverse group that ever did so, went together for a visit of the nearby concentration and extermination camp of Majdanek. Together we wandered through the camp’s exhibitions, exhibits and blocks; and wondered how people could do such things to other people. We ended the walk through the camp in a visit to the Crematorium and then gathered around the huge pile of human ashes near it. There we read the names of the known victims who were murdered in this camp and held a Jewish prayer by a rabbi in Hebrew, a Christian prayer by a priest in Polish and a Muslim prayer in Arabic. One of the participants, a Muslim woman fromJerusalem, was asked by a Jewish friend to put stones on the remains of the dead, according to the Jewish custom, and put stones she brought from theTempleMounton the pile of ashes. After some minutes of silent reflection we slowly went back to the bus for the short ride back to the hotel.
In the hotel we came together in a circle, in which each of us shared one word or a few words that summarize what he or she take back home from the conference. Hope, friendship, religion as a bridge, power of encounter – were some of the words heard.
We fare welled with the wish to meet again next year in Morocco.
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The Interfaith Encounter Association
P.O.Box 3814,Jerusalem91037,Israel
Phone: +972-2-6510520
Fax: +972-2-6510557
Website: www.interfaith-encounter.org
