Image of a community fridge and pantry for members of the Northeastern community, established this past year through interfaith collaboration between the Catholic Center at Northeastern, Northeastern Hillel, CSDS, and NU Mutual Aid.

Before the Boston Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI), I thought I had a good grasp as to how to facilitate interfaith dialogue and collaboration. This was mainly due to my role as an Interfaith Associate for Northeastern’s Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service (CSDS), helping plan interfaith dialogues and service events. While my role at CSDS is spiritually rewarding in the context of interfaith programming, BILI has given me a new lens on interfaith event planning, as well as techniques and methods to improve upon my interfaith leadership within and outside of CSDS.

One dialoguing technique used in BILI that I am looking forward to taking with me and implementing in my campus interfaith work is Reflective Structured Dialogue. In Reflective Structured Dialogue (RSD), participants are presented with a personal contemplative question, and every person answers in a structured manner, each allotted a certain amount of time to ponder and respond. After everyone provides a response, there is a similarly ordered question and answer time to continue to facilitate the conversation. Due to the structured nature of the dialogue, every participant is able to share their thoughts equally and engage in the discussion. I was able to experience RSD both as a participant alongside other BILI fellows and as a facilitator on the BILI Retreat. I really enjoyed these experiences, as did the other participants as reported as part of the post-retreat survey. After BILI, I aim to bring RSD to the Interfaith Dialogues at CSDS in order to facilitate even deeper conversation and encourage those who may not speak up during the dialogues to express their thoughts as desired.

Other elements of BILI that I would like to bring to Northeastern’s interfaith programs are case studies, engaging with community leaders, and more intercampus programming. Reading and deeply reflecting on various case studies, especially during the BILI Retreat, was a new experience for me. I really enjoyed thinking critically on realistic issues in interfaith planning and hearing a wide range of perspectives on the solutions. This practice made me contextualize the interfaith events I help plan and think through any potential obstacles that we may encounter. Furthermore, in multiple BILI sessions, we were able to have panels of interfaith community leaders speak about their experiences within their faith as well as through interfaith collaboration. We were able to ask them questions and get advice regarding effective interfaith programming and dialoguing techniques. I believe that bringing interfaith community leaders to CSDS would encourage more thought-provoking discussion on faith and spirituality and could be a great addition to our current programming. Throughout BILI, I also really appreciated hearing the perspectives of interfaith student leaders from so many different campuses. I would love to work with CSDS and other BILI fellows to create an ongoing group of Boston interfaith leaders to discuss and plan interfaith initiatives on an intercollegiate level. In addition, my involvement in planning the BILI Retreat has inspired me to become more involved in CSDS’s annual interfaith retreat and facilitate more student leadership within the planning process. I hope to engage with students and encourage their involvement in planning the retreat as well as participating in it.

I also am eager to take all that I have learned in BILI to communities outside of CSDS. Earlier this year, I was able to participate in an interfaith panel as the Jewish representative in an event coordinated by our Muslim student group. While participating in this panel, I realized that many of the students attending the event were not involved in interfaith programming and just their individual faith group. Therefore, I would love to use my newfound interfaith leadership and programming skills from BILI and collaborate with these different student organizations to facilitate interfaith dialogue outside of CSDS. I hope to discuss some of the challenges each of us are facing in our respective faith communities and build meaningful relationships and initiatives. We could also bring our spiritual leaders and advisors to speak to a multitude of Northeastern students in order to foster spiritual inclusivity and diversity within the student body at large. I also intend to further interfaith conversations within the Jewish communities in which I am a part at Northeastern, hoping to partner with other spiritual clubs as a Jewish interfaith student leader.

Individually, I plan on continuing to build my relationships with the other BILI fellows and to help foster intercampus interfaith dialogue between us. I hope to start a biblical text study group with another fellow, Andrew, who comes from a Christian background. I am also thinking of facilitating a comparative text study group with other interfaith leaders, from BILI or elsewhere, in order to show the commonalities among our faiths. Overall, with my newfound connections and skills that I have learned throughout BILI, the interfaith programming possibilities are limitless!