Category: Academic
Digging Deeper: Archaeology and Interfaith Community
As the sun spilled over the Galilee hills in the distance, I paused for a moment, straightening up from over my pickaxe and squinting into the east. The sky had been lightening for the past thirty min... Read More
Ethnographic Filmmaking and the Scientific Study of Religion
What happens when a social scientist uses a camera as a tool in ethnographic fieldwork? For a decade prior to pursuing graduate school, I worked as a composer, film editor and documentary filmmaker. W... Read More
Love and Buddhism: The Parallel and Paradox by Jai Mirchandani
In common Hindi parlance, there are three words for love: ishq, pyar, and mohabbhat. Perhaps less important is the difference in each one of these terms than is the notion that there are three distinc... Read More
On Taking a Selfie with Pope Francis
Recently I attended an audience with Pope Francis with the International Council of Christians and Jews. It was my second audience, as I had also gained access to the Vatican’s elaborate reception r... Read More
Methodological Challenges to Measuring Transformation
When I set out on my dissertation research, my main question was whether and how interfaith dialogue functions to transform people. I had a hypothesis that people do interfaith dialogue because when d... Read More
Choice and Safety: Required Ingredients for Interfaith Progress
Classic “contact theory” predicts that diverse societies automatically bring about tolerance. I argued against this idea here when I discussed how proximity generally exacerbates the anxiety of di... Read More
What Is the Unity of “Unity in Diversity”?
Notwithstanding the prizing of diversity, there IS some unified bottom line to interfaith dialogue. Nonviolent behavior is the basis for “unity in diversity.” Behavior is a category about which a... Read More
Inclusion in the Orthodox Jewish Community
This article is adapted from the thesis I wrote for my Master’s in Religious Studies from NYU, dealing with how to more fully include gay and lesbian Orthodox Jewish people into Orthodox congreg... Read More