{"id":31532,"date":"2016-08-09T11:16:26","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T17:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=31532"},"modified":"2016-08-09T11:16:26","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T17:16:26","slug":"op-ed-the-disturbing-sexist-trend-in-interfaith-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/op-ed-the-disturbing-sexist-trend-in-interfaith-work\/","title":{"rendered":"OP-ED: The disturbing sexist trend in interfaith work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By RABBI JORDIE GERSON, <em>SPECIAL TO THE CCJN<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was at the gym this morning, when an ad came on the TV with a powerful image. It was three men: a minister, an imam, and a rabbi talking to and hugging each other.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_31533\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/rabbi-jordie-gerson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-31533\" class=\"wp-image-31533 size-thumbnail lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/rabbi-jordie-gerson-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"rabbi-jordie-gerson\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 150px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 150\/150;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-31533\" class=\"wp-image-31533 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/rabbi-jordie-gerson-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"rabbi-jordie-gerson\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-31533\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rabbi Jordie Gerson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>I couldn\u2019t hear what they were saying but it looked heartwarming \u2014 the kind of feel-good image you might find on a CNN special on world-religions or the cover of Time Magazine. So why did it bother me so much?<\/p>\n<p>Before rabbinical school, I spent two years at Harvard Divinity School studying Christianity and Islam. My friends there, many of them, were women studying to be Christian, Buddhist and Muslim religious leaders.<\/p>\n<p>We were proud of our multi-faith efforts. We attended dialogue events, organized an interfaith viewing and discussion of \u201cThe Passion of the Christ,\u201d and worked hard to create civil conversations about Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>We also talked \u2014 candidly \u2014 about what it meant to be women in our traditions, many of which, despite their misogyny and patriarchy, we\u2019d chosen not to walk away from.<\/p>\n<p>A few years later, I interned at a prestigious New York university where my supervisor, a young Orthodox rabbi, befriended the school\u2019s Muslim imam.<\/p>\n<p>They were both practicing men who didn\u2019t eat pork, believe in sex before marriage, or use birth control.<\/p>\n<p>Their faces and their friendship were splashed everywhere \u2013 their relationship valorized, and despite the fact that I (unlike my supervisor) had spent two years studying the Q\u2019uran, I was never invited to these discussions.<\/p>\n<p>I would have challenged the place of women in their interpretation of Judaism and Islam with my mere presence.<\/p>\n<p>Since ordination, I\u2019ve become very close to a number of young, female Christian ministers in the communities I\u2019ve served.<\/p>\n<p>And in most cities I\u2019ve lived in since ordination, every single time I\u2019ve seen an interfaith event sponsored by the Jewish community, it has featured an imam, a rabbi, and a priest \u2014 all with beards.<\/p>\n<p>Never have I seen a young clergywoman on these panels. My female colleagues are no longer surprised, but we are heartbroken.<\/p>\n<p>My interfaith friendships with other young female clergy have been transformative and powerful, inspiring and critical to my own spiritual and intellectual growth.<\/p>\n<p>They have challenged me to fully live the values of my own tradition, allowed me to study texts with people who read them very differently than I do, and forced me to start conversations \u2013 always \u2013 with the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n<p>And yet these friendships are invisible to the broader community simply because we\u2019re young women.<\/p>\n<p>No one but us celebrates them. It\u2019s time for that to change.<\/p>\n<p><em>(This piece originally ran in The Jewish Forward and is republished with explicit permission from the author. Rabbi Jordie Gerson is employed as a full-time rabbi for <a href=\"http:\/\/adventurerabbi.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Adventure Rabbi<\/a> in Boulder, CO. She is an accomplished writer and speaker with a blog at the Huffington Post religion.)<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"OP-ED%3A%20The%20disturbing%20sexist%20trend%20in%20interfaith%20work\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[8010,8790,8795,8008,8788,8009],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31534,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31532\/revisions\/31534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}