Mark Woods: An evening of breaking bread (or matzah bark) and embracing diversity

It’s somewhat of a rarity to have a confluence of the holy days of three Abrahamic religions — Judaism’s Passover, Islam’s Ramadan and Christianity’s Easter.

This happens only a few times a century.

And yet perhaps nearly as rare as a confluence of the holy days is what happened Monday evening at a synagogue in Jacksonville — a very intentional confluence of the people celebrating those days, each doing so in their own traditions, but also together in a shared experience, ending with a meal organizers say was a first for this city (and likely far beyond).

A Kosher for Passover Iftar dinner. The traditional meal eaten by Muslims to end their daily fast during Ramadan, prepared following strict Jewish dietary laws and in this case shared by about 150 people (the limit for seating) from a diverse cross-section of Jacksonville while discussing a wide range of topics. Everything from big life questions to small talk about the Jaguars and all the rain we’ve had this month.

“If you can get people to sit down together …,” Rabbi Jonathan Lubliner said.

This was the seventh annual Interfaith Program, hosted by the Jacksonville Jewish Center and the Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida. But with Passover and Ramadan coinciding with Easter, the organizers, Rabbi Lubliner and Dr. Parvez Ahmed, invited The Very Rev. Kate Moorehead Carroll, dean at St. John’s Cathedral, to join them and participate in a panel discussion about each tradition’s views on the afterlife.

“I was honored to be included,” she said a few days later. “It’s a powerful thing they’re doing. And it was a beautiful event.”

I’d echo that. I went to it not necessarily thinking I’d write something about it, but more out of curiosity, which actually is part of the Interfaith Center’s mission (“building mutual curiosity”).

Beyond being struck by both common threads and distinct differences, what stuck with me was how, at its heart, this event was about our diversity.

In a time when diversity and inclusion have been targeted, even vilified, there are groups and people in our city who, without engaging in political battles, are simply continuing to do what they have been doing to embrace diversity and foster inclusion.

'We are Jacksonville'

It isn’t just this event. On the same day as the interfaith program, OneJax and the Together Strong Community Fund launched a new campaign built around three words: “I am Jacksonville.”

Together Strong was created at the Jewish Federation and Foundation of Northeast Florida by David Miller and his family as a reaction to a string of antisemitic incidents last year. But from its inception, Together Strong was intended to be about much more than that.

“In Jacksonville, our diversity is our strength,” the campaign’s video says.

The video and billboards include an array of local people, leading to three other words: We are Jacksonville.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t just a message from OneJax, a nonprofit organization that by definition “seeks to promote diversity as the foundation for a strong community.”

Together Strong has the support of some of Jacksonville’s most prominent businesses: Florida Blue, Haskell, CSX, VyStar, the Jaguars.

And there are, of course, many other nonprofits and businesses doing similar work, often with little fanfare.

The day after the program at the Jacksonville Jewish Center, Parvez Ahmed talked about diversity — not just from the faith perspective and his role in starting the event, but also from a business perspective.

As a professor at the University of North Florida’s Coggin College of Business, he was researching and teaching the significance of diversity, equity and inclusion long before DEI became the latest hot-button abbreviation.

It isn’t a matter of political resistance, he says. It’s simply common sense. Good for business and good for a community.

“Diversity is a given,” he said. “I mean, Jacksonville is more diverse than two decades ago. And two decades from now it will be even more diverse. The challenge is what do we do with it?”

'A breathtaking moment'

Of all the silos in in the world, few are as tall and separated as religion.

About a decade ago, Ahmed and Yildirim Sivar (the current president of the Interfaith Center) traveled to Jerusalem as part of a special fellowship program. When they returned, they sat down with Rabbi Lubliner and brainstormed about ways to bring Muslims and Jews together in Jacksonville.

They began holding the Interfaith Program, inviting all to come and celebrate the holidays with them.

“I am mindful of some of the violence that has been going on in the Middle East has been because of the confluence of the holidays,” Lubliner said.

He said you can use this as an occasion for separation and fragmentation, for asserting fear or enmity. Or you can do what we typically do in this country, basically ignore the other. Or there’s a third option.

“You can use it to educate and bring people together,” he said.

That’s what they did again Monday.

The event started with the traditional Passover services, followed by the afterlife discussion. Then at sunset, came the moment that both Lubliner and Ahmed pointed to later. The Muslim call to prayer. In a Jewish holy place.

“When the call to prayer is said and we are there and watching our Muslim neighbors pray, that for me is the most meaningful moment of the evening,” Lubliner said.

“That is, in my view, a breathtaking moment,” Ahmed said. “I do think there is no parallel to this. Certainly not in Jacksonville, maybe not even in the nation.”

It’s a moment that, from my view while watching it, involves respect and vulnerability, both from those who are welcoming the prayers and from those saying them.

It’s part of what led Rev. Moorehead Carroll, the Episcopal priest, to talk about the beauty of the evening; how it was possible for everyone to pray in their own way and to also find common ground.

“I think if we believe that encountering newness and difference helps us grow — which I certainly believe — then these kinds of events are absolutely essential for the future of the world,” she said. “And I'm so proud of Jacksonville for hosting it.”

Matt Hartley, director of the Interfaith Center at UNF, was there with his family. He’s been to most of these events since the start. He says that when it comes to interfaith work, he often thinks of W.H. Auden's poem, “September 1, 1939.”

“The line that says, ‘We must love one another or die,’” he said. “That’s what I’ve seen with (Lubliner and Ahmed) from the beginning. Their relationship was the seed that grew into this partnership between these communities.”

On Monday, after the formality of services and prayers, it was time for the breaking of bread — or in this case, the breaking of chocolate toffee matzah bark, one of the desserts on the menu.

The preparation of the food created both challenges and opportunities. Jewish, Muslim and Christian volunteers helped Margo’s Catering. And while the result was the first-ever Kosher-for-Passover Iftar dinner in Jacksonville, it really was more than that.

It was the continuation of an attempt to embrace our diversity, to see it as our strength.

“Time and again, my experience is that for people who come and join us for that evening, they walk away moved,” Rabbi Lubliner said. “And they walk away with an understanding that we live in a world where diversity is, and can be, a beautiful thing.”

mwoods@jacksonville.com

(904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Interfaith Program continues to embrace diversity in Jacksonville