Interfaith Dialogue is the Foundation – Janet Penn

Episode 38.
Like many people of her generation, Janet was raised with little religious instruction, due to her parents’ desire to be American. After some exploration into other faiths, she decided in her 20s to learn about the Judaism of her roots. It has been a long journey. She considers herself a JewBu – incorporating elements of both Judaism and Buddhism, generally the ritual and holidays of the former and philosophy of the latter, along with some meditation practice when faced with a challenging situation. Besides her personal journey, Janet spent years developing and leading programs and dialogues bridging religious and other differences. Youth LEAD and the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom are two she speaks of. 

Highlights:
·       The three Cs of dialogue: Curiosity, Courage, and Compassion.

·       Even after years of training and experience, we make mistakes and react instinctively.

·       Speaking with people who are different is challenging. Using a structure all agree to is critical. 

·       Dialogue is the foundation, letting us see each other’s humanity, but action is then necessary to improve the world.  

·       Jewish values of tikkun olam, repairing the world, and tzedakah, charity, inform her social justice work.

References:
Prof. Diana Eck, Harvard University, Pluralism Project – https://pluralism.org
Eboo Patel, Interfaith America – https://www.interfaithamerica.org/people/eboo-patel/
Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom – https://sosspeace.org
Roots – https://www.friendsofroots.net
Combatants for Peace – https://cfpeace.org

Social Media links for Méli:
Talking with God Project –  https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisolomon/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066435622271

Transcript: 
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1851013/episodes/12730345-38-janet-penn-dialogue-is-the-foundation/edit


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Transcript

Janet Penn transcript
Dialogue is the Foundation

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INTRODUCTION:

Méli:  Hello and welcome to Living Our Beliefs, a home for open conversations with fellow Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Through personal stories and reflection, we will explore how our religious traditions show up in daily life – at work, at home, in the community, in good times and in bad.  There is no one-size-fits-all ‘right’ answer, just a way to move forward for you, for here, for now.  I am your host Méli Solomon.  So glad you could join us.  

[Music]

Méli:  This is episode thirty-eight and my guest today is Janet Penn. Janet has been a leader in the interfaith movement since 2001, when she began forging local, national, and international partnerships to help build a high school interfaith youth movement. As Founder and Director of Youth LEAD (Youth Leaders Engaging Across Differences), she was passionate about developing the capacity of teens to facilitate respectful conversations that bridge differences. At the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, Janet developed and facilitated workshops for Muslim and Jewish women around the US, including ‘Skills for Engaging in Difficult Conversations’ and ‘Spiritual Activism’. She believes everyone can learn to listen "outside their comfort zone", and that respect fostered in dialogue is an essential condition for working together despite our differences. Janet holds an MSW in Community Organizing and Social Planning and an MBA from Boston College. Janet lives in the Boston area with her husband. 

Méli:  Hello Janet. Welcome to my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I'm really pleased to have you on today. 

Janet:  Thank you for inviting me. 

Méli:  I'd like to begin with my usual first question. What is your religious and cultural identity? 

IDENTITY & BACKGROUND:

Janet:  I was born into a Jewish family. I identify as a Jewish American. However, my family was not religious at all. I would consider us the cultural Jews of the 1950s in the United States. My parents really sought, I think, to separate themselves from the old country. They were first generation Americans and really believed in the American dream, not so much in religious belief. I grew up in a secular home that was deeply rooted in Jewish values. When I look back on it, I see that very clearly. My parents were deeply involved in the community and sort of ironically, they were one of the founders of the Jericho Jewish Community Center on Long Island. I later asked, you know, why did you do that? You never went there. Response was: ‘Well, there were Jews in the community. There needed to be a a synagogue’. So it's kind of ironic, but but it really shows their commitment to community. I realize now that was deeply rooted in communal belief and in the belief of tikkun olam. So I grew up with that, but without a lot of Jewish rituals or grounding. Interestingly, my parents did send me to Hebrew school. I went one day – I was five years old – and I came back and I said: ‘That was boring’. And they said: ‘OK, you don't have to go anymore’. So that was the extent of my Jewish education. And you can get a sense from that, that they were deeply ambivalent about it as well. They thought I should have a Jewish education but weren't willing to, sort of go through the ‘I don't want to go’ experience, and so I grew up without any Jewish learning. When I was 16, I distinctly remember we had a very tiny kitchen, and I remember standing in the kitchen and it was right before Yom Kippur. And I said to my mother: ‘I think I want to fast for Yom Kippur’. And she said: ‘Why do you want to do that?’ And I said: ‘I don't know’. So at that point in time I was reading a lot of existentialism. I was very deeply involved in a quest of some sort. Looking back on it, I don't recall if I fasted. I do recall we had what my mother called a break-fast and I remember thinking: how can you have a break-fast if you don’t fast. Fast forward, you know, to my college years and I started exploring – went to Quaker meeting, got involved in yoga and reading the Bhagavad Gita and then after college realized, you know, I come from a tradition, I should at least find out what that is. And so thus began in my 20s my path toward discovering Judaism. One of the first things I do recall is deciding to go – I had moved back to Boston to go to graduate school and I decided to go to Harvard Hillel for Rosh Hashanah services because it was free. I remember walking in and somebody handed me a prayer book. I didn't know how to read Hebrew. I didn't know what page we were on. I was embarrassed to ask, and I walked out of the synagogue in a very short order and, you know, sat on the steps. And I just remember crying for a very long time – that I wanted to access it and I didn't have the means to do so. And then I think it's really been a journey ever since. I think right now – your initial question is what is my spiritual identity? I really think of myself as a JewBu now because Buddhist philosophy really guides how I live my life in terms of thinking about impermanence and interbeing. So the philosophy really speaks to me and I read a lot of Buddhist, really Western Buddhist texts, and what I find is that in Judaism it's the ritual, it's the music, it's the art, it's community. It's where I feel at home. Once I found Reconstructionist Judaism, that's when I realized: Ah. This is it. So all those years when I was in a Conservative synagogue and didn't really feel comfortable, it was the notion that there is godliness. I didn't have to struggle with God and do I believe because frankly, I was really struggling with that. So that was a really important part. And I guess the other – two things I want to share is that by accident I stumbled upon Jewish paper cutting. I have no art training at all, but I bought a book about 25 years ago, and for 20 years I made pretty amazing art. And in that read the Torah because I made paper cuts for people when they became bar and bat mitzvah. So Jewish art was one way and also Jewish music. I'm a singer and I sang for 20 years in an octet for the high holy days and other things and through that really learned to understand prayer and what the prayers meant. So it's been a lifelong journey to get to where I am today. 

Méli:  Wow, fantastic. Thank you for taking us on that journey. These podcasts conversations are really about the guest, but I do wanna just drop in how astounding it is to hear someone basically relay my experience. 

Janet:  I think there's probably many of us in that generation whose parents moved away from religion wanting to be American first because their parents were not American or perceived as American. 

Méli:  Yeah, it's fascinating to hear these different avenues through which your Jewish values have been expressed. The JewBu, the ritual, finding Reconstructionism, the paper cutting and the music. Lots of creative and communal avenues. 

Janet:  When I was searching and trying to understand, what did it mean to me to be Jewish, In other words, when I was in my early 20s, I was very angry at my parents. You know, why didn't you give me this? You know, this was part of my heritage. And at a certain point, I realized I needed to take responsibility. I was an adult. What did I want? And initially I thought it just meant going to synagogue and praying. And yet, I realized there is so much more to religious and spiritual community and experience than prayer at the synagogue that I belong to. Now, the student rabbi has been leading the Learners Minyan, meaning having people come and learn about the prayer, and I went a couple of times to support a friend of mine. And I realized how many people struggled with prayer. And I was fascinated because I've come through that through music. I have learned to understand what the prayer is. And also the way that we pray now in our particular shul is there's a lot of chanting, which really resonates with me. Taking the heart of the prayer and chanting it over and over rather than mumbling through paragraphs of Hebrew, which has a certain way of going into a a space of letting the thoughts go and just being in communion with something larger. 

Méli:  I want to pick up on that last bit you said communing with something larger. What is the sense you have of what you're communing with? 

GODLINESS AND KAVANAH: 

Janet:  That is $1,000,000 question because it's something that I think about a lot and I'm not sure I can articulate. There is something. I'm not a Hebrew speaker. I'm siddur literate, meaning I can read a prayer book, I can read Hebrew if it has vowels, and I know many words, particularly words that are related to liturgy. But it's not like I'm reading a story and I can understand the story. So when I am chanting, there is a way, similar to when I sit on a meditation cushion. I can allow myself time to step out of my thoughts of: What do I need to do? What have I forgotten to do? Who do I need to call? Did I say something? Whatever it is, that is, of the world. I can set that worldliness aside, and when I chant, it allows me to sort of just open my heart to – the two words that come to mind are godliness and my kavanah, my intention to become my Higher Self. 

Méli:  Godliness and kavanah, intention to be your higher self. So at this point, your practice, what I'm hearing, Janet, is you identify as a JewBu – I'm curious to hear what the practice of that is. And I know you're a member of a Reconstructionist synagogue here in the Boston area. Can you say more about what your practice is at this point? 

Janet:  Sure. So when I am in Boston, I often go to synagogue for Shabbat morning services. I do light candles and sing blessings over the wine and and bread on Friday night. I also silently bless my daughters after I've lit candles. My eyes are covered when I'm separating Shabbat from the rest of the week. I internally bless my daughters who no longer live with me. So there is that. I sometimes will sing the song to welcome in the Sabbath. Going to services Saturday mornings and then also taking part in social justice work through the synagogue, which has really helped me feel part of the community, especially during COVID when we weren't meeting regularly. I'm part of a small team that's been supporting in a recently arrived Afghan family, for instance. So doing that kind of work as part of a Jewish community feels important now. I could have done it through Watertown Citizens for Peace and Justice, right? They're supporting Afghans as well, but I chose to do it through my synagogue. 

Méli:  Why is that? How is that different to do it through the synagogue versus through the Watertown group? 

Janet:  Interesting question. Because that's the community that I'm cultivating and I feel like it's very hard to cultivate several different communities at one time. And so my choice was to say that the Jewish community is where I'm going to set my roots down because it offers so much in terms of a space away from daily living. A space to explore my spirituality. A space for me to step back and reflect and meditation, actual sitting on my cushion. Buddhist meditation. I'm a lapsed Buddhist in that way. And you would say, although this morning I did sit on my cushion again, it's a sense of quieting my mind and finding a way to stay centered because of the darkness. There's so much metaphoric darkness right now. I feel like more than ever. Having a spiritual grounding is so critical for me. 

Méli:  Yeah, no, I'd say Amen to that. So it's interesting that you continue to identify as a JewBu, but the meditation practice has has lapsed, right? 

Janet:  Yeah, but I read, I read my Lions Where magazine. I'm always reading Buddhist philosophy. There's certain practices in Judaism that I do every week, usually related to Shabbat. But the Buddhist practice is when I find myself angry at someone or upset, I will do compassion meditations for them, you know, If I'm upset with myself, for instance – I'll use myself as an example – I'll over and over say: ‘May I be safe and protected. May I be peaceful, May I live in ease and joy’. And this morning when I did that practice, when I was meditating, I then did: ‘May my loved ones be’, and I chanted that. And then I did: ‘May those who annoy me be safe and protected’. And so those practices really are, they're part of my daily practice. I can meditate when I run. I'm a I'm a runner. So it's there, it's just not always on the cushion. 

Méli:  Fair enough, These are dark times. We need all of the compassion and reflection and understanding that we can get, all of the listening and bridging differences that we can get. 

Janet:  One of the things that I think about, I believe it's in the Yom Kippur liturgy where there is a phrase that we are made B’tselem Elohim. We are made in the image of God, and then we are but dust. And I believe it's in the Yiskor service, but I'm not sure, the remembrance service. I think about that a lot. On my dresser is a little piece of paper that says: be humble, be bold. And I think that's my interpretation of I am made B’tselem Elohim, I am made in the image of God, and I am but dust. So again, that's another way that my Judaism shows up in my life. 

Méli:  It's reminding me of something I read. I'm afraid I don't remember who wrote it, but a man said he carries two notes, one in each pocket of his pants and one is: ‘I made in the image of God’ and the other is: ‘I am but dust’. And depending on how the day goes, at a moment he might pull one out or another. You know, if his ego is getting inflated a bit too much, he'll pull out ‘I am but dust’. And if he's feeling really down and and at a loss, he'll pull out ‘I am made in the image of God’. And I just think that's a beautiful, very simple practice that any of us could hold. So on that note, I'd like to ask you about work you've done in the past. In your bio, you talked about working with high school students in Youth LEAD. And also, we've spoken of your work with the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom. So let's start out with the Youth LEAD work. If you could say a little about what is that group. What did you do? Why did you do it? 

Youth LEAD & SISTERHOOD OF SALAAM SHALOM:

Janet:  Sure. So it was 1999 and someone who worked at the Anti-Defamation League came to me. They at that time had an interfaith youth leadership program and it was with youth high school students from all over Boston. And they were interested to see what would it look like if it would be in one town. I lived at the time in Sharon, MA. It's a town of 17,000 people with eight churches, eight or ten synagogues, and a mosque, uh, not to mention a large Indian population, a Hindu population and Chinese. And so I started as an employee of the ADL, brought together youth, Jewish, Christian and Muslim at the time and it was a solely an interfaith program. And after a couple of years, I mentioned that there were many students of many different backgrounds in the town, came to me and said: ‘We want to be part of this group’. And I was like: ‘Well, you can't. It's just for the Abrahamic traditions’. And so I got together with the youth and we said: ‘You know, this doesn't seem right’. So we graciously thanked the Anti-Defamation League for their support and became independent. The organization had many different names but for the last number of years– so this was a period of over 15 years – Youth Leaders Engaging Across Differences. And part of what I realized at that initial time when I went to the youth and said: ‘What should we do? Here we have youth from you were atheists and and Hindus that want to join’. And we had a conversation about it and I started thinking: ‘Hmm, what would it be like if you made all the decisions except when there was somebody's health or well-being involved or money that they weren't going to raise?’ And so, over time, what shifted was the sense of young people were hungry to have conversations about who they were and the confusion or the belief that they had. And there really was no place to do it except when they had occasional times when adults led it. And I was thinking, you know, we're not in that space, you know, 99.9% of the time. What would it look like if youth themselves felt comfortable leading those conversations? I wasn't trained as an educator, but we sort of just followed our inner wisdom about it and started creating trainings. Okay. What do you need to know to be able to lead a conversation where you're talking about faith? And created a series of in the end, eight full day workshops, training workshops, Introduction to Dialogue Facilitation, Advanced Dialogue Facilitation. You know conversations across divides more and more. We said: ‘OK, you have to be 18 and under to vote’. Right. So like, you're really in charge. And so what happened was the parents would say: ‘What are you doing with these kids? They're like, no, I can't do my laundry now. I have to do something for Youth LEAD’. They were really, really excited. And then over time, they realized, you know, we don't just want to talk about faith. There's race, there's class, there's gender, there's all these things. And that's when we shifted from an interfaith organization to Leaders Engaging Across Differences. And it was really about: Who am I as a human being? and How can I create space where people feel comfortable talking about these things and know what to do? And if someone says something that's really offensive or hurtful. It was a really exciting time and I'm still in touch with many of the young people who are now in their 30s who actually say: ‘I use the skills that I learned more than just about anything else that I did learned in graduate school in my work. 

Méli:  Well, that is such a testament to the work. Something really to be proud of. Amazing. 

Janet:  Yeah, we couldn't grow it. I tried. We went to several other communities in New York, in Oklahoma, and in Western Mass. Most of the adults had a hard time really, really letting go. There were a number of reasons. Ultimately, Youth LEAD was taken under the wing of Emerson College in their diversity. And they do some work now in Boston. I don't really know where, where things are. 

Méli:  Yeah, thanks for that additional note. Sometimes we focus on the founding and the growing and we don't really talk about what happens afterwards. Yeah, it's interesting your note about the difficulty growing. You, you obviously tried, you approached different towns. Was there something particular about Sharon or those years that made that a particularly potent combination that didn't exist in other places? 

Janet:  I do think that's part of it. There wasn't a lot of class diversity. It's really a middle-, upper-middle- class town and there wasn't a large African American population. But that said, I remember a group of visiting scholars from the Middle East came to Sharon and that included Hosni Mubarak's imam actually at the time. They were here on a tour to learn about Islam in the United States and how it's lived. The organizing group found out about Youth LEAD, and all these scholars came to Sharon and we crowded in the library this little space with a simultaneous translation. And they asked: ‘How do you as Muslim Americans live out your faith and what is it like?’ And it was a fascinating conversation because there were Muslims who were prayed five times a day. There were Muslims who didn't pray at all. There were Muslims who fasted during Ramadan and those that didn't. And at the end, one of them said: ‘This is the most I've learned in our entire trip, you know, we've been to the Congress, we've been to MIT’. And I actually said to one of them when you walk in the high school – and then we actually did – and there were like literally within 10 minutes there was a girl with henna on her hands who had just obviously come from an Indian wedding. There was a young man wearing Tzitzit, meaning the fringes that Orthodox Jews wear and a kippa, yarmulka. There was a woman wearing not a niqab but a very conservatively dressed hijabi high school student. And there they are, just hanging out, walking with their books in their hands. And I think there's something to be said when young people are in such close proximity to each other. Not a lot of small towns have that. 

Méli:  Right. But an aspect that is implied in what you just described, Janet, is really a question of how much diversity is the right amount of diversity for these difficult conversations across difference or even just to have any kind of conversation and relationships across difference. I'm now wondering, this is, I think, something really worth much more thought – is there kind of a sweet spot of enough similarity but enough difference so that you're not just completely homogeneous as a group. 

Janet:  Or talking to the choir. That's sort of how I always see it. 

Méli:  Yes. 

Janet:  Yeah, that is interesting. I think when we're talking about things that relate to who we are as human beings, there is an unlimited amount of diversity because who we are, we can bring that to the table. I'm thinking back, though, to a conversation that the teens wanted to have around Israel and Palestine. And I remember pretty much the Muslim and Jewish students had a lot to say. I remember a number of Hindu students sort of like: ‘What's the big deal? Like, why is this an issue? You don't live there. It doesn't touch your lives’. So I think when there's something that's core to your identity and it's not core to someone else's identity, I think that's where it can be an opportunity for those for whom it's not core to ask questions of curiosity and to say: ‘I don't get this, this is not part of my lived experience. I'm wondering’ – I like that phrase a lot – ‘I'm wondering you know, what this means to you’. Asking open-ended questions. When did you first learn about this? You have those opportunities to do that and especially, because I've had situations where I've been with people who have very formed ideas about what is true and what is real and they're not interested in hearing what I have to say and so what I usually do is just ask lots of questions, like: What can I learn from this person? And at a certain point, if I find myself OK, I've learned enough, or I'm getting annoyed that they have no interest in my point of view, I thank them and I I move on to others. I have agency. But there are always opportunities for learning. And I know I talked about before we started, the three C's that I've – when I was with the Sisterhood talked a lot about, which is, you know: Can I cultivate Curiosity about the other? What kinds of questions can I ask that will help me understand where they are, who they are as a human being? Are there ways that I can relate to them, even if some of their ideas are really difficult for me and problematic. And then the second is it takes Courage to do that, because I might be forced to listen to something or open myself up to some questioning that I hadn't thought about that might unmount me a little. So it takes courage to be willing to do that. And finally, Compassion, starting with myself. That even though I've taught for years how to have difficult conversations and what skills and what are the techniques, there are times when I screw up. There are times when I react out of my amygdala with emotion and not from a place of compassion, and so having compassion for myself. Having that framework is another way that helps me when I miss the mark, shall we say. 

Méli:  These conversations, bridging a gap is difficult. It really is difficult, and it does take a certain mindset, at least in the moment and maybe more broadly, so that you can go in with an open heart and an open mind, but some critical thinking as well, recognizing that this is going to be a potentially explosive or rocky conversation. 

INTERFAITH DIALOGUE:

Janet:  One of the ways my thinking and practice has evolved over the years, as someone who has been a leader in dialogue, especially into religious dialogue, is that I think about a house. That dialogue is the foundation. We need to have a certain respect, a certain shared vocabulary, a certain willingness to say, I want to know who you are as a human being. The way I think of dialogue, it's a very structured container. One doesn't need it for casual conversation. It's needed when I have to listen to things that might be really hard and I'm probably going to want to interrupt. And so we all have agreed to certain principles. Going into it for a long time, I thought: Oh yeah, dialogue. This is it. And then I realized, particularly around issues of Israel, Palestine, why should I dialogue if there's no justice? So now when I think about how do we create a better world. To me, dialogue is the foundation of a house. I need to be able to relate to other people and see them as human beings, despite the fact that we may have very different beliefs. But that one can't live on a foundation. It's cold, there's no bathroom, there's no roof, right? And so to me, the point of dialogue is to say: ‘OK, are there ways we can work together for things that we share concerns about?’ And it doesn't necessarily have to be religious, but I do feel like the more that we can reach across to others who look different from us, who pray differently from us, who have different beliefs – it's the promise of America. It sounds hokey, but I think it is the promise of America. It's the pluralism that Diana Eck and Eboo Patel talk about and so yes, let's dialogue. But then yes, let's think about what are we going to do now that we can see each other 's humanity and respect each other even though we can really disagree about certain things. What are we going to do together that's going to make the world a better place?

Méli:  So dialogue is critical but. Needs to lead to action. 

Janet:  It's a sine qua non. Yeah, it's necessary, but not sufficient. 

Méli:  What sorts of actions would you like to see these days? We talked about it being a dark time. 

Janet:  One of the choices that I made was after really thirty or more years of supporting progressive causes in Israel through organizations like the New Israel Fund and others, I just was so despairing about what was happening in Israel now that when I learned about a fairly new nonviolent Palestinian civil society movement called Tahir, which means change in Arabic, co-founded by Ali Abu Awwad, who people may know through his work with Roots and Combatants for Peace. And so I've been working and supporting several women now in Palestine. We're looking at ways to support women through economic empowerment, through taking leadership roles in their communities. There is a sense of some of what I feel that's happening in Israel now as a Jew is it's in my name and I can't abide by that, and so supporting Palestinians who are so marginalized now, and part of what my hope is, is because I know so many Muslim and Jewish women across the country through my work with the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, can we create an international women's support network for women in Palestine? They feel so unseen and abandoned, both by their own government, such as it is (or authority) and Israel. That's something that I personally have made a choice to do. You know that and my work with the Afghan – supporting the Afghan family – is taking most of my volunteer time now that I'm retired. And I think that each of us just needs to find the things that we're passionate about, and do our part. And that that's what Judaism, through the principle of tikkun olam, tells me to do. We each do our part.

Méli:  Yeah. And I think that's the critical underlying point that each person will do their part in a way that follows their passion. 

Janet:  Right, and their values. 

Méli:  So for you as a Jew or as a JewBu, one of the values that I'm hearing come through is the tikkun olam, repairing the world. 

Janet:  Right. Which I saw through my parents through a very secular lens. They they wouldn't have called it that, but that's what it was. 

Méli:  Are there other Jewish values that are coming through that you feel either consciously or maybe subconsciously are alive in this social justice work? Mitzvot, perhaps? 

Janet:  The giving of tzedakah. I've been blessed with more resources than I absolutely need, and I've been really rethinking: What does that mean? How much is enough? And can I push myself more in that way? This notion I keep coming back to, godliness. It's like, how can I be my higher self? How can I be the best human being that I possibly can? How do I make amends when I fall short? How can I serve? Because that's where I am in my life now, right? My children are grown. They're just beautiful human beings. They're launched. You know, my career is behind me. I've been blessed. How can I serve?

CLOSING:

Méli:  That's a fine question to end on Janet. I appreciate you coming on my Living Our Beliefs podcast, and I'm grateful for this conversation. 

Janet:  Oh, you're most welcome. Thank you for the opportunity. 

Méli:  My pleasure.

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Méli:  Thank you for listening.  If you’d like to get notified when new episodes are released, hit the SUBSCRIBE button. Questions and comments are welcome and can be directly sent to info@talkingwithgodproject.org. A link is in the show notes. Transcripts are available a few weeks after airing. This podcast is an outgrowth of my Talking with God Project. For more information about that research, including workshop and presentation options, go to my website – www.talkingwithgodproject.org.  Thank you so much.  Till next time.  Bye bye. 

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