Temple Emanu-El and Noor Cultural Centre Weekend of Twinning

Featuring guest scholars Rabbi Dr. Reuven Firestone and Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub

Join us for the third annual Weekend of Twinning with Temple Emanu-El, part of a North America-wide initiative to bring Muslim and Jewish communities together. The theme of the Noor – Emanu-El twinning will be Inner Battles and Outer Battles: Struggling with the Language and Imagery of War Within our Traditions.

This weekend promises to help our communities grapple with the grim realities of communal conflict and the ways in which the language and imagery of war within our scriptures and wider traditions have been invoked and continue to be invoked to justify and promote conflict.  How should we understand this?  How can we see these passages as sacred?  Do our traditions illumine a path beyond conflict, a path where we can be faithful to these texts and traditions without perpetuating and escalating the violence that runs so rampant in the world? Acknowledging that we cannot simply get rid of this element of our scriptures and indeed our lives, how can we witness to these texts and traditions in a healthy way?  Are there metaphorical readings and appropriations (such as the Rabbinical sublimation of war within the “Wars of Torah” and the “Inner War” of our mystical traditions) that can open up alternatives to Divinely sanctified bloodshed and all the moral and political complications this brings?

Program

Friday November 19, 2010 | Inner Battles: Looking at our Foundational Stories of Strife, Resolution, and Self-Definition

Time: 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Location: Noor Cultural Centre
Jum’ah prayers with sermon by Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub; refreshments and socialization to follow prayers

Time: 8:00 p.m.
Location: Temple Emanu-El
120 Old Colony Road East
(off Bayview, south of the 401)
www.templeemanuel.ca
Shabbat service with sermon by Rabbi Dr. Reuven Firestone

Saturday November 20, 2010 | Inner Battles and Outer Battles: Struggling with the Language and Imagery of War Within our Traditions

Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Public lecture and discussion with Dr. Ayoub and Rabbi Firestone

Sunday November 21, 2010 | Making Peace Where There is Strife? Building a Relationship Based Upon Our Common Concerns, Histories, and Burdens

Time: 11:30 a.m.
Location: Temple Emanu-El
Breakfast and discussion with Dr. Ayoub, Rabbi Debra Landsberg, and Dr. Timothy Gianotti

Rabbi Firestone is professor of medieval Judaism and Islam at Hebrew Union College and founder and co-director of the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement (www.usc.edu/cmje). He has lived in Israel and Egypt and has traveled and lectured extensively in Europe, Asia and especially the Middle East. Author of more than 80 scholarly articles and essays, and seven books, he is known for his particular expertise in Jewish-Muslim relations.

Mahmoud Ayoub is Faculty Associate in Shi‘ite Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary; he formerly served as professor and director of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion, Temple University, Philadelphia (1988-2008). He received his education at the American University of Beirut (BA, Philosophy, 1964), the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., Religious Thought, 1966), and Harvard University (Ph.D., History of Religion, 1975). Mahmoud Ayoub is the author of a number of books, including Redemptive Suffering in Islam and The Qur’an and Its Interpreters (vol. 1 & 2).

Debra Landsberg has served as Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El since 2001.

Timothy Gianotti is the Noor Fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies at York University.