What does Interfaith mean to you ? Please write to me (rosen@michaelrosenwords.com - or post something here), let me know.

On Friday, a woman asked me about "interfaith" issues & our extended family. I told her how our two sons Morgan and Ripton were going to the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, when we first me the bigger boys and other kids from the Tompkins Square baseball game. I told her I'd overheard an early theology conversation among the various boys. "What are Jews?", one of the bigger boys asked our kids. Then another bigger boy asked if Jews believed in G-d. Our sons said "yes", but one of the bigger boys said that was impossible, because Jews don't accept Jesus as G-d. On and on.

I told this woman about Rabbi Heschel marching with Reverend Martin Luther King Junior from Selma to Montgomery, and when asked why he marched, the Rabbi answered, "When I march in Selma, my feet are praying."

I related that story in reference to the work I do (& now that I'm traveling so much "do" is suspended into the past and future tenses, sorry Pastor Phil and my friends at Trinity Lutheran, who feed 150 hungry homeless a day), where I mostly cut onions and over vegetables. I told the lady that when I cut food at Trinity Lutheran, I feel that my hands and fingers are praying.

I spoke about the sanctity of Tikkun Olam, of repairing the brokenness of the world, of saving the world one act of kindness at a time.

I paraphrased a bit of Talmud: And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world, and spoke about a friend who'd very early said we were saving the bigger boys lives, and I doubted what he'd said, except he pointed out the murder, the jail terms, the dropping out of school, the unemployment and more surrounding the bigger boys in their families.

I spoke about our sons and some of the bigger boys going to Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ ,,,, and the discussions afterwards among the boys about Ripton and Morgan, Leslie and me ("because you killed Jesus" (did we?)) going to Hell regardless of how that particular son thought of us - and again, the question of accepting G-d.

The woman didn't think my stories were really issues of Interfaith concern.

So I'm wondering, as I'd asked above, What does Interfaith mean to you ? Please write to me (rosen@michaelrosenwords.com - or post something here), let me know.