Each year in the spring our Catholic-Jewish-Muslim Dialogue of Southern New Jersey organization offers the program Breaking Bread Together and each year it has been growing in popularity. The dialogue group grew out of the Catholic-Jewish Commission and fosters dialogue, joint prayer and learning together. This year’s annual event will address, “Prayer in the Three Faith Traditions.” It will be held Sunday afternoon, May 16, from 2-4 p.m. at St. Thomas More Church, 1439 Springdale Road, Cherry Hill, just north of Kresson Road. Kosher, Halal and vegetarian refreshments will be served following the panel discussion. All are welcome, admission is free and voluntary donations to help defray the costs will be gratefully accepted.
Prayer is central to all three monotheistic religions. Jews are called upon to utter acclamations of praise or a “berakah” prayer at least 100 times a day. These prayers give constant thanks and praise to God beginning with the invocation “Blessed are you, Lord….” These prayers are offered and acknowledged with adoration and gratitude for all the minor and major gifts from God each day that we all receive such as air, water, food, family, friend. Saturday is the Sabbath observance for Jews. It is observed from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday and includes the synagogue service on Saturday morning and the day itself, dedicated to personal rest and family events.
Muslims must pray five times a day with each prayer requiring five to 10 minutes. They should take place at dawn, afternoon, later afternoon, following sunset and at night. The prayer is recited facing Mecca, the sacred shrine that Muslims maintain that the Angel Gabriel first spoke to Muhammad their Prophet. They kneel on a prayer mat and if possible touch their forehead to the ground. These positions and words of prayer convey for the Muslim a sense of submission to the will of God, as well as, adoration and trust. Muslims come to the Mosque on Friday afternoons for public and communal prayer.
Related aspects of prayer for each faith also center on understandings of divine assistance, supplication, request for forgiveness and healing. All three faith communities have their traditions of fasting and almsgiving related to prayer. We also have our holy places and traditions of visiting these places in the form of a pilgrimage. Some of these places are held in common and some are unfortunately sources of turmoil. All three religions have our sacred Scripture that influences and informs our prayer traditions. By learning more about one another’s prayer life we discover our similarities and are edified by one another’s reverence and piety.
“Understanding and appreciation of the views of our religious traditions can only help us move to understanding and appreciation of each other as individuals,” said Farhat Biviji, a leader of the tri-faith dialogue and member of Anjuman-E-Fakhri, the new mosque in Cherry Hill. “With difficult questions never far from the conversation, it’s particularly important for the Muslim community to explain our faith and its common bonds with the other Abrahamic faiths to our neighbors and friends, so they gain greater understanding of what we truly believe and the values we really cherish.”
“We are pleased that our interfaith dialogue group believes so strongly in the value of these annual programs, which underscore the extraordinary value of creating an environment for interfaith understanding,” said David Snyder, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council and co-director of the Catholic-Jewish Commission. “The community response to our annual interfaith prayer services for peace and the Breaking Bread Together programs clearly indicates a strong appetite for learning from and learning about each other. We are extremely pleased to be able to offer our community this informative opportunity to learn more about the culture and beliefs of our neighbors of different faiths.”
Hope to see you on May 16 at 2 p.m. at St. Thomas More Church in Cherry Hill for this uplifting and enlightening panel discussion by local scholars. For more information please contact the JCRC office 856-751-9500, ext. 224.
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