(From Left to Right) Rita George-Tvrtkovic, Ph.D., Malka Z. Simkovich, Ph.D., and Moderator, Jovita Geraci, Ph.D., prepare to carry out their conference on interreligious dialogue.
MEHNAZ AFRIDI / COURTESY
By Laili Shahrestani, Contributor
Manhattan University’s Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center (HGI) held a conference in Alumni Hall on Sept. 18, with the objective to encourage students to partake in interreligious dialogue.
The HGI promotes building relationships between people who come from different religious backgrounds in order to prove that humanity is able to live amongst one another harmoniously in spite of our differences.
Keynote speakers during the conference included highly educated representatives from the Muslim, Jewish and Catholic communities. They all stressed the need for interreligious conversations, especially in a time at which the world is experiencing conflicts over religion.
Rita George-Tvrtkovic, Ph.D., a consultant for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, suggested how having dialogue provides society with certain skill sets that foster communication and understanding within the United States, a country of high diversity.
“The skills of interreligious dialogue are transferable,” George-Tvrtkovic said. “We could all benefit from these transferable skills in 2024, here in the United States, applying them to interpolitical, intercultural and interracial dialogue as well.”
While Manhattan University is labeled as a Lasallian Catholic institution, it is still home to students of various faiths and religious backgrounds. The conference highlighted the importance of embracing diversity, and encouraged students to find appreciation in the differences of their peers.
Mehnaz Afridi, Ph.D., the director of HGI, expressed the importance of having empathy during interreligious dialogue. She emphasized the idea that validating the pain of others is crucial, even when one’s own agony may feel overbearing.
“To acknowledge and engage in dialogue, while the world is falling apart around you, is to listen to the pain that the other religious person feels,” Afridi said. “It is acknowledging that that’s not your pain, and you may be feeling like you are suffering way more than that person, but just acknowledge it, and empathize with it.”
The director of the Jewish Publication Society, Malka Z. Simkovich, Ph.D., brought awareness to the topic of acceptance. She spoke about how it is crucial to not only empathize with others, but to also wholeheartedly accept people as they are, with no desire to change them or their beliefs.
“We are obligated to love a person without trying to change who they are, accepting them as they are in the moment of encounter and acknowledging them in their fullness according to their self-definition,” Simkovich said. “It involves saying that we love someone as they are, not because we want them to be someone else that aligns with us, but because we love them as individuals who do not mirror us. This is the mandate of loving the stranger.”
When it comes to participating in interreligious dialogue, representatives of the HGI encouraged students to practice attentive listening in addition to empathy and acceptance. Attentive listening was mentioned to be the gateway for having successful conversations.
“The most important skill is to really listen,” George-Tvrtkovic said. “Not just listen, but incline, hearken. To hearken means to move your whole body.”
Representatives of the HGI motivated students to have dialogue with individuals of different faiths in order to learn something new. It was emphasized throughout the conference that one does not have to set aside their own pre-existing religious beliefs in order to have interfaith dialogue.
“You have to be open to listening and learning about the other, but you have to stay faithful to your own tradition at the same time,” George-Tvrtkovic said. “I encourage you all to talk to different people and gain different perspectives. Get comfortable with differences.”