The Bridging Faiths program is designed to promote interreligious understanding and counteract common misconceptions about different religions at an early age through one-on-one interaction. Rodef Shalom teen organizer Nico Satryan, 17, said “it’s really important to start doing away with misconceptions early. I didn’t know a lot of what we learned today about the Hindu faith. I didn’t know about their conceptualization about spirituality — where your spirit goes after different stages of purity.”
The event was led by various local religious leaders including Rodef Shalom’s senior rabbi, Aaron Bisno, Father Nate Rugh of the Calvary Episcopal Church, Tim Crossen of Serra Catholic High School, Riffat Chugtai of the Muslim Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh and Dr. Nangali Srinivasi of the Sri Venkateswara Temple. However, all of the programs presented by the religious leaders were organized by a committee of teenagers, an element that PAJC Executive Director Deborah Fidel strongly supports. “I firmly believe that if you’re doing teen programming, it needs to be implemented by teens for teens...So each group planned its own presentation for the adults to give.”
The event started with introductory statements from PAJC leaders before the students broke into groups. The students groups then rotated to various stations for activities on each faith. One of the activities included seven boys sitting around a Muslim prayer carpet to learn about Muslim worship and holidays. Amazed that a compass was sewn in the center of the carpet, Warren Adams, 12, joked, “I wonder if they could make one with a GPS system.” Another question was from Gyan Mehta, “When people fast for Ramadan, do they not eat anything for 30 days...like, at all?”Adam Shamsi replied, “It’s just sunrise to sunset...So in the summertime, that can get pretty brutal.”
Activities such as the Muslim prayer carpet were just one of many that took place over the three hour session. The kickoff event was an icebreaker to lay down the groundwork for future events. Eventually, the teen committee is aiming to turn the Bridging Faiths session into a social action program. “If we’re planning to make this a social action group, we knew we should have an overview first where we get to know each other. This was just laying the groundwork. Next year, hopefully we’ll start doing projects,” said Maira Khwaja, 15.
The kickoff event was a huge success. The biggest proof of that came at the end of the day when Adams smiled to himself and said, “It’s funny how almost all religions promote peace, but they end up fighting each other. If people only realized how similar they were, there’d be peace.”
Website: www.pajc.net
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