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In fall 2015, Dr. Shon D. Hopkin and I entered into discussions with three Jewish scholars in the Los Angeles area: Rabbi Mark Diamond, Dr. Tamar Frankiel, and Dr. Steven Windmueller. The initial impetus for moving toward a formal dialogue with Jews and Latter-day Saints grew out of the web article published by Diamond and Windmueller.[1] Together this group began to develop a model for interfaith dialogue that involved private, academic discussions and public events. In our first meetings at BYU (Spring 2016), the dialogue team included, in addition to those mentioned above, Rabbi Ilana Schwartzman (Congregation Kol Ami, Salt Lake City), Jared Ludlow, Richard Holzapfel, Barbara Morgan Gardner, and Brent Top. Since the inaugural meeting in early 2016, the group reconvened for meetings in Los Angeles and again in Provo. In this short piece, I hope to give several reasons for Latter-day Saint engagement in interfaith dialogue and show how our particular model has led to some important outcomes.
Why Interfaith Dialogue?
Interfaith dialogues can be tricky to navigate and organize because goals and anticipated outcomes are usually vague. Those who participate in such efforts are well accustomed to the outsider’s inevitable question, “What is the purpose?” For reasons that are usually apparent early in such a conversation, the question arises out of a suspicious hesitancy that the point of such “dialogues” is either conversion or a thinly cloaked effort at narrow apologetics. Further complicating the matter, the question of “What is dialogue?” usually confounds outsiders and participants alike. Edward Kessler argued that there is a marked difference between casual conversation and dialogue. “Dialogue,” he writes, “is not simply synonymous with ‘communication.’ For dialogue to take place, there must be a genuine hearing of “the Other.”[2] This hearing of the other requires patience, humility, and often a genuine inquisitiveness that is both generous and sincere. Thus, dialogue as a practice of hearing builds upon a tradition of seeking—something with which early Mormons were readily familiar.
When the Jewish– Latter-day Saint dialogue began, there were concrete goals in mind for the group. The methodological approach of the Jewish–LDS dialogue aligns with that of Judith Simmer-Brown’s description of essential elements of productive encounters. She argued that dialogue requires “listening deeply with an open mind; looking freshly at the other person and respecting; suspending judgments; and voicing their own truths.”[3] Along these lines, I describe the goal as “intellectual reciprocity.” In the process of learning about other religious traditions by sitting in conversation with practitioners, both parties benefit because such experiences tend to open up new avenues for comprehending one’s own practice and the other’s.
There are many reasons for interfaith dialogue. First, there is great benefit when individuals recognize a common core of experience with those of other religions. Second, in understanding another position or religion, one is better able to understand his or her own religious narrative. Krister Stendahl (1921–2008) developed the idea of “Holy Envy” for those who study other faiths. One aspect of Holy Envy that developed in my experience with this dialogue is a profound respect for the sheer weight of Jewish history. As participants in communities shaped by religious journeys such as the Mormon trek west and the Israelite Exodus story, Latter-day Saints and Jews seem particularly adept at locating profound meaning in sacred and profane narratives.[4] Religious communities tell stories to create continuity, to remember sacred events, and to reenact those events to build a future of religious faith for younger generations. Jews have a remarkably long history that is, at least in part, durable because of the tradition of celebrating foundational religious moments through Pesach, Simchat Torah, and Purim, among others.[5] Robert Seltzer concluded his monumental traipse through Jewish history in these words: “The course of modern Jewish thought—indeed of all Jewish thought—demonstrates that every theology is provisional and that Judaism remains contemporary only through confronting a perplexing and changing present. Without the desire to conserve and assimilate the gift of the past, there is no genuine Jewish history and no genuine human history.”[6] Conversely, Latter-day Saints are just tipping the scales toward two hundred years of existence. As such, Latter-day Saint commemorative practices (e.g., youth treks) look rather infantile, though certainly no less profound for participants.
These communal narratives lend fodder from which individuals create personal identities as part of that larger body of religious adherents. Scholars often discuss the process of identity formation as one that unfolds with a conscious recognition of an imagined or identifiable “other.”[7] When individuals and communities self-describe, they do so from a position of alterity that mandates another individual or community be an integral, albeit occasionally marginal, part of that definition.[8] For Levinas, the self no longer knows itself in its myopic self-sameness once one has encountered an “other.”[9] Jacques Derrida expanded the scope of this othering process more broadly to society on the grand scale. Derrida wrote: “No culture is closed on itself . . . because it has always been thus exposed to, and shadowed by, its other, it has been compelled to question itself. Every culture is haunted by its other.”[10] One of the seemingly inevitable benefits of encountering a religious “other” in a structured environment is the reflective stance incumbent upon oneself and one’s religious zeitgeist.
The Jewish–Latter-day Saint Dialogue Approach
While the act of coming to know the “other” was certainly central to individual participants in the dialogue, we felt that there still needed to be a base set of expected outcomes. As a group, we felt that given the importance of the work we hoped to accomplish, our efforts could reach the largest audience and contribute to the public discourse in positive ways by incorporating three essential elements: (1) maintain an academic approach, (2) create joint worship opportunities, and (3) provide public lectures for students and communities.
First, the dialogue needed to be academic in nature. Academic, in this sense, meant that the subjects of inquiry would focus on the sharing of knowledge, thereby leading participants to understand the what, why, and how of the other religious tradition. The notion of academic in this context suggested a systematic approach to discussing topics of interest to both communities that serve as gateways for further work. This aim required individual members to prepare papers and deliver presentations that foster discussions. Some of the presented papers include Wayment’s and Garroway’s papers on Mormon and Jewish readings of Paul, Monson’s and Windmueller’s views on politics and Israel, and Hopkin’s and Frankiel’s perspectives on liturgy. While our initial efforts began with comfortable topics, as our trust and friendships developed, a substantial willingness to begin raising questions and rigorously questioning ideas and conclusions as a means of advancing our efforts developed. Two of the most significant moments that grew out of private dialogue sessions included the disagreement among Latter-day Saint participants on Paul and his message, and the articulation of various Jewish perspectives on the state of Israel and possible solutions to Israel and Palestinian disagreements.
Second, this dialogue group focused on building common worship services that served both to educate others about rituals and liturgical practices but also provided experiential opportunities to see how religious communities interact. This provided a space for the “lived religion” to play a central role in our dialogues. Some of the highlights in common worship services included Diamond’s sacrament meeting talk on Shabbat in which he offered Latter-day Saints admirable goals for our own Sabbath worship. Likewise, the congregation at Leo Baeck Temple invited Holzapfel to give a sermon on the weekly Torah reading and answer questions posed by congregants. In a similar vein, Morgan Gardner and Hopkin bravely took on the “Questions You’ve Always Wanted to Ask about the Mormon Church” panel at Adat Ari El. The generosity of extending the pulpit to someone from outside the community plays a tremendous role in fostering a sense of trust from both sides that is an essential element of our dialogue.
A third component of this dialogue has been the ambitious goal to incorporate into the heart of the endeavor a significant public element that models for students, community members, and others the principles of sound dialogue approaches; fosters further inquiry; and leads to cooperation. At BYU in March 2016, we gathered with nearly 160 students, faculty members and interested community members in which we had a few brief presentations and then Q&A. In Los Angeles, we invited students and faculty members from the Academy for Jewish Religion and heard presentations about Mormons and Jews in Hollywood.
As the dialogue continues to develop, the team is planning to publish a collected volume from the papers presented in private and public settings. Additionally, plans are currently under way to continue this effort in a substantial dialogue session in Israel in 2019. For more information, visit https://
Participants in the Jewish–Latter-day Saint dialogue
Rabbi Mark Diamond (Academy for Jewish Religion California/
Dr. Tamar Frankiel (Academy for Jewish Religion California)
Dr. Joshua Garroway (Hebrew Union College)
Dr. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel (Brigham Young University)
Dr. Shon D. Hopkin (Brigham Young University)
Dr. David Kaufman (Hebrew Union College/
Dr. Holli Levitsky (Loyola Marymount University)
Dr. Jared W. Ludlow (Brigham Young University)
Dr. Quin Monson (Brigham Young University)
Dr. Barbara Morgan Gardner (Brigham Young University)
Dr. Andrew C. Reed (Brigham Young University)
Dr. Jacob Rennaker (John A. Widtsoe Foundation, University of Southern California)
Rabbi Ilana Schwartzman (Congregation Kol Ami, Salt Lake City)
Dr. Marvin Sweeney (Academy for Jewish Religion California/
Dr. Brent L. Top (Dean of Religious Education, Brigham Young University)
Dr. Thomas A. Wayment (Brigham Young University)
Dr. Steven Windmueller (Hebrew Union College/
Dr. Fred E. Woods (Brigham Young University)
Notes
[1] Steven Windmueller and Mark S. Diamond, “What Jews Can Learn From Mormons: Insights From the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Jewish Philanthropy (blog), 6 July 2016, http://
[2] Edward Kessler, Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 185.
[3] Judith Simmer-Brown, “‘Listening Dangerously’: Dialogue Training as Contemplative Pedagogy” Buddhist-Christian Studies 33 (2013): 36.
[4] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2005); and Michael Hubbard MacKay, Sacred Space: Exploring the Birthplace of Mormonism (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2016), 1–26.
[5] Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 5.
[6] Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History (Upper Saddle River, NY: Prentice Hall, 1980), 766.
[7] Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 7.
[8] Laurence J. Silberstein, “Others Within and Others Without: Rethinking Jewish Identity and Culture,” in The Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and Identity, ed. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn (New York: New York University Press, 1994).
[9] Emmanuel Levinas, “The Face to Face—An Irreducible Relation,” in Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 79–81.
[10] Jacques Derrida, “Deconstruction and the Other,” an interview with Jacques Derrida, in Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, ed. Richard Kearney (Manchester, UK: University of Manchester Press, 1874), 116.
