By Lynda Gilbert
It’s been an exciting time, particularly for the ladies in our community as well as for me personally, as on 2nd December we held our first major Nisa Nashim event, following our launch on 21st October. Nisa Nashim, for those of you who may not have seen my article in the last issue, means ‘women’ in both Arabic and Hebrew, and is the name given to a national Jewish-Muslim Women’s Network. We now have our own fully-fledged Milton Keynes branch, and our Chanukah event on 2nd December was a huge success. 30 women in total attended, 14 of whom were Jewish, and 16 Muslim. Another 3 Jewish women would have joined us had it not been for ill-health or other commitments cropping up that day, so we are a really strong Jewish contingent. We were also delighted to welcome Claire, who had travelled up from Harrow to join us, and Maria, a lovely lady living in Milton Keynes who was born Jewish but raised as a Catholic. Maria is the epitome of interfaith, being committed to the faith she was raised in but fascinated by her Jewish roots and by Jewish practices. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of her at both Nisa Nashim and other Shul events.
The Nisa-Nashim Chanukah event on 2nd December began with a great icebreaker designed by Lou Tribus. It required each woman to take a card with a concept on it from the ‘opposite’ faith; so for example, the word on my card was ‘hajj’ and I then paired up with a Muslim lady who had ‘kosher’ written on her card. We each had to say as much as possible about our ‘concept’ before our partner stepped in to help us. Needless to say we learnt a great deal as well as forming an inevitable bond with the woman or women we were talking to.
Other activities that afternoon included a narration of the Chanukah story by Lou, complete with props and audience participation (!); the lighting of the Chanukah candles including Ma’oz Tzur led by Sheila, and wonderful food reflecting our two faiths and many different cultural backgrounds, including Eastern and Southern European, Turkish, Iraqi, and Asian. Best of all though were the conversations, and these we hope to continue next year and beyond, with a full programme of events – so watch this space!!
I mentioned Turkish culture; in fact shortly before Chanukah, we had been contacted by a gentleman representing four Turkish Muslim families in Milton Keynes who wanted to reach out to us and bring their children to meet us. I thus invited the four wives to the Nisa Nashim event, and all the families to our Shul Chanukah party on 9th. Three of the families were able to come, bringing with them their children aged 3 to 13, and a great time was had by all; it was lovely to see the children in particular joining in activities and talking to other children from our community. We hope to see more of them in the future. They were joined by a friend and colleague, Mehmet, who sadly was not with his wife and children; his wife’s mental health issues and difficulties with the English climate had made it necessary for her to return to Turkey, while he works here as a computer engineer. He asked me to pray for them to be reunited soon; I hope you will all join me in doing that.
I’ve focused a lot in this article on Jewish-Muslim relationships because of the events of the past few weeks, but connections with other faiths have not been forgotten. On Sunday 18th November, at the end of Interfaith Week, I attended a lovely interfaith service at St. James Church, New Bradwell. Stan Cohen was there too, and like other speakers from a multitude of different faiths, we gave our perspective on Psalm 16, a beautiful, very profound psalm which reflects a deep connection with God’s love and a sense of being held safely within it. I found myself really enjoying the Sunday morning church service, with its uplifting hymns, and it didn’t seem incongruous at all to attend our own Choir’s wonderful concert at the synagogue later on the same day!
Talking of concerts, don’t forget to get your tickets for the Crossroots ‘Cake & Mugs & Rock & Roll’ concert on Sunday 13th January. What’s that got to do with interfaith, you might ask? Well, apart from them being an interfaith and inter-ethnic band, the tickets are on sale to the general public so it’s yet another occasion to give a warm welcome to people of other faiths – and to support the Shul at the same time!