The second Annual Interfaith Retreat was held in Greyton, outside Cape Town on the weekend of 22 — 25 September, hosted by The Open Mosque.
The three Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were represented in a respectful and contemplative retreat where Jewish, Christian and Muslim people came together in faith and friendship to learn and share.
The retreat created a time to move away from other distractions and through learning and integrating with our Muslim and Christian friends we were given the opportunity to be in a place of stillness and to really go deeper into ourselves and our individual relationships with G-d.
We were able to celebrate and honour beliefs different to that of our own, as well as acknowledge the similarities at the core of these three religions.
The Jewish, Christian and Muslim contingents were respectively led by:
Rabbi Julia Margolis, the only female Rabbi in South Africa and Chairperson of SACRED (South African Centre for Religious Equality and Diversity)
The Most Reverend Archbishop Professor Dr Malkhaz Songulashvili from Tblisi, Republic of Georgia, who is an Oxford-trained Professor and an internationally renowned scholar and proponent of authentic interfaith cooperation, and
Dr Taj Hargey, director of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and the founder of the Open Mosque.
Topics discussed covered the Interfaith Imperative, the issue of the ‘other’, sacred narratives in faith traditions, women and patriarchy in religion, relevance of rituals amongst others and more.
The retreat also featured services and prayers of all three faiths represented.
Temple Israel is proud to be part of this Interfaith dialogue and looks forward to this continuing and growing into the future.
