By Rev. Tom Reid, Associate Director of the Miller Center

It is hard to believe it is already December and that we are only weeks away from the end of 2022. Soon, we will see a growing flurry of end-of-year donation requests, retrospective lists (highs and lows), and predictions and resolutions for the new year.  

While Christmas and Hanukkah do not occupy the same position of importance in the Christian and Jewish liturgical calendars respectively, and our understandings of the symbolism of light differ, they both point to a common ancient human desire to bring more light and warmth into our hearts, homes, and communities during the darkest and coldest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. 

 By Joshua Polanski and Rafi Ellenson

The Miller Center recently unveiled BILI Online: Lessons in Interreligious Leadership, a digital curriculum and resource bank for leadership development made possible with a generous grant from the Gottesman Fund. The units are based on the model developed for the Miller Center's national undergraduate interreligious program, Building Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI) fellowship.  

The site has recently been updated with more thought-provoking artwork by James Andrew Gilbert (artist name: Endriu) and additional units including Appreciating the Other: An Ethic of Love, Community Building: Who Are Our Partners?, and Cultivating Your Voice: Artistic Practice.  

Below is an abbreviated selection from “The Face of the Other,” a lesson featured in the "Appreciating the Other" unit: 

Faces tell stories and are a source of meaningful connections between people. The old film-school cliché “The close-up is the most dangerous weapon in cinema” still rings true. When a face is seen so intimately up close on the big screen, the face can feel real. The final shot (below) of mainland Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin is not, technically speaking, a close-up, it nonetheless demonstrates the power behind the cliché. Even removed from its original cinematic context, this image, a collection of faces, tells a story. 

Sit with and reflect on the image, the final shot of A Touch of Sin for a few minutes. What stories do you see? What faces stand out to you? What kind of movie do you imagine A Touch of Sin is? Did the frame maintain your attention longer than a typical image with one or two faces would? 

Emmanuel Levinas, a Lithuanian-French Jewish philosopher, a man who experienced the horrors of Nazism, spoke powerfully about the ethical responsibility of looking at another human face: “The first word of the face is ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”  

Faces matter in the American judicial system too. Consider how race, signaled through skin color, impacts sentencing. We are all influenced by implicit racial biases, judges are no exception to this all too human phenomenon which, as a Cornell Law study found, significantly impacts the sentences handed down... 

 By Rev. Tom Reid, Associate Director of the Miller Center

Each month, we will honor an individual (or group) who inspires the bridge-building efforts of the Miller Center. Each honoree embodies the values of inclusivity, justice, and compassion in different and unique ways.

The work of the Miller Center is rooted in relationships. This applies to all our initiatives—with teens, young adults, seminarians, and professionals. Our “Beacon of Hope” for December is a person who embodies this ethos and who has become a valued colleague and friend. 

Harmeet Kaur Kamboj (they/them) entered the Miller Center orbit through their work as a program manager at Interfaith America—our partner on the expanded BILI fellowship. Harmeet has been a wonderful addition to the BILI leadership team, and I am excited to work with them on this unfolding national venture.  

Harmeet is a fierce advocate for inclusion—for Sikhs and Sikh traditions, as well as for trans and non-binary lives—and they inspire us with their commitment, their wisdom, their creativity, and their collaborative spirit. Plus, they are a lot of fun to work with! 

In addition to their program-related work, Harmeet is also a performing artist, public scholar, and zine-maker. Harmeet is both a dancer and instructor specializing in South Asian dance. They have written for the Religion News Service, Sojourners, and Interfaith America Magazine, and recently published their first piece of original reporting in the October issue of The Revealer, housed at New York University’s Center for Media & Religion. The article is entitled, “Virtual Communities are Critical Lifelines for Transgender Sikhs.”  

Thank you, Harmeet, for all that you are and all that you do! We are delighted to celebrate you and the work that you do with the Miller Center, Interfaith America, and beyond. 

In light of recent local and national events, Miller Center Founding Director Rabbi Or Rose has devoted a significant amount of time reflecting on the latest spate of anti-Semitic incidents. Listen to his appearance on WBUR’s Radio Boston alongside Rabbi Suzie Jacobson (alumnus of HC) and read his article, “Fire & Light: Anti-Semitism & the Celebration of Jewish Life” on Hebrew College’s website.  

Writing for the Religion News Service, Kyle Desrosiers, the Miller Center administrative assistant and Master of Divinity student at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, reported on the digital artwork produced at the Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The Synod conducted 48 listening sessions last spring and summer at 14 colleges and other Catholic campus organizations in the Philadelphia area. Visual notetaking played a key role at the Synod, according to Desrosiers.  

“[The] artwork represents many of the students’ dreams, sorrows, worries and hopes for the church: women’s ordination; the inclusion of LGBTQ people in community; the engagement of religious and ideological diversity; the pursuit of racial justice; and a robust response to the global ecological crisis.” Read more on RNS.