March 11, 2026 | 23 Adar 5786

The Miller Center staff and advisory committee extend warm wishes to all in our community observing this season of sacred holidays—including the conclusion of Ramadan next week and Eid, and the upcoming celebrations of Pesach and Easter. Across traditions, this moment in time invites reflection, renewal, and gratitude, reminding us of the shared values that unite our communities. In a time when our wider world can feel strained and uncertain, these sacred seasons call us inward to examine our hearts, deepen our commitments, and rediscover the quiet work of patience and care. May this season help us cultivate the inner strength and spirit needed to meet our moment with wisdom and grace.

Rabbi Rose in community at Southern Lights

Earlier this winter, Miller Center Founding Director Rabbi Or Rose appeared at Southern Lights, a conference co-founded by Miller Center collaborator Rev. Brian MacLaren, dedicated to reimagining Christian faith in a changing world. Rabbi Or presented about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's legacy of interfaith leadership in pursuit of justice. Here he reflects on the communal singing that preceded his lecture:

"I am grateful to the organizers of the Southern Lights Conference for the invitation to teach at this soulful Christian gathering in Georgia. In opening my presentation on the life and work of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (d.1972), I invited the assembled group to join me in singing the well-known Hasidic song Gesher tzar me’od ('The whole world is a very narrow bridge'), based on a teaching from Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (d. 1810). I explained that because the world can often feel unsteady, even dangerous, we need to support one another in our journeys with dignity and empathy. Sadly, this has not been the norm for much of the history of Jewish and Christian relations.

Rabbi Or Rose presents at Southern Lights

I paired this song with a statement from a contemporary Muslim colleague and friend of mine, Dr. Eboo Patel (president and founder of Interfaith America), who often reminds audiences that 'bridges do not fall from the sky'; we must build them together. And when these structures become too narrow or rickety, we have to work together to expand or upgrade them.

I presented Rabbi Heschel in this context for this wonderful group of Christian seekers and leaders to emphasize the portion of his career devoted to working with people from different religious and secular communities to create a more just and compassionate world."

2025-26 Dignity Project Fellows and Mentors at their Closing Ceremony

The Miller Center’s Dignity Project Fellowship for high school students concluded its semester of community building and religious pluralism with a closing celebration. The event included a photography exhibit about identity, pluralism, and religious expression in Greater Boston; music and sharing from fellows; and a small structured-dialogue exercise for friends and family to learn more about how the fellows spent their year.

As fellowship mentor David Hannan shared, "I’ve described the Dignity Project as a peculiar oasis of authenticity, relationality, beauty, and humanity. The fellows’ desire to know and care for each other as unique human beings with different beliefs and values, and not to merely exchange information about their religions, or find the “answers” to difficult and complex questions facing our world appeared to me nothing short of a miracle. These young people are exceptional in their willingness to be vulnerable and learn about each other in a deeply personal way, not as a mere exchange of information but offering themselves."

Applications are open now for next year's fellowship — nominate an outstanding teen!

Rev. Rob Schenck in Minneapolis, credit Mother Jones

Last month in Mother Jones magazine, Miller Center Visiting Professor of Christianity and Religious Leadership Rob Schenck published an extensive recounting of his time in Minnesota participating in organized interfaith clergy actions to protest DHS overreach. Read an excerpt below:

As I sit here in this sanctuary with my evangelical sensibilities—even identity—teetering in the balance, I wonder if there are any others like me in the mix. So far, I’ve met clergy from a variety of liberal and progressive denominations, as well as from non-Christian religious bodies, but no evangelicals. It is mid-morning, and we are divided into groups for some training. Those of us who signed up to monitor ICE actions on Minneapolis streets are told to go to a large side room for preparation. I follow a stream of about 200 people to a dining hall where a woman in a clerical collar, buried beneath an oversized parka, explains that we will be dispatched to locations where ICE is actively knocking on doors, stopping vehicles, and “disappearing our immigrant neighbors.” We’re given small, orange plastic whistles and told to blow them loudly at the first sight of ICE agents. “Go toward them,” our instructor says. “But keep a safe distance. Others will come to manage the situation.” She pauses and continues, emphasizing this point: “Video everything.”

Now it’s time to go out into the streets. We’re given a few minutes to put on the extra layers we’ve all carried to the church, then we’re directed to one of five buses lined up outside. Once aboard, I sit down next to a young seminary student preparing for ordination in the Unitarian Church. I tell her I’m an evangelical minister, albeit a dissenting one, and she looks shocked. We agree to be a duo and watch out for each other.

The Newton Interfaith Leaders Association and the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership at Hebrew College launched a new interfaith learning initiative on March 1 with a dynamic opening workshop, “The Evolution of Antisemitism: From the Ancient World to the Contemporary United States,” led by Rabbi Or Rose. Teams of clergy, youth leaders, and lay leaders from Christian congregations across the Newton area gathered for an afternoon of study, discussion, and reflection, beginning a shared process of strengthening relationships and building strategies to confront antisemitism and related forms of prejudice in their communities.

The session combined historical learning with small-group dialogue and congregational team planning, setting the stage for ongoing collaboration this spring. Participants explored the long history and evolving forms of antisemitism in the United States while also considering how local faith communities can respond together. “While global and national events can feel overwhelming, there is concrete work we can all do in our neighborhoods and townships,” says Rabbi Or Rose. “We roll up our sleeves and engage in the sacred work of cultivating allyship in a very challenging time.” The gathering marked a hopeful first step in cultivating deeper allyship and cross-community solidarity among neighboring congregations committed to creating a more just and compassionate society.

This initiative is made possible by an Ally Challenge Grant from Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ Center for Combatting Antisemitism

Tom Scott (left) and Saad Soliman (right) teaching at UNC. (Video still courtesy of The Nantucket Project).

In his capacity as a senior consultant at Interfaith America, Rabbi Or Rose recently published this story about a new approach to Jewish-Muslim dialogue developed by educators whose families fought on the opposite sides of a war:

Simon Greer and Saad Soliman should, by some accounts, be fierce ideological opponents. Greer is a Jewish social entrepreneur whose uncles fought for Israel in 1967; Soliman is a Muslim justice reform leader whose uncles died fighting for Egypt in that same war. “We could have been enemies,” Soliman has said of their shared history, “but we chose something else.” 

That “something else” has become an intensive teaching partnership on Israel and Palestine, and an effort to use what they have learned from overcoming divisions to teach a new generation of leaders. Continuing this work in the wake of the vicious Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the brutal war that followed has added immeasurably to this challenge. 

“We both could have retreated into the safety of our existing narratives,” he recalls, “but that would have been a betrayal of everything we say we believe in.” Instead, they chose to pursue a friendship, convinced that “transformation happens not when we simply defend ourselves, but when we also honor each other’s humanity.”

When: Thursday, March 12, 7 pm
Where: Hebrew College, 1860 Washington St, Newton, MA 02466 (in-person only)

Join Rabbi Or Rose in conversation with award winning author Jon Sweeney about his new book, Experiencing God: 36 Ways According to Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis of Assisi was spiritual before anyone used that word, and he was religious in the best ways. We love him because he cut through the paraphernalia to get back to religion where it belongs: working in the human heart, making a difference in everyday life. Anyone can do the things Francis did, summarized in these 36 ways of experiencing God. Examples offered through anecdote, text, and explanation include “Free captive creatures,” “Pray alone in the woods,” “Allow yourself to weep,” and “Stand between those who fight.”