After the 9/11 ceremonies I met with Dr. Mohammed Essawi and the faculty of Al-Qasemi Academy from Baaka El Garbia, Israel. It was a wonderful hour with an inspiring group of Muslims from Israel who are working on coexistence education. (thanks to Trinity's Rev. Hoke and the AJC's Ari Gordon for making this meeting happen.)
From there, my 9/11 themed week continued with a trip to Montreal to participate in the 'World's Religions after 9/11' conference sponsored by McGill. (I'll post my speech when I finish the edits.) The conference drew about 1,300 folks, and a few more thousand showed up when Deepak Chopra took the stage for a ridiculous power point presentation in which he summed up all of religious and spiritual thought in five minutes or so. But he was funny during the Q & A session. Much more impressive was Karen Armstrong, who spoke with great clarity about the Middle East. I also got to meet Harold Kasimow, a student of Heschel's who teaches at Grinnell. He edited the book on Heschel's 'No Religion is an Island' that has been a great resource for me in this work.
