Sacred Space - Sacred World- published in the Jewish Herald Voice in Houston Texas

HOUSTON - Local Jewish and Catholic students organized a series of interfaith community service projects as an extension of learning about each other’s faith traditions.

Jewish Herald Voice a weekly community newspaper serving the Jewish community of Texas' Gulf Coast. It is headquartered in Upper Kirby, Houston. Established in 1908, it bills itself as the longest-running Jewish paper in the Southwest.

By Michael C. Duke JHV

High schoolers from The Emery/Weiner School, Strake Jesuit in Houston and St. Agnes Academy participated in a Catholic-Jewish Summit, Feb. 20-21, where they explored the theme of “scared space, sacred world.”

In addition to spending time on each other’s campuses, summit participants had the opportunity to visit St. Anne’s Catholic Church, Emanu El synagogue and Rothko Chapel. At the conclusion of the summit, representatives from each school agreed to host a community service project that would involve students from the other schools.

On March 9, Strake plans to host a community service project benefiting the Houston Food Bank. On March 22, St. Agnes will host a project at the Nehemiah Center**. EWS will host the third project, on March 29, at Aishel House.

The service projects represent the shared desire to put one’s faith into action, students said.

Throughout the two-day summit, participants shared different religious perspectives and found common ground among each other, they noted.

“Diversity is really important to me,” said Katelyn Needler, a St. Agnes 11th-grader who participated in the summit. “I want to get to know other people and listen to their stories.

“This summit offers a good way to ask questions in a safe space and get to know other people,” she told the JHV.

Samuel Hausman-Weiss is an EWS junior who was part of the student leadership team that helped plan this year’s summit as a follow-up to last year’s inaugural event. Both summits were sponsored by the Lowenstein Foundation*, with support from the Anti-Defamation League’s Southwest Regional office.

“Our theme this year is scared space, sacred world,” Hausman-Weiss told the JHV. “I want people to come away from this summit believing that their sacred space can go beyond their house of worship.

“We have the ability to expand the impact of our sacred space by engaging in community service,” he said.

Damian Barrientos is a junior at Strake who said the summit helped him appreciate both the differences and the similarities between Judaism and Catholicism. He said the summit led him to discover that the two faith traditions have more in common than he previously thought.

“Obviously, there are contrasts, but I’m interested in seeing different worldviews and how those lead people to action,” Barrientos told the JHV.

“I’m big on empathizing with other people,” he said. “I want to change the world for the better. I’ve met new friends, here, who share the same goal. These are people who can talk and do service projects together to help our communities.”

Anthony Kim, another Stake junior, helped answer questions that the Jewish students asked about his Catholic faith.

“We believe that Jesus was the primordial sacrament and that he was the final sacrifice to G-d,” explained Kim, in response to a question that asked why Catholics don’t follow all the rules of the “Old Testament.”

“We believe that Jesus perfected the rules of the Old Testament,” he said. “We still follow the rules of the 10 Commandments, but we’ve expanded upon that to target the individual sin.”

Stuart Dow, EWS’ head of school, helped the Catholic students understand why Jews in the Diaspora feel a special connection to the State of Israel.

“For Jews all over the world, the Land of Israel is a sacred space and a sacred place,” Dow said. “Why? Because it was part of the original covenant [between G-d and the Jewish people].

“A tremendous number of the commandments in the Torah can only be performed in the Land of Israel,” he said. “There’s a religious piece to it, and then it becomes a mindset. Whether you’re observant and really religious or not, Jews all over the world talk about and feel this connection to where it [Jewish history and Jewish peoplehood] all started.”

Joe Weinstein-Sears is EWS’ director of Jewish Life and teaches upper school history at Houston’s largest Jewish day school. He helped lead the summit and gave a primer on Judaism, explaining that Judaism, despite its diversity, can be summed up in three concepts: the oneness and centrality of G-d; the special covenant that G-d has with the Jewish people; and the value that Jewish people put on community.

Alexis Diaz-Waterman, an EWS junior, had the opportunity to share her journey toward embracing Judaism.

With parents who “weren’t religious at all,” Diaz-Waterman explained that she grew up “not really knowing what religion was.” As she got older, Diaz-Waterman began to search for religion, she noted. She attended classes on Catholicism and went to a Buddhist temple for a while. Around the same time, her mother began dating a Jewish man, who later became her step-father. That “introduction” to the Jewish community led her to enroll at EWS.

“The thing that I found in Judaism that really spoke to me was the community,” Diaz-Waterman said. “I feel like a lot of the traditions in Judaism are more set around the community and being there for each other, especially in times of hardship.”

Diaz-Waterman noted that her mother’s family is native American, but she learned that other side of her family tree has Jewish roots.

“I really felt close to people in my community, even though I was kind of new to the community,” she said. “I was just introduced to the Jewish community in sixth grade, but I met people who knew my grandparents and heard people talk about Jewish geography a lot.

“That closeness to my community is something that I really enjoy – knowing that I’ll always have that support, wherever I go,” Diaz-Waterman said.

Catholic students, like Katelyn Needler, said they want to expand that sense of support across different faith traditions.

Needler was one of several students who wore a blue ribbon at the summit.

“Since the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh last year, I’ve worn this ribbon to show my support,” she told the JHV.

“At last year’s summit, I learned about the similarities between Catholics and Jews,” she said. “This year, I’ve been able to see the differences in those similarities – differences that we should respect and can use to build bridges of understanding.”

*Lowenstein Foundation Mission:

We seek to support organizations that provide transformational solutions to some of our most challenging issues in order to leave the world a better place for future generations.

**Nehemiah Center- A safe haven in which inner-city children are motivated, inspired and equipped to realize their God-given potential. Nehemiah Center provides a high-quality education for students while helping their families get the information and resources necessary to have stability in the home. Today. the Center works with over 500 vulnerable children and their working families annually.