Dialogues for Wisdom

Last evening, Rabbi Claudio Kogan of Temple Emanuel in McAllen and I had a two hour conversation in front of about 300 people. Held at the school gymnasium of Our Lady of Sorrows parish we talked about many things, including the challenges of modern family life, the importance of sacred time set aside for the things of God, of taking time to get to know each other, the place of religion in contemporary society,... And many other things.

Rabbi Kogan and I have gotten to know each other over the last few months and the idea came to us that it might be good for the wider community to in some way participate in our dialogues / conversations. We were guided in our planning by the example of Pope Francis who engaged in a series of dialogues with Rabbi Abraham Skorka while he was Archbishop in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The fruit of that dialogue has since been published in a book entitled "Sobre el Cielo y la Tierra", or "On Heaven and Earth" in the English version.

The thing about a dialogue is that you don't really have an agenda for the conversation. We had a few general themes we agreed would start the conversation, but we knew one topic in a conversation leads to another. And that is how it should be. We also responded to questions from the participants.

People have asked me: "What is the purpose of a dialogue?".  Simply to get to know each other better, I say. There is great joy in this. "What does it take to have a dialogue?": A willingness to listen attentively, and respond honestly and respectfully.

The Monitor newspaper ran an article and a few nice pictures of the event. You can find it at the following site: http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_6e6ff240-3548-11e3-b453-001a4bcf6878.html

I really enjoyed the evening. Our next one is set for December 2, 2013 at Temple Emmanuel in McAllen. Everyone is welcome.