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     Interfaith work has been a center of my life for some time now; from shadowing chaplains around the hospital, to working at my university’s office of spiritual inclusion, and now here spending my summer with Interfaith Philadelphia.        When others ask me what this kind of work is about, I find many are often surprised when I tell them that outwardly discussing religion and faith is only a fraction of the work we do. I can’t blame their surprise, as I think back to when I first began my study of religion and the world’s faith traditions, I remember myself standing as an outside observer to them. I would spend my time drawing lines of connections between these grand concepts of metaphysics, ethics, history, and culture believing it to be the heart of religious understanding. It worked fine for academic purposes, but I would soon come to understand that theory alone is not comparable to the lived experience of interfaith work.    ...

I was raised a Conservative Jew at a Conservative school. The holidays were a time for family. On Sukkot and Passover, my grandparents and cousins on my mom’s side came to stay with us the whole week. My cousin stayed with me in my room, and became one of my best friends. The culture of holidays and family is energy .  The secular holidays, I celebrated with my dad’s side of my family. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were Jewish and not Jewish. Some celebrated other holidays, too. Thanksgiving was as important to me as my weekly observance of Shabbat, and remains that way. Family is spirit . Every Thanksgiving, I was uplifted and refreshed.  My first Christmas was magical. I was with family friends, and it consisted of: a huge Italian Catholic Christmas Eve dinner, followed by midnight mass, and then waking up early with excitement to see what was under the tree – and found to my surprise that Santa came for me, too. I felt so welcomed in to their home. My own sense of self was...