Blog

A mosaic celebrates both the uniqueness of an individual tile and the collective pattern of many tiles together. This is the driving vision behind  Interfaith Youth Neighborhood Mosaic ; it is a celebration of an individual’s identity and the richness that identity brings to a diverse community. This past June, 20 middle school students from South Philadelphia spent a week exploring their own identities and the diversity of their neighborhood. Here are some reflections from our staff who crafted this wonderful program.  Elizabeth Royer – Community Programs Associate & Mosaic  Co-Facilitator  One of my favorite moments of the week was our visit to St. Thomas Aquinas Parish. Mosaic gives campers a way to learn about other faith communities that they might pass everyday, but may not know much about. Some campers had never been inside a Catholic church before this visit, while others were members of St. Thomas Aquinas and attended services there. Though St...

On June 6 th , Interfaith Philadelphia’s wide circle of friends gathered at Tabernacle United Church in University City to celebrate the Rev. Nicole Diroff. Nicole, who served our organization over nearly the whole of its history in roles from student intern to Associate Director, stepped away from her work to move with her family to Scarborough, Maine, where her husband, Dr. Jeremy Diroff, is a new member of the staff of the Maine Veterinary Medical Center. It was an occasion that can only be described as bittersweet as those who came together from so many different parts of Nicole’s life came together in Nicole’s home congregation space to honor the amazing leader Nicole has been – celebrated her successes – and blessed her going forth to new endeavors not yet quite fully imagined. Several speakers offered their praise and thanksgiving – these words from Milan Kunz, a member of Interfaith Philadelphia's Religious Leaders Council, certainly resonated for many of us –  ...

For the last eleven months, I have been privileged to serve at Interfaith Philadelphia as a Quaker Voluntary Service fellow. QVS is “a one-year experiment in intentional living” where young adults across the country choose to volunteer full-time at a nonprofit organization and join six or seven other fellows in intentional community. For me, what set QVS apart from other service programs was their promise that the experience would not be a “year off” from regular life, but instead a year of preparation for a whole lifetime of service.  I remember hearing once, back when I first started to become interested in Quakerism, that “there are no Quaker beliefs, only Quaker practices”.  The Religious Society of Friends is a non-creedal religion, meaning that it has no official statement of faith. This means that Quakers hold a wide diversity of beliefs about the Divine, the world around us, and how one should live in it--in fact, some Friends would almost certainly disagree with ...

I am a Mennonite Pastor. Every time I say this I expect to receive lots of questions like: "Mennonites let women be pastors?", "What’s the difference between Mennonites and the Amish?", or "I never would have known you were a Mennonite, where’s your bonnet?" Sometimes I do get these questions. Sometimes I receive inquisitive looks. But these things only happen when I choose to identify myself. The rest of the time, I present as any other white, Christian woman and I receive all of the privileges that accompany that identity. Growing up, I learned that Mennonites were outsiders in society. In Mennonite school, we took church history classes where we learned how Mennonites and other Anabaptists were brutally tortured and executed for defying the state religion during the Reformation and that they were persecuted as a religious minority by both Protestants and Catholics. We were also taught about the struggles Mennonite men faced in the United States when ...

  At 15 years of operation, Interfaith Philadelphia is a leader in the nonprofit industry. Our organization has been implementing surveys in order to evaluate the effectiveness of programs. Program evaluation is an area where most interfaith programs struggle; it is difficult to measure the impact of dialogue. Researchers such as Renee Garfinkel (2004) and Reina Neufeldt (2011) began the conversation about best practices regarding interfaith program evaluations. Garfinkel noted that interfaith dialogues themselves may not prevent conflict, but they can change attitudes that may promote peace in the future. Garfinkel (2004) evaluated interfaith dialogue with a conflict resolution framework. She noted that it can oftentimes be difficult to measure the impact of changes in attitude or behavior. In this way, Interfaith Philadelphia is a leader in the efforts to evaluate our impact, particularly during this special Year of Civil Conversations. Interfaith Philadelphia has...

Philadelphia cartoonist Signe Wilkenson rarely adds words to accompany her poignant artistry.  But on March 17, 2019, when the above image was published in The Inquirer , she added her voice: “After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting last fall, I drew the initial version of this cartoon but for timing reasons it never ran. I’m sorry but not shocked for the opportunity to redraw it now after the unGodly carnage at the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. There aren’t enough armed guards to protect every church, synagogue, mosque, ashram and temple around the world. It might be time for God’s children to figure out a way to get along.” And then tragically, on Easter Sunday, another unthinkable atrocity occurred, targeting innocent people in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka. I felt the tremors of this attack – 9000 miles away, in the safety of my home – on the second day of Passover. Each year since I was a child, the recounting of the Passover story has been a source of ...

On June 20 th , 2013 Krista Tippett spoke with Joy Ladin, Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York, an author of seven collections of poetry, and currently writing I Am What I Will Be: Reading God and the Torah from a Transgender Perspective . Six years ago, Joy transitioned from male to female identity. She became the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution. In her conversation with Krista, Joy shared that throughout her life her body didn’t match her soul. As she spoke, I couldn’t help but be enlightened by how her story helps all of us reflect on how gender shapes the ongoing journey of being “at home” in ourselves. I found it particularly poignant what Joy shared about the convergence of her Jewish identity with that of her gender identity and expression. For example, she connected gender identity with the Torah—specifically that God is portrayed as a genderless character [though male pronouns are ...