Welcome to America's Middle East

IN FALL 1884, the congregation that became Temple Israel opened its doors as the first Jewish synagogue in the state of Nebraska. From its inception, Temple Israel was a Reform congregation, a theologically progressive denomination that stresses the social justice imperatives of Judaism. Yet the early members of Temple Israel included not just Reform Jews, but Conservative and Orthodox Jews as well; navigating these interdenominational relationships would prove to be a significant part of the congregation’s early development.

Fast forward 130 years and Temple Israel is one of three houses of worship embarking on a unique interfaith partnership: a single campus in west Omaha that will house a Jewish synagogue, a Muslim mosque, a Christian church, and a fourth building for interfaith fellowship.

Aryeh Azriel, Temple Israel’s senior rabbi, planted the seeds for this project, known as the Tri-Faith Initiative, in 2006 when he reached out to the American Muslim Institute, another local religious community that was looking to construct a new building.

“The original idea started as a result of looking for a partnership in sharing parking lots,” Azriel told Sojourners.

The two communities had forged a relationship in 2001 when, following the Sept. 11 attacks, Azriel led members of Temple Israel in encircling a local mosque to protect it from the Islamophobic attacks they were seeing in the national news.

Syed Mohiuddin, president of the American Muslim Institute, agreed to the partnership; he liked the idea of the two religious groups sharing a parking lot with each other rather than with retail stores or other commercial development. However, it didn’t take long for the two communities to realize the project had greater potential than a shared parking lot. If they could find Christians willing to join them, they could build a shared campus for all three Abrahamic faiths, the first such campus in the world—at least to their knowledge.

“The more we talked about it, the more we thought this was an opportunity of a lifetime,” Mohiuddin said. “We could share the things that are common among us, the things that are different, and we could learn to appreciate the beauty of each religion.”

Not “watered down” faith

In December 2011, after looking at 32 plots of land, Temple Israel, the American Muslim Institute, and the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska—the Christian partner—purchased the grounds of a recently closed Jewish country club; two years later, the synagogue was completed. The original plan had been to finish the mosque by 2015; however, in 2013, citing time and cost challenges, the Episcopalians pulled out of the project. The search for a new Christian partner brought construction plans to a halt.

In spring 2015, Countryside Community Church, a United Church of Christ congregation, became the new Christian partner, and with plans moving forward, Mohiuddin said he expects the denominationally and gender-inclusive mosque to be completed by the end of the year. Countryside, meanwhile, has only recently embarked on a capital campaign for their new building and has yet to break ground. All three houses of worship, plus the fourth communal building, are expected to be up and running by 2018.

“When you build something so unique and momentous, it takes years,” said Azriel.

But if there’s one thing the Tri-Faith Initiative partners want to make clear it’s that they aren’t trying to create a single, coalesced religion. While the Tri-Faith Initiative board helps govern the overall project, each faith community maintains sole responsibility for its own building and worship. After all, the point of the project is to promote interfaith community and that can’t happen, the partners say, if the communities aren’t living their faith authentically.

“None of the three faiths are being asked to water down their faith,” said Eric Elnes, senior minister at Countryside Community Church. “We’re actually all expected to come out of this full-blooded Christians, full-blooded Jews, full-blooded Muslims.”

Beyond “being nice”

And that’s meant that the three faith communities have had to grapple with difficult questions and the challenging ideas in their respective holy scriptures. For example, what are the implications of believing that Abraham’s rejected son, Ishmael, is the spiritual father of all Muslims? Or how can Christians, Muslims, and Jews grapple with the seemingly disparaging ways their holy texts describe other faith groups? It hasn’t always been easy, but so far, no one has seemed interested in giving up.

“There’s nothing more boring than an interfaith dialogue where everybody’s just simply trying to be nice,” Elnes said.

Wendy Goldberg, a Tri-Faith Initiative board member and a former president of Temple Israel, agrees. “Most interfaith conversations are looking for those places of sameness,” she said. “In the Tri-Faith Initiative, we’re looking to acknowledge that we are different, and that we cannot just tolerate but respect and trust and accept that there other ways to know God.”

Goldberg said she views the Tri-Faith Initiative as an important generational innovation. Her parents, who lived through the time of the Holocaust and were all-too-familiar with anti-Semitism, grew up in a religious community that mostly kept to itself—a coping mechanism that allowed people in marginalized communities to support one another. Goldberg’s children, however, have grown up in the internet age, with nearly instant access to millions of religious thought leaders and all kinds of religious texts. Given that environment, said Goldberg, it would be ridiculous to try and tell them there’s only one place to find truth about God.

“Balancing that place between those generations has been enlightening for me,” Goldberg said. “I’m not saying there isn’t value in supporting your own people—it’s the same in philanthropy, you know? You support Jewish causes because who else would, right? But in order to not live in that ghetto mentality of Jews only belonging in one place, we have to be more open and accepting that people are going to think differently than us.”

“You can’t get away from each other”

Even without a completed campus, the Tri-Faith community has already taken to its mission of getting to know one another. A robust children’s program offering interfaith playtime for younger children and leadership development for teenagers is already operating, and the communities share meals together at public picnics and in each other’s homes. And, of course, there are already plans for a joint interfaith education program; one of the things that’s been most surprising to many involved with the Tri-Faith Initiative is just how little people know about faith traditions outside of their own. And those observations are backed up by research: Five years ago, the Pew Research Center polled religious literacy in the United States and found that the average American adult could only correctly answer 50 percent of their questions about world religions.

And while religious literacy remains important, the ultimate goal of the initiative is to move beyond dialogue into the real, gritty work of interfaith understanding—something that a shared campus will hopefully encourage. Typically, interfaith dialogue involves going to a lecture with a lot of other people, explained Mohiuddin. “They talk, then they go home, and they probably don’t see each other for a long time,” he said. “On this campus, you can’t get away from each other. You are there.”

The thought is that on the Tri-Faith Initiative campus, when Jews see Muslims praying on a regular basis or when Christians know what is happening in a synagogue, fear and misunderstanding of the other will dissipate.

Mohiuddin said there has been nominal pushback from some members of the broader Omaha community, but he said he doesn’t consider it to be a “real obstructive force.” Aryeh Azriel says, so far, he’s overjoyed at how heartily this vision has been accepted by those involved.

This vision has seemed all the more important in a time when blatant Islamophobia in the United States goes seemingly unchecked. For example, last fall, dozens of governors across the country vocally opposed plans to resettle Syrian refugees in their states—this despite the fact that Syria has been embroiled a long civil war that, at that point, had already killed hundreds of thousands of people, half of them civilians.

Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts was one of the governors refusing to resettle refugees, citing the “reach and strength” of ISIS as the primary hesitation.

Jennifer Hamann, moderator of Countryside Community Church, called Rickett’s position painful. Before Countryside joined the Tri-Faith Initiative, Hamann had Jewish friends, but she hadn’t known any Muslims—now she says her new friendships have opened her eyes to the discrimination Muslims face on a daily basis, and it breaks her heart.

“I have friends who have to explain to their children that, even though they’re Muslims, they’re not bad people,” Hamann said. “How long do we have to keep fighting and have misunderstanding over religion? I get chills when I talk about this, but the Tri-Faith Initiative is a statement: Let’s conquer this with peace and love.”

Conquering hate with peace and love is Aryeh Azriel’s goal too. It was only about 100 years ago that Jews were one of the primary targets of violence and hate in the United States, and the Jewish community still carries those agonizing memories of being betrayed, chased, and marginalized, he said. Azriel believes that’s part of what drives Temple Israel to promote peace and mutual understanding today.

“It is time to shut completely the language and the spirit of bigotry and racism in this country,” he said.

Midwest is best

If anyone is surprised that such an ambitious movement is coming out of Omaha, Aziel thinks they shouldn’t be. Originally from Tel Aviv, Azriel himself has lived in Omaha for 28 years, and he thinks the Midwest is the perfect place for an undertaking of this magnitude.

“I think you can do things in Omaha quietly, without the news arriving too early,” he said, pointing out the failed attempt in 2010 to build an Islamic cultural center in New York City. Inappropriately dubbed the “Ground Zero mosque,” the plans drew heavy criticism from those who thought the cultural center was an affront to the victims of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and a sign of the “Islamicization” of the United States. The cultural center was scrapped, and now it appears that luxury condos will go up in its place.

“Being in the Midwest allows all of us to work harder here without the front page articles, without CNN, without news media that sometimes diminishes the intentionality of the project,” Azriel said, which is not to suggest that the Tri-Faith Initiative doesn’t welcome media attention.

“Right now, we’re a garden of one in the world,” said Eric Elnes, laughing. “But we’re hoping that in coming years, we’ll be one of 200 tri-faith initiatives or even more. We’re hoping not to be unique, and we’re hoping that one way we can help others is to talk about our experiences—where the pressure points are and how you work through them.”

So far, Elnes says he’s only heard of two projects inspired by the Tri-Faith Initiative: the House of One in Berlin—which is currently crowdsourcing funds to build a single house of worship for Jews, Muslims, and Christians—and a group in Bentonville, Ark., that’s in the early stages of exploring its options.

Aryeh Azriel said he would love to support other tri-faith initiatives, even emphatically suggesting that anyone interested in doing something similar call the group in Omaha. However, he said, this project isn’t ultimately about providing a model of interfaith community for the world.

“I just want to make sure that we do right with God,” he said. “This is definitely not for our own egos—this is something that God always wanted us to do. And I think we are doing justice to what God requires of us.”