A minister and rabbi walk into a mosque...

Like a few characters out of the stock "walk into a bar" jokes, Reverend Myrna Bethke (of the United Methodist Church of Red Bank) and I joined a few other clergy for an introductory meeting with the Imam of the Islamic Society of Monmouth County today. The meeting took place in his study at the Masjid Al-Aman Mosque on Red Hill Road. Its name means “mosque of peace” and our experience today fit the moniker. There was no agenda. The goal simply was to meet each other and - as the imam requested - "build relationships." We mostly spoke through interpreters as he does not speak much English. Thanks to Rev. Bethke for helping arrange this meeting and for inviting me to it. And, of course, thanks to Sheila for connecting us.

The imam, Sheik Reda Shata (left in NYT photo), was featured in a story in the New York Times published in January 2007 (and a series of articles the year before). Our meeting was warm and friendly. Over tea and lemonade we talked about spouses and children, how imams, ministers and rabbis find, keep, and move on from job to job, and where else we've worked as clergy (the imam had the most interesting resume of the group including positions in Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Brooklyn). On several points, the imam and I found ourselves with much more in common than with the rest of the group. We both struggle with the challenges of having a foreign language in the central texts of our tradition and the ways our religious schools must also serve as language schools. We both struggle with the challenges of religious law and communities that contain a wide spectrum of observance and outlook vis-a-vis that law. We both struggle with assimilation and its impact on our members.

The imam and I are about the same age. We both have kids of similar ages (although he has a larger brood). We both were especially happy to see each other at this meeting. I don't mean to imply that Christian-Muslim dialogue is unimportant. But, at one point while the group was breaking up, the imam came around his desk to sit across from me. He put a hand on my knee and said simply (in some of his only English of the meeting), "I am very happy that you are here today."

This year the end of Ramadan coincides with the High Holy Days so we agreed to meet again after those festivals. We agreed to meet in October and since it will be Sukkot, I invited the group to join me in our temple sukkah one afternoon. It will be a great way to invoke that holiday's spirit of hospitality and sharing. I think it will be a pretty good punch line: A minister, an imam, and a rabbi walk into a sukkah....