An eclectic group of rabbis, pastors, and imams from throughout the city wants New Haveners to know that they are not alone during this Covid-19 crisis, and that interfaith solidarity provides one path forward for emerging from this trying moment with an even stronger community than existed pre-pandemic.
That message is at the center of a new video produced by Baobab Tree Studios and featuring Congregation Mishkan Israel Rabbi Emeritus Herb Brockman, Quinnipiac University Friar Jordan Lenaghan, Yale University Imam Omer Bajwa, Christian Community Action Executive Director Bonita Grubbs, and First Presbyterian Church Rev. Jocelyn Cadwallader.
“We want you to know that you are in our prayers as together we make our way through this difficult and frightening time at home, in our nation, and in our world,” Brockman says at the start of the video.
“We offer these words to those of faith as well as those of no faith, without judgment. What we do come to understand is that only through a common commitment and resolve to each other, an interdependence which a person of faith might say, ‘As God is one, so we are one,’ only through this realization can we muster the human resilience and trust that can get us through.”
Rev. Kevin Ewing, the CEO of Baobab Tree Studios, said that the interfaith leaders connected via Zoom to put together the video and that the idea for the video came from Brockman and Yale Divinity School Associate Dean for Ministerial and Professional Leadership William Goettler.
Beautiful and helpful words that remind us of our commonalities and celebrate our different ways to worship