TMS is gathering this month to explore how our religious or spiritual identities intertwine during the holiday season. It’s clear that interfaith communities are an inherent part of the globalized world we live in.
So, what does it look like to be religiously mixed?
What is that experience like at the height of religious celebrations?
How do you navigate the holiday season in an interfaith family, friend circle, or community?
December’s meetup was filled with wisdom, knowledge, and “meeting people on a heart
level” with our speakers Riyana Zafira Razalee and Rabbi Marjorie Berman…
Riyana is passionate about two things: reconnecting people with love (interfaith relationships) and land (regenerative agriculture). Love: She is the host of An Act of Faith (@anact_offaith), an upcoming podcast that highlights interfaith relationships and seeks to find secrets that make navigating through it easier. Land: Riyana is the Head of Business Development for Re-Nuble, transforming food waste into sustainable products for indoor farms. In a previous life, she was an investment banker in Southeast Asia. Her roots are deeply Malaysian, her world views are expansively global
Rabbi Marjorie Berman is a native of Madison, Wisconsin, and attended Earlham College, a Quaker institution, where she majored in Religion. She received her rabbinical degree in 2003 from Reconstructing Judaism. Currently, Rabbi Marjorie is the rabbi at Congregation Temple Israel of Lehighton in Northeastern Pennsylvania, teaches at Society Hill Synagogue in Philadelphia, and serves as a Spiritual Director for rabbinical students as well as rabbis and pastors. She also serves as a teacher and guide to several groups on women and aging. Counseling, interfaith work, and bringing life to Jewish texts, history, and ritual are among her passions. She is deeply curious about how intersectional identities are drawing a new map for how humans create communities of meaning, justice, and connection through spirituality, culture, ethics, and social action.
Did you know?
In the US, 20% of marriages in 1950 were interfaith unions. By 2012, this rate increased up to 45%.
Over a dozen popular Christmas Songs were written by Johnny Marks, a Jewish songwriter/composer.
About one-fifth of the entire Muslim population in the U.S. is Black, according to Pew Research.
Goodbye is a contraction of the phrase “God be with ye.”
What did ancient religious practices
and cultures look like?
How are we welcoming an intersectional,
globalized, and open relationship to faith?
What do you want to preserve
into the next century?
