NEW PEACE, LOVE & UNDERSTANDING
There are so many social impact organizations now that aim to help people who are victims of violence and war, but only a few that help people take action to make peace and promote humanitarian love.
The Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding is a secular, non-sectarian nonprofit organization that promotes mutual respect with practical programs that bridge religious difference and combat prejudice in schools, workplaces, health care settings and areas of armed conflict around the world.
The Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees (MFA) is the nation's leading interfaith response to the Syrian refugee crisis, leveraging a network of 100 secular and faith-based organizations, including Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh organizations.
Both organizations raise consciousness about our need to love, respect, and support one another, regardless of race, religion, country-of-origin and other differences.
Photo: Courtesy of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. Peacemakers Network members.
Tanenbaum differs significantly from most interfaith organizations. They do not focus on dialog, but rather on behavioral change and skill-building. Their core work is to change the way people actually treat one another.
Photo: Courtesy of the Tanenbaum Center. Reverend Canon Andrew White, Baghdad.
Tanenbaum is inspired not only by The Golden Rule – to treat others as you would like to be treated – but also by the Platinum Rule – to treat others as they want to be treated.
Photo: Courtesy of the Tanenbaum Center. Mark Fowler delivering a Tanenbaum Training.
Their four core programs are action-focused.
In schools, Tanenbaum prepares educators to teach respect for religious pluralism and diversity. The result? Kids learn that being different is normal and interesting, not something to be feared.
In health care settings, the Tanenbaum team trains doctors to respond to their patients’ religious needs and important traditions, such as diet and fasting, birth and death rituals, as well as prohibitions against transplants, transfusions, or other objectionable treatments.
In workplaces, Tanenbaum helps companies counter prejudice and promote diversity.
Photo: Courtesy of the Tanenbaum Center. Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye, Nigerian Peacemakers.
Tanenbaum also empowers 28 international and interfaith grassroots activists to pursue peace in their Peacemakers in Action Network. Each has exceptional local impact. All are driven by their faith. And together they are even more powerful.
Photo: Courtesy of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. Ephraim Issac, Ethiopian Peacemaker.
Network members serve as roles models and teachers, taking lessons learned from countries that have rebuilt their communities and sharing them with countries struggling to end and recover from violence.
Today, Network members work in 21 different conflict zones, including Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia, Indonesia, and Israel.
In one current program, Peacemaker Hind Kabawat, from Syria, is confronting the shocking brutality and destruction in her home country by bringing humanitarian supplies to refugee camps.
Tanenbaum is working with her to bring Peacemakers Ivo Markovic from Bosnia and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge from South Africa to help. Together, they will train a diverse group of 80 young Syrian leaders to rebuild and restore peace to their communities. These leaders can then, in turn, help to train others.
Photo: Courtesy of IsraAid. Syrian Refugees in Northern Jordan
In addition to setting the stage for reconciliation in post-conflict Syria, this program will help counter extremism and sectarianism, increase cooperation amongst moderates working on sectarian issues, and increase cooperation between men and women.
Tanenbaum was founded in 1992, by Dr. Georgette Bennett, to carry on the important work and vision of her husband, humanitarian interfaith leader Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, after he died suddenly of heart disease.
Known as the Human Rights Rabbi, Tanenbaum had personally worked on critical missions to help groups such as Vietnamese “boat people,” as well as Cambodian, Cypriot, Lebanese, Ugandan, Nigerian-Biafran, and Bangladeshi refugees. He was the only rabbi at Vatican Council II. He participated in the drafting of Nostra Aetate, a document which repudiated anti-Semitism and called for fraternal dialogue between Christians and Jews.
Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees (MFA), also founded by Dr. Bennett, raises funds for organizations providing direct services to Syrian war victims on the ground, facilitating partnerships between organizations working on similar issues, and planting the seeds for future stability in the region by fostering people-to-people engagement.
As a Jew, a child of Holocaust survivors, and a refugee herself, Bennett was personally compelled to become actively engaged in alleviating the terrible suffering she witnessed in our current refugee crises. She saw an opportunity for building bridges between communities that had come to each other as enemies.
Even sworn enemies can rise above politics, mutual suspicion, and hatred to work together to alleviate human suffering and to love one another. Support Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding by donating here. Support Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees by donating here.
Photo: Reji. Doves.
Read more about Beautiful Love all this week on BeautifulNow, including Beautiful Places to Love Together , Beautiful New Passions To Love & Wear Now and Can Love Save Bears? And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
Want more stories like this? Sign up for our weekly BN Newsletter, Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. Join our BeautifulNow Community and connect with the most beautiful things happening in the world right now!
Do you have amazing photos? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Competition.
