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Shabi Elashvili & Adeeb Zoughby
On Wednesday, 21st of April, we held our second session of the Tel Aviv Youth Interfaith Encounter group at the Hillel offices in the campus of Tel Aviv University, in order to discuss the different cultures and religions around us, get acquainted with our neighbors from these religions and learn to know them more closely. Our group, that is in its first stages of formation, did not include many participants, but in spite of that we had representation to each of the three religions - Islam, Judaism and Christianity - which contributed a lot to the interest we had in our joint conversation, as a result of the different and so varied perspectives we had.
The relaxed and flowing conversation that was created there dealt first with some theological issues, such as the paradox in the Trinity belief and the question whether is has or doesn't have a logical solution. Some participants tried to give it a rational dimension through the distinction between the self one existence of God and the triple nature of God's revelation to the human being, while others claimed that this paradox is essentially built into the Christian belief and any attempt to solve it distances the desired - God's reality HAS to be mysterious, paradoxical and incomprehensive from its very definition. We compared to this the perception of the infinity of God in the Jewish Kabala that reduces and manifests even in the restricted world. Then we moved to discuss the common denominator that exists between Judaism and Islam, which makes them present the same disagreements with the Christian perception of God, although Islam does not negate that Jesus was a prophet.
Later our conversation went to historical paths, touching a bit on the Hashmonaic period and a bit on the Roman regime and some influential events such as moving of power centers and different conquests and their religious impacts on the events in the Holy Land. During the meeting we learned a little to know each other and touched the different occupations of some of the participants.
We scheduled the next meeting to Monday, 3rd of May, at 20:00 in the office of Hillel at the students' dormitories of Tel Aviv University.
Shabi Elashvili & Adeeb Zoughby
---------------------------------------------------------------------The Interfaith Encounter Association
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Phone: +972-2-6510520
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Board: Sr. Karmela Farrugia, Chair, Sheikh Muhammad Kiwan, Vice-Chair, Mr. Shlomo Alon, Vice-chair, Sheikh Ali Birani Rabbi Dov Maimon Ms. Ibtisam Mahamid Deacon Eng. Jirias Mansour Sheikh Tawfiq Salama
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