UB Professor: 'Convergence' of Major World Faiths Happens in Jerusalem
April 3, 2015
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Writing in The Baltimore Sun, Arthur Magida, writer in residence for the University of Baltimore's Klein Family School of Communications Design, says this year's convergence of major religious holidays brings to mind the future of Jerusalem—a holy city for Jews, Christians and Muslims.
"A city holy to three peoples, all joined at the theological hip, all quarreling and disputing—siblings endlessly refusing to get along," Magida writes. "Every Seder around the world tonight will culminate with L'shanah habaah b'yerushalarim!—"Next Year in Jerusalem!" But who will be in this city next year: Jews? Christians? Muslims? Who will lay claim to it as a birthright, as a soul right? Who will bask in the salvation and the freedom and the innumerable layers of divine dust and historic restitution of beloved, beleaguered Jerusalem? And who will find the salvation that Jesus offered, the freedom that Moses delivered, the spiritual ascension of Mohammed?
"Sadly, in our torn and fractured world, satisfying and equitable answers to these wrenching questions may require a major religious miracle, something that will staunch the fanatics and the racists from all sides, open hearts as Jesus urged, refashion the notion of chosen-ness so it is illuminatingly universal and blessedly ecumenical, and animate the Quran's injunction 'to know each other, not despise each other.'"
Learn more about Arthur Magida and the Klein Family School of Communications Design.