The VOICE of Inspiration
By Rabbi Rick Sherwin
The Divine Charge “to love” appears three times in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses: (1) Love your neighbor as yourself, (2) Love the stranger who comes to you for help, (3) Love your Eternal God. A closer reading of the text reflects love not as emotion, but as the manifestation of awareness and caring action.
The call "to love" sets the foundation for INTERFAITH programs dedicated to understanding each other, creating shared dreams of a better world, and cooperating to make those dreams come true. The foundation of love - any kind of love - begins with face-to-face dialogue.
The element of loving responsibility underlies the MULTIFAITH call for us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, to protect each other proactively and – where necessary – to jointly respond with prophetic passion in word and deed.
In Central Florida, many faith and heritage communities worked to create a strategy to promulgate shared values, to advocate for justice with one voice, and to proactively watch for signs of inflammatory messages and speech that incites political and social attack, especially in social media.
INTERFAITH face-to-face relations are imperative, and MULTIFAITH shoulder-to-shoulder advocacy is vital!
I “love” the communal call to be proactive!
Rabbi Rick Sherwin, a graduate of UCLA, was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Rabbi Rick’s passion is filling spiritual services and interfaith educational programs with creativity, relevance, dialogue, and humor.
