The Interfaith Youth Core was founded with mission of building bridges of mutual understanding between people’s of different faith backgrounds through social action or tikkun olam. It’s a hard task, especially given the current world climate where we constantly hear the media and our political leaders speak of religion as a divisive force in the world. Yes, we live in a world where, unfortunately, religiously motivated crimes still occur - the desecration of a cemetery, the burning of a house of worship, or the senseless act of attacking someone merely because they stand out as different. We hear how Jews and Muslims exist in a constant state of animosity as evidenced by the failure to achieve peace in the Middle East. We hear Buddhists and Hindis characterized in dismissive tones casting them as alien or foreign. What we don’t hear of enough is the work of organizations like the Interfaith Youth Core who seek to change the conversation about religion to be a positive one, one for social and moral change in our world. An organization which is certainly going places, the URJ is a friend of both the IFYC and its director Eboo Patel, having met with them here at the RAC and inviting them to present a workshop just last month at the URJ’s Biennial Convention in San Diego. Listen to a segment recently aired on Good Morning America about the Interfaith Youth Core and how together we can not only change the conversation about religion, but we can build bridges of mutual understanding to help peoples of faith find the similarities within one another.