By Rabbi Scott Sperling
There are moments when we can sense that history is in the making. Last month, I stood in a receiving line at Spain's famous Prado Palace so that I might shake hands with the kings of Saudi Arabia and Spain. In that experience and all that happened over the ensuing three days, I felt a part of such a historic moment. I was fortunate enough to represent the Union for Reform Judaism and our Commission on Interreligious Affairs at the Muslim World League's World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid, Spain.

This conference brought together approximately 300 delegates from every corner of the globe and who represented the broad spectrum of the world's religions. While the plenary sessions were interesting and occasionally heated and controversial, the real work of the conference took place in hallways and at our communal meals. I had conversation with an astonishing variety of people. 

At one meal, I broke bread with the assistant to the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and the assistant mufti for Russia. At another meal, I had an exceptionally intense conversation with an official of a Muslim organization in Mumbai (Bombay), India about the spiritual and emotional impact on him when he completed the haj-the traditional Muslim pilgrimage. Between sessions on the first full day of the conference, I spoke with a Shinto priest from Japan who is engaged in promoting Buddhist-Muslim dialogue.

There were also moments of discomfort and anxiety. While most of the speakers focused on the positive aspects of interreligious dialogue, some chose to lay a heavy burden of blame on Israel and Jews for the violence and upheavals in the Middle East. The Jewish people were well represented when Rabbi David Rosen, Director of the American Jewish Committee's Department for Interreligious Affairs, spoke with passion and eloquence about the need for the world to understand the Jewish people's historic and religious connections to the land of Israel.

Sparks also flew when some delegates raised the issue of the virtual absence of women at the conference. Yet, to their credit, the Saudi organizers of the program brought an articulate Spanish-Muslim woman onto the panel for the next plenary session.

Many people questioned the sincerity of the Saudis in hosting this event as they speculated about their motives, their reasons for holding the event in Spain and the potential for any substantive progress to be made in such a gathering. Yet, during the course of the conference, members of at least four different faith communities repeated to me their version of the maxim, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Each time, I enthusiastically agreed that this conference represented just such a first step.

In over thirty years of doing interfaith work, I have come to believe that even as we work with organizations and strive to shape governmental policies, real progress is also made by building one relationship at a time. To illustrate this point, I want to share a portion of an email (slightly edited) that I received from one of my new Indian-Muslim acquaintances.

Mr. Nisaar Nadiadwala wrote,

Greetings of Peace,

Indeed it was a great pleasure to meet you in Madrid. I did not know that there are so many organizations in the US that promote interfaith dialogue and interfaith understanding. This day my outlook towards the West has changed drastically and I believe that I am the one who has benefited the best from this interfaith dialogue in Madrid.

Mr. Nadiadwala and I and the hundreds of others who shared in this experience all benefited, as together we took the first step of a long, complicated but critically important journey towards understanding and reconciliation.

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