Three years ago, I agreed — reluctantly — to join a local interfaith clergy trip to Israel. It was late in the year, my workload was heavy and I barely knew the other participants. I went mostly because the trip leaders were persistent, and because it offered a chance to see my daughter who lives there. 

It was not, in any sense, good timing; yet the experience ended up reshaping my rabbinate and igniting a wave of interfaith work that continues to this day.

Since that journey, our group’s partnership has expanded far beyond what any of us could have imagined. Together, we’ve created interfaith learning at the JCC. We have organized pulpit swaps, with pastors preaching in my synagogue and me speaking from their pulpits, and we have launched classes taught by us as a team at Mercy University. We have stood together at vigils for Ukraine since the Russian invasion and for Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks, and we have issued joint letters to elected officials on shared communal concerns. 

What began as a trip became a network — and eventually, a community.

But the turning point came not during a tour or lecture, but at a hotel bar, late one night during the Israel trip, when I asked the group the question I once asked Father John Ashman, a friend from back home: “Can you tell me your calling story?”

As each clergy member described the moment they felt summoned into spiritual leadership, I found myself listening more deeply than I had in years. I realized that while I had come to show my colleagues my land, something different was being asked of me. I needed to stop talking and start witnessing.

The spiritual discipline of listening

Our tradition teaches that love of neighbor begins with seeing the other clearly. The verse “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is often interpreted as requiring self-love as a prerequisite. But the verse may be demanding something more expansive: the capacity to understand the lived experience of another.

Hillel distilled the Torah into one principle: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary” (Shabbat 31a). Christian tradition echoes this call in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘Hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… [God] causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:44–45).

Reading the famous words of the Sermon on the Mount at the historical site overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Pastor Erwin Lee Trollinger’s personal connection to the verses made his delivery all the more powerful:

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (4-7).

In that moment, I understood that interfaith work is not simply about building alliances. It is about moral imagination — the willingness to let someone else’s sacred narrative illuminate your own. When we are open to what is sacred to others, we find what is most meaningful to ourselves. 

Why interfaith partnerships matter for Jewish communal life

Across the Jewish communal landscape, we are navigating an era of volatility. Extreme polarization, rising antisemitism and the emotional aftershocks of the Oct. 7 attacks have shaken our institutions and our people.

In such times, interfaith partnerships are not luxuries. They are strategic necessities. Jewish tradition has long recognized this. The Mishnah teaches: “We support the poor of the gentiles along with the poor of Israel, visit their sick, bury their dead — for the sake of peace” (Gittin 5:8). And in Avot 3:2, Rabbi Hanina reminds us that a stable society prevents a world where “each person would swallow their neighbor alive.”

Listening — truly listening — fosters allies, builds trust and strengthens the civic fabric that protects minority communities.

We now find ourselves in a month filled with luminous holidays: Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa. Each tradition expresses spiritual truth through the metaphor of light.

Hanukkah calls upon us to place the light of our beliefs in the window for all to see, unafraid.

Christmas spotlights hope born in vulnerability.

Kwanzaa’s candles represent unity, creativity and communal responsibility.

These celebrations remind us that no single community owns the light, and that light grows when shared. Hope expands when passed from hand to hand. The world becomes more navigable when illuminated not by one tradition, but by many.

For Jewish communal leaders and philanthropists, this season offers an invitation to invest in the relationships that bring more light to the world.

Interfaith partnerships strengthen our institutions, expand our coalitions, deepen our moral commitments and create resilience in times of crisis.

Three years after that unexpected trip, the most important lesson I carry is that interfaith work is not about diluting our differences. It is about showing up with clarity, listening with humility and building with purpose. It requires trust, respect, kindness, hard work and the courage to hear someone else’s story.

As the poet Amanda Gorman wrote: “Even as we grieved, we grew. / Even as we hurt, we hoped. / Even as we tired, we tried.”

This is our charge now: to grow, hope and try together.

In this season of many lights, may we continue reaching across pews and pulpits, across sanctuaries and synagogues, across faiths and neighborhoods, to illuminate the world we share. Perhaps the most transformative commitment we can make is the simplest: I will hear your story. And in hearing it, I will let your light expand my own.

Rabbi Jay Stein is the rabbi of Greenburgh Hebrew Center in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. Rabbi Stein is the author of Found in Thought, an adjunct professor at Mercy College and a police chaplain for the Village of Dobbs Ferry.