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'Sacred Spaces' Tours
| AJC visits different religious communities and participate in their worship service. This invaluable experience enables us to better understand different faith's history, culture and customs. |
| On April 12, 2009, AJC conducted a tour of annual Sikh Community Baisakhi. Baisakhi is a major Sikh holiday celebrating their birth in 1699 when they were created by Guru Gobind Singh. The tour organized by AJC Director of Interreligious Affairs Randy Brown included a worship service. |
On January 25, 2009, Los Angeles AJC's Director of Interreligious Affairs, Randy Brown and 15 AJC lay leaders participated in worship service at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica. Reverend Patricia Farris led a discussion about the service and provided a history of Methodist beliefs, which included a perspective on the church’s position on social issues.
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Father Alexei Smith and Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord led Randy Brown, Los Angeles AJC's Director of Interreligious Affairs along with members and Los Angeles religious leaders with private tours of, 'A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II And the Jewish People' at the Skirbull Cultural Center.
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| Father Alexei Smith, Director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the LA Catholic Archdiocese and Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord, Chief Ecumenical Officer of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches led 50 AJC and religious leaders on tours of the Skirball Cultural Central exhibit devoted to Pope John Paul II’s relations with the Jewish people on November 20th and December 19th. |
| The curators of the exhibition provided a retrospective on Pope John Paul II’s efforts to reconcile two millennia of tension between Catholics and Jews. John Paul II was the first papal leader to publicly express regret for the Catholic’s church past conduct towards the Jewish people. John Paul II’s 1993 oration commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising inspired the name for the exhibition |
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| Father John Bakas talks about the history of the Greek Orthodox Church as Joey Klein, co-chair of the Interreligious Affairs Committee listens. |
| Father John Bakas, Dean of Saint Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church of Los Angeles led a group of 40 AJC members on a tour of the Icons of Sinai exhibit at the Getty Musuem on February 27th. The exhibit included fascinating icons from Saint Catherine's of Sinai, a church built at the foot of what is believed to be Mount Sinai. |
| The Icons of Sinai represent the largest collection of icons in the world; most are hundreds of years old and some dated to the 6th Century CE. As Father Bakas and the Getty tour guide Zhenya Gershman explained, icons are spiritual objects that are not just paintings but actual scriptures themselves. Father Bakas described the connection between the Jewish and Christian faiths, commenting that "we are brothers and sisters" with much in common for Christianity would not exist if it were not for Judaism. |
AJC Tours St. Andrew's Church
| Father Alexei Smith, Director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the LA Catholic Archdiocese, Randy Brown, AJC Director of Interreligious Affairs, and a group of AJC leaders attended an intimate service at Saint Andrew's Russian-Greek Catholic Church in El Segundo. The 'Sacred Spaces' Tour, part of an ongoing AJC series, included an insightful dialogue regarding Catholic Jewish relations and the striking similarities from ancient Jewish tradition of the liturgy and rituals used during the service. |
Sacred Spaces Tour of St. John's Episcopal Church
| On Sunday, April 8, 2007 fifteen AJC leaders attended Easter Sunday Mass at St. John’s Episcopal Church. Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord, Chief Ecumenical Officer of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches graciously hosted our delegation and gave us a unique tour of the beautiful facility and led an interactive discussion about the history of the Episcopal Church. Our group was fascinated with the interesting liturgy, inspirational music and diverse congregation. We thought it was most fortuitous and appropriate that Passover and Easter fell on the same day and we were able to continue bridges and share in each other’s customs and traditions. |
Sacred Spaces Tour of Ba'hai Center
| On Sunday, March 18, Randy Brown led a group of fifteen AJC leaders to visit the Los Angeles Bahai Center. Although the Bahai Faith does not have official clergy, one of their community volunteers, Nick Simple, gave the group an insightful and comprehensive tour of the facility. Nick was born in Israel where his parents worked at the Bahai International Headquarters in Haifa, Israel. The Bahai faith is established in more than 190 countries and has some five million members who come from virtually every nationality, religious background, ethnic group and social class. After the orientation tour, the AJC group joined their Sunday prayer service which featured spiritual readings from almost every religious tradition. In addition, two talented musicians chanted a beautiful hymn depicting the words of the religion’s founder, Baha u llah, “The earth is one country and mankind its citizens”. The AJC members who attended truly enjoyed this unique opportunity and look forward to a continued relationship with the Bahai community. |
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