Elijah takes pride in the projects it has achieved to date and seeks to build upon them in the future. Following is a list of 8 projects, four global and four local to Jerusalem with global outreach and involvement.
Global Projects
The Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders (EBWRL) brings together some of the world’s most prominent religious leaders in ongoing personal encounter, study, development of friendship and modeling of interfaith relations for the broader community. EBWRL includes such luminaries as H.H. the Dalai Lama, Patriarch Bartholomew, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Sri Sri Ravi Sankar, Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric and many others. The Dalai Lama has described this group as the most intimate and profound group working in the field of interfaith, on account of the special methodology that combines scholarship with encounter of leaders, and that privileges intimate exchanges and building of personal relations. EBWRL has been meeting bi-annually for 14 years and has engaged in projects of response to contemporary issues between meetings. Elijah leaders seek to take their example to their community and the reach to the community is the heart of the development plan they, and the Elijah Institute, seek to implement.
- Convening of Regional leaders
Elijah’s leaders have decided to replicate the successful formula that has served them for many years on a regional level, thereby generating a movement of religious leaders worldwide under the slogan “Sharing Wisdom – Fostering Peace”. Accordingly, they will be working in various locations globally to replicate the successes of Elijah in developing bonds across religious diversity based on learning, understanding, spirituality and friendship, all with an eye to serving the community at large and extending the message of friendship and collaboration to their communities. Several pilot projects are being planned in different regions, that will implement Elijah methodology, in conjunction with local religious leaders, academic institutions and civil bodies. As the pilots prove successful, Elijah plans to scale its work to become a global movement, that it calls “The global hope movement”.
- Research projects
A key to Elijah’s success and its unique methodology is the bringing together of the finest scholarship with highest leadership. Elijah scholars have undertaken multiple common research and reflection projects, through collaborative interreligious think tanks. These have led to a series of academic publications. Research lies at the heart of teaching activities and of facilitated dialogue activities at the various levels at which it is applied. Elijah seeks to continue developing these research projects. Specific projects at the heart of our program to date, and that we seek to further develop include:
- Religious Genius – The study of outstanding individuals, who can be inspiring across religious traditions. This is an original area of study and defines new areas for interfaith engagement.
- Theologies of religions – The study of the root attitudes of diverse religions to other religions, in an attempt to identify the root causes of violence and intolerance and to develop from within the religious and theological resources needed for advancing harmony between religions on internal religious grounds.
- Study of mystical and spiritual life – the spiritual life is where religions come closest and where they can inspire each other most. Collaborative research into the mystical and spiritual life anchors interfaith engagement in the depth of religions’ spiritual experience.
- The Global Study and Dialogue Program
Elijah has established an extensive network of relationships with scholars, religious leaders and religious communities globally. Study and dialogue lie at the heart of this network. Elijah seeks to regularly convene this network through an online platform that enables study, dissemination, dialogue across parts of the network and interactive learning. The platform will bring together different parts of Elijah’s network, and will allow the network to grow further into a global movement, through adding new partners to this study initiative. Elijah leaders and scholars will offer regular teachings to the entire network, and members of the network will cement relations of exchange and dialogue across the network. The proposed theme for the launch is “affirming unity in a world torn by separatism”. The theme will apply religious and theological resources to contemporary social concerns.
Elijah has been running a summer school program for the past 20 years. The summer school program allows students of religion, religious leaders and interfaith activists to deepen their interreligious experience, to discover its theological roots, and to receive a training in the theoretical and practical dimensions of interreligious relations in Jerusalem, a location that features unparalleled opportunities for historical and spiritual encounter with religious communities, their memory, and hopes. The summer school brings together different members of the Elijah network. It draws on members of the EBWRL and on Elijah scholars, thus making available to the next generation of interfaith students and activists all the riches that Elijah has been blessed with. It is thus the concrete training ground that ties Elijah’s different bodies, and that unites Jerusalem and various global localities in a vision of sharing wisdom and generating hope.
In this age, when friendships across faiths and nations are lacking in much of the globe and interfaith movements are characterized by outward reaching action, the Global House of Friendship and Hope will go to the core of the spiritual life and the life of prayer of faith traditions. It will thereby position Assisi as a capital of interfaith friendship, radiating peaceful messages across Europe and around the world.
At the Global House of Friendship and Hope, the faithful can expand their sense of devotion, while broadening hearts and minds to other religions, recognizing deeper spiritual commonalities. Youth and adults alike can discover a spiritual experience and deeper appreciation of nature and of humanity. And all can return to their homes with broadened knowledge, fuller appreciation of the spiritual life and greater appreciation towards reaching out to others in friendship.
PTIJ is a monthly interfaith gathering that has been meeting for over ten years. What began as an initiative to bring people of different faith traditions together has grown into a vibrant community of friendship and shared spiritual life. In the heart of Jerusalem, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and people of other backgrounds come together in prayer, song, and reflection—standing side by side to seek peace, justice, and the well-being of the city and the world.
