WE DON'T NEED MORE inter-faith meetings.
What we need are INTRA-faith meetings.
OK, I realize Jews need to work with non-Jews for the betterment of all.
Especially now when anti-Semitism is on the rise and even the Amish are vocally condemning us. The Amish!
BDS is bad enough.
Extreme Islam is a plague - not only on Jews and Israel but all the world.
Yes, we do need INTER-faith discussions and inter-racial ones and inter-everything else, too.
But most of all, we need INTRA-faith talks.
Talks between the Orthodox of all stripes - modern, hasdic, Zionist and anti-Zionist - and "the rest" of Jewry: Conservative, Humanistic, Reform, and the fallen away, and never present agnostics.
It might even be necessary to have an intra-faith conversation between converts and those who, mostly due to their own ignorance, denigrate converts and cause them pain. That would necessarily include rabbis as well as three day (sometimes "three hour") Jews.
Today, in Israel, there are skirmishes between the rigid rabbis and the revolting rabbis. The battlefields are marriage and conversions; religion as government.
Unfortunately, Jews at both ends of the spectrum are heavily dug into their positions; there seems no way to bridge the gap, but if we are to survive our factionalism we must at least make an effort to talk - AND LISTEN - to one another.
1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2: a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something {political agnostics}
: one who believes that there is no deity
