Interfaith Solidarity

and the luminosity of togetherness

A little more than a week ago, while staying with friends on the North Shore of Kaua’i, I was invited to attend an interfaith gathering held beneath a tent just across the highway from Kealia beach. Hosted by Pukas Ministries, there were at least two more church communities participating, along with several members of the Jewish community from the island, maybe about 40 people altogether. Everyone brought food to share —- ranging from pork fried rice to vegan lasagna, from coconut fish stew to hummus, from homemade cookies to imported halvah. A fierce wind whipped at the tent, and the darkening sky kept threatening to burst with rain. Pastor Jason and his wife Malia sang eloquent harmony accompanied by guitar and ukulele; the Jewish community was represented by Tehila, Lauren, and my friend Denise, who sang in Hebrew and English; and there were two guest speakers who took my breath away. By the end of the night, I felt transformed in more ways than I can explain.

And yet, I want to try. I want to find words for that night in hopes of keeping it alive for myself, and in hopes of offering you at least some of the consolation and elevation I experienced.

At the start, Pastor Jason offered an invocation welcoming all of us in fellowship and a shared meal; Lauren Miller, the President of the JCK (Jewish Community Kaua’i), added her open-hearted gratitude for the gathering; and then came the first speaker, Uri, an Israeli now running a small Kaua’i business (Shakalafel, a food truck combining Israeli food with Aloha spirit, located in nearby Kapa’a). Uri began by acknowledging the many values and beliefs shared by Jews and Christians, especially the fundamental commandment to treat others as you would wish to be treated, to honor the inherent dignity of all beings, to uphold life and individual freedom. Then he told his story about October 7th. As soon as he heard about the massacres underway, Uri made his way to the airport, aiming for JFK in order to convene with his quickly-reconstituting army reserve unit. He described the chaos at the El Al ticket counter in New York, the discovery of an un-uniformed woman quietly working on a laptop to ensure flights for reservists, and his arrival in Cyprus still wearing his shorts and flip-flops.

Uri explained that his unit was sent to the north of Israel, to the border with Lebanon, anticipating more attacks by Hezbollah; he emphasized that Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis are all part of a massive terror organization funded by the regime controlling Iran. He didn’t say much more about those months he spent back and forth between Israel and Kaua’i except to add mention of a woman who was continually vandalizing his food truck. “She comes two or three times a day,” he said, shrugging with what I imagined was fatigue and exasperation. “Sometimes I get a call from a voice demanding that I say ‘Free Palestine’ before they order food. I just hang up on them,” he said.

The next speaker was a blond-haired Christian woman named Donna Jollay, who stepped up to the microphone saying “Shaloha, y’all. You can take the girl out of Tennessee, but you can’t take Tennessee out of the girl.” She was the reason we were all there that night, under the tent that flapped in the wind. We held plates in our laps on folding chairs, and we listened.

Donna told us about having worked in Oak Ridge TN with the department of defense, and her uncanny history of being “in on things” during their early days. For instance, she worked with very early versions of AI. Donna wanted to explain this as background for how, having moved to Kaua’i, she ended up being an early subscriber to a newsletter created by an Orthodox rabbi in Israel who was focused on daily interconnections between the Old Testament and breaking news. Within the first year he had acquired 100 thousand subscribers, half of them Christians, and because she was a notable early subscriber, he asked Donna to help him understand this huge portion of his following. Although she loved her community service work on Kaua’i, she felt called, about eight years ago, to move to Israel to continue working with the Orthodox rabbi. She is learning Hebrew, with her unmistakable Tennessee accent. And she leads tours of the Holy Land for Christians and Jews.

There is so much more to summarize, and I wish I could make sense to you the way Donna made sense to me that night. She apologized for two thousand years of Christianity having done harm, expressing her astonishment that Jews would nevertheless be willing to forgive them. “You all are so compassionate!” she said, her face and eyes radiant with what I can only call joy. She spoke of her profound admiration for what Israel has managed to create during its brief existence relative to thousands of years of waiting. “And when 300 thousand reservists were called up in response to the atrocities of October 7^th, more than 400 thousand showed up,” she said, clearly in awe of that level of devotion to protecting their homeland. She insisted, emphatically, that good will prevail, eventually. In the face of so much awfulness, she is faithfully convinced that the promises carried by the Jews of Israel and by Jews around the world will come true.

“I see you,” Donna said. “And I see your light.”

It sounds hokey to quote her now, and I’m surely getting some things wrong in my memory. But here’s the thing: she was so wholeheartedly lit up, so sincere. I have never heard anyone express their faith and sense of fellowship with such humble passion. “I’m not here to convert you,” she announced, holding up her hand like she was making a holy vow. “Jews don’t need Christians, but Christians need Jews.” After she finished speaking, Lauren asked her what it was like to be a member of a Christian minority among a Jewish majority? And Donna said, “What amazes me most is to see the incredible capacity to grieve and be joyful in almost the same moment. I mean, I went with an ecumenical group to visit Auschwitz, where I witnessed the hugeness of their mourning. And then the Jewish members of our group began to dance.”

When I tried to thank Donna for her words, she looked me in the eye. “I came here to thank you!,” she said. “And here you are blessing me.” Pastor Jason asked us to stand together in a circle holding hands, and to pray together. “Even if we don’t always use the same language,” someone said, “we echo each other.” Pastor Matt Higa, of New Hope Kaua’i, said he wanted to apologize for not doing better, as Christians. “Kaua’i is the oldest of the Hawaiian islands. That means we are the oldest son, responsible for showing others the way; we must make amends for our mistakes and lead by example.” His voice grew even stronger. “We stand with Israel,” he said. “And in my congregation, if anyone doesn’t agree with that, they are welcome to leave.”

I thought of one of my favorite Hebrew folk songs about welcoming strangers into our tent, sitting together in peace, but I was too choked up to sing it. Because I realized that all of this was what I would have imagined the world would choose as the most obvious response to what happened on October 7^th. This adamant and collective commitment to stand up for human dignity and freedom and the beliefs we hold in common. To renounce violence and evil and misogyny and destruction and terror. To make vows of righteous compassionate unity and support. I saw tears in the eyes of many others in our circle. And I felt my heart lifted up in ways I cannot adequately describe --- as though I were being embraced, floated, bathed and healed in lovingkindness. On a small island surrounded by the wild blue Pacific, I heard so much of what I needed to hear, and I didn’t even know how much I needed it until I heard it.