A group of teens bridged racial and religious divides in March, continuing an ongoing partnership between a local Jewish day school and a Catholic prep school.
On March 18, Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville hosted 10 students from Bishop McNamara High School. Led largely by 11 CESJDS students, the teens toured the CESJDS Upper School campus, discussed United States civics, jammed out together in the music room and connected throughout the school day.
“The importance of getting them together is for dialogue,” Sam Hardwick, McNamara’s assistant director of campus ministry, told Washington Jewish Week.
McNamara’s student body is predominantly Catholic and Black, while students at CESJDS are Jewish. Though the two student groups differ, they share more in common than either group realized, according to CESJDS’ Maharat Ruth Friedman.
“I think interfaith dialogue can sometimes seem like it’s people meeting across differences, but in fact, when you’re bringing together people of different religious backgrounds, you’re actually helping [connect] people who exist in very similar contexts — you just change the scenery,” Friedman told Washington Jewish Week.
A self-selected group of CESJDS students visited McNamara in Prince George’s County in the fall, an experience that junior Lindsay Shapiro enjoyed.
“I was really excited to come to school today because I love these people,” Shapiro said. “We met earlier in the [academic] year, and it’s been a really great day spending time with them, getting to reconnect and show them our school because they showed us theirs.”
The morning of March 18 consisted of icebreaker activities, during which some CESJDS students in the group shared their personal connections to Judaism.
“We actually took a Torah out and showed them what it looks like inside and the decorations, which was super cool to get to share because it’s such a big part of our religion, but not theirs,” Shapiro said.
Madison Bridges, a senior at McNamara, was surprised to learn that the CESJDS students spoke and read Hebrew. “I didn’t know that the Torah itself was actually written fully in Hebrew and they actually read it in Hebrew,” she said, adding that she thought the ancient text was translated into English. “I thought it was so interesting that they read it in that same language.”
Bridges said she noticed that even in conversation, CESJDS students would sometimes incorporate Hebrew words into sentences. “It’s just so fluent to them. It’s really interesting how integrated that is,” Bridges said.
During a tour, Shapiro and the other CESJDS students visited various places and classrooms around the school. “We sort of just went off of the list [we were provided], but we talked more about what our connection was with each of the places we visited, and that was super awesome because we got to share what made the school special to us,” Shapiro said.
More than simply showing students around the physical space, the tour allowed CESJDS students to think critically about their school and its offerings, Friedman said.
“I think that you learn a lot about yourself when you have to talk to someone else about you,” she said. “How do you explain what JDS is, right? And how do you talk about what unites the students? Where do we celebrate differences in religious backgrounds? What are the things that we all have in common? Where is the room for change and for variance? And what is this space? The questions that when you’re somewhere every day, you don’t think about.”
One stop was the school’s prayer space. Bridges’ first observation was that the room was set up differently than a traditional Catholic prayer space. At CESJDS, chairs form a semicircle around the Torah in the center, while churches typically have rows of pews facing an altar at the front of the room.
Bridges also noted commonalities. “The Torah, their holy book, was kept behind this closed door, which is very similar to how in Christianity, the Eucharist is kept behind the Tabernacle,” she explained.
There are other similarities as well — both student groups attend academically challenging schools in Maryland, belong to close-knit communities and share many values, according to Shapiro.
Their minority statuses mean that both groups understand discrimination and prejudice.
“A big thing that came up for us was feeling like sometimes, we are … very easily overlooked in our society because of our race,” Bridges said. “And then for them, it’s because of their religion.”
She added that both Black and Jewish community members may have experienced isolation due to their beliefs or appearances. “I think coming together and realizing that we have had that similar experience definitely helped us connect more on a deeper level because we were able to understand each other,” Bridges said.
The program, a years-long joint effort between CESJDS Head of School Rabbi Mitchel Malkus and McNamara President John Barnhardt, allowed high school students to interact with peers they might never have encountered if not for the schools’ partnership.
Shapiro said she had never spoken in depth with someone of the Christian faith.
“I’ve been in Jewish spaces my entire life: I’ve gone to Jewish camps, I’ve been at Jewish day school, I went to Jewish preschool, I do BBYO, so everything I do is with Jewish people,” Shapiro said. “I haven’t really had these types of conversations about theology and religion with people outside of my community, so that’s another reason why I wanted to participate in this program.”
Similarly, this experience was Bridges’ first time in a Jewish space. “Where I’ve grown up, there hasn’t been a large Jewish community,” Bridges said, adding that she had heard stereotypes about Judaism, but didn’t know what to believe.
Both Shapiro and Bridges said they left with “much more of an open mind” about people of different faiths.
“It’s been an amazing experience,” Shapiro said.
