Oregon Humanities

Sharing Meals, Sharing Faith

An interfaith women’s group seeks to inspire understanding, one potluck dish at a time.

Eric Gold

A pecan apple salad can’t save the world, but a group of Portland-area women are exploring how a shared meal might bring about more understanding among three great religions.

Between Women, a monthly potluck gathering of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish women in Portland, was inspired in part by the interfaith peacemaking groups Jan Elfers observed on a trip with fellow activists to Israel and Palestine in 2006. Back in Portland, Elfers, of the Christian organization Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, teamed with Sherry Fishman of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland and Sanaa Sammour of the Muslim Educational Trust (MET) to begin a potluck group, which now has about a dozen members.

“Women somehow have an ability to develop deep relationships and cut through some of the politics,” Elfers says. The group had its first meeting in July 2008 and has met every four to six weeks ever since, over date rolls and mandelbrot (a Jewish biscotti) in various members’ homes. The potlucks eschew pork, alcohol, and the mixing of milk and meat, says MET’s Rania Ayoub, to respect everyone’s dietary traditions.

At the first meeting, Ayoub and some of the other Muslim women made a presentation about common misconceptions of the role of women in Islam. “Muslims view Adam and Eve as equal partners,” Ayoub says the women told the group, “to be rewarded or punished in the same way.” The women have also discussed the word jihad, which is often translated as “holy war.” “In reality,” Ayoub says, “jihad means you’re striving within yourself. If you want to do something wrong, and you decide not to, that’s jihad.”

Fishman found it easy to empathize with what her Muslim friends were saying, based on her childhood experiences. “Even though I was an American kid,” she says, “I grew up in a situation to have been the ‘other.’ ”
Elfers says she hopes to show the group “not all Christians are judgmental and ‘holier than thou.’ ”

Subsequent meetings have revolved around coinciding holidays and other topics, with each participant taking a turn as the presenter. The women have attended a Jewish theater production and addressed classes at Portland Community College. They are planning a cookbook of their collected recipes, which they hope to sell to benefit the community at large.

Elfers remembers a moment when, as the group sat around a table drinking tea, someone asked one of the Muslim women about her hijab. “She took off her scarf and showed us how they do that in the morning,” Elfers says. Such intimacies can lead to a change in perspective that might reach beyond the dining room. Elfers believes Between Women strengthens her faith as she honors another woman’s, adding, “Our relationship changes the way we read headlines, how we listen to the news.”