folks in the community were disturbed by the the attack on the tree of life synagogue in pittsburgh and then only last week the f b i released hate crime statistics showing that in the past year hate crime nationwide has increased seventeen percent this is spurred a great deal of conversations in social media between neighbors conversations with town leaders about what we should be doing as well as conversations with with religious leaders in the communities i'm joined today by four members of the belmont religious council it's of who are faith leaders or members of their faith communities to talk about responding to hatred and intolerance and the unique focus of this year's interfaith special idea about how to use this year's interfaith service to respond to some of of what's disturbing folks i had just come back from philadelphia where i was closing up my hundred year old mothers it was fine apartment and having to get rid of furniture and i was incredibly pleased that high ass what was originally the hebrew immigration immigrant aid society where i was going to take all of the furniture because they were twenty one refugees coming from ukraine and the connection with my family's own past where they helped immigrants refugees come over and the orientation of high ass it's that they say now we used to save refugees because they were jewish now we do because we are jewish resume which is amazing and i had just given this furniture when there was the murders in pittsburgh and somebody shouting about hyatt's because they're one of the seven organizations that the government supports in re settling refugees or so when i came back the question was coming into the city  people do people really want to feel like they can participate or do something or and it was there were two things one was it was a little hard to find a time for a vigil in belmont there was one in arlington there was one downtown and the other was that having come through the civil rights movement i have the woman's march i feel like i didn't just want to stand a vigil for her i get by saying we shall overcome one more time without feeling like it's going to go somewhere thought people want to do something and i actually was on facebook that fair number of people posted this saying about you are not required to complete the task but neither may you decline to participate and that's from what's called the sayings of fathers from the tom and i thought that's that's the thing to have feel like you can do something and in my temple and here i feel surrounded by people who do great things do fabulous things and i think you know what can i do and i thought well i can do something everybody can do something and to intentionally i so i said what if we intentionally say to people everybody who wants to choose to do something write it down and when we take a collection in this is what this is what i did right and this will be before ocus this will be the focus of this year's interview at the well this year's interfaith service had already been planned with a focus on earth and sometimes i think if we had only one task to choose i would choose saving the earth and then we have time to deal with the other stuff but so it was added on to something that has been planned and is incredibly important speakers and things like that the other piece was that the collection the financial collection is going to be taken to give the money to high us ok all along with let me much there's you know the things that get lost maybe you can tell us a little bit about that so i started a ministry here about five years ago and quickly became the vice president the religious council and then quickly became the president so this is my  years as president and we've had one at least the past five years i know it's gone a tradition that dates back well before i arrived in fact the religious council self was founded in the fifty's as a way to foster understanding and build relationships between the different houses of worship in belmont and also according to their charter to provide spiritual and moral guidance for the town which we now see as  you know being a voice for understanding hope compassion and justice and there are times when we take that moral is defined very broadly with guidance very seriously and  as one of those times and which as you said we changed the format last year used to be a worship service that incorporated different parts of the different faith traditions are participating but we thought last year with what was going on with refugees and the hate those being directed towards that we wanted to share immigrant story since we had three people sharing the good stories so this year with the united nations report on global warming and we thought this is an important topic to lift up we voted three people peter very passionate about the issue and so we have this planned out when the shooting took place and we knew that we needed to respond and janet had the lovely idea of writing down and bring in the offering and we also thought that you know it's really really tragic that the reason this man targeted chief lesson agog was the credible work they were doing it wasn't because of you know it was it was because of their participation in it because of resettling refugees and there were there are a lot of complex reasons for why he thought there was a sinister plan to  but it's we thought we should take the collection for us and that they really that it really is incredible we're going to travel organization and terrible that this is how it's getting it publicity but we decided that any cash that would be put in the plates and that we don't actually usually take a counteroffer even during these we decided we would take a monetary offer in addition to you're probably right so listening to joe talk just a minute ago about his journey with the belmont religious council i can just say i can foresee my future because he came to me this past year and asked me to sit have a small behind community here in the area we actually do a lot of things with neighboring communities as well but the faith itself is actually fairly even now which is why many people probably haven't heard of it this year we're celebrating the god that there is one god one creator i believe in the oneness of mankind that all men and women of every nationality every creed every walk of life is all equal in the sight of god and have  the same soul and the oneness of religion so we believe in what's all progressive revelation where the same god has sent down manifestations at different times during history to bring the same foundational teaching but to bring maybe new social teachings for that day such as today followed by how it was teachings that really talk about abolishing prejudice and that is really what we're talking about today so important  so i mean i'm curious your thoughts met many americans have misconceptions about the muslim faith and maybe you can talk a little bit about about your thoughts about that  involved i came living i came to live in belmont about twenty years ago and kind of was socializing with just my community for the longest a bit older and they could understand what was going on and that really affected me in the one thing that i start thinking as i do my neighbors know who i am do they know what have i done any taken off into a separate line but my four year old my four year old would be on the terrorist list and so we had to go through extra screening and we would come back after a twenty one hour flight two am in the morning and we're sitting there at the airport because we're getting to going through the extra screening because my four year old is on the terrorist has to be so disconcerting very very so why are we why we're going through this because some bad people did some bad stuff i mean that's about all i could tell him at that moment and from then on there's just been a and got really horrible hate mail about two years ago but the the most interesting thing that's coming out of that is we had all the communities around  and so i want to share that you would think that oh you know just going and saying supporting people that's just you know i'm not doing much but that a lot of kids were scared to go like i had a member their parents calling me  from wall to wall on earth makes a lot of difference makes a lot of difference i think just recently i think it was it yesterday or two days ago a good elementary school girl in  go received a note in her locker saying i will kill you and before that she had received a note saying you are terrorist ten year old that pain that really upsets me is the kids when the kids are doing it to other kids that's where i see feel like where are we missing what are we missing and what can we do to change that before it gets too late before it comes to seeing it's so difficult to think about about solutions you know we as individuals may not be able to solve intolerance and hatred but but i'm curious you're you were talking earlier about this notion that that that even even if we can't solve even if we can't solve the problem we can we can still we can still do something you put you put it in much better words than i can and i ask you to explain your thoughts on that a little bit more this was a statement from our religious writings that says you are not required to complete the task but neither may you desist from it so so i'm not sure none of us are expected to solve the problem but but we have to do so we have going to be very much on this earth very long that's a because i think we're going to probably do it selves and but we are not developed very much and there is a part of us that is primitive and that says me and  mean i grew up in a town that was very much like watertown actually a lot of our medians catholics and greeks and jews and kind of middle class working class in pennsylvania when by law we said ten verses of the bible and said the lord's prayer every day in school at school by law i've ever public school at a public school and there was a we and it was a white christian country and the rest of us were there i mean we were tolerated they didn't realize that but it was clear to a lot of people who the we is so to make a difference it's kind of complicated for for some people and in the two thousand year old man record  of mel brooks and her writer carl reiner says to mel brooks is supposed to be this two thousand year old man when you lived back in the caves did you have any like songs or anthems nationally  everybody can go to hell except cave to forty  two and we live with that in a very very painful way and don't listen and respect each other and people feel not listened to joe can i can i ask you to talk a little bit about your hopes for you know how how the interfaith service and per perhaps perhaps even large of the bomb or religious council can can help a lot of really wonderful things i can't remember the name of organization of the moment but he was talking about how it's not about you know jews versus christians or muslims versus  you know christians and jews it's about pluralists people who want to coexist and be together and versus extremists who want their worldview with their to be dominant and to dominate others and so part of the we i feel like is this creating a sense of belonging of we are the people who want to build a cooperate if plural future together another thing i was thinking is it's not that being part of the solution isn't a chore it's not this obligation at that one of things i found when i started interfa ministry was i found a community and a group of friends that were from different walks of life but had that vision and so it's it's good to be part of these communities and to do to do good things it's not a chore it enriches your life and i tell my congregation when i preach you know interfaith work is not about becoming less christian so that we can get along with others it's about being more christian because in order to really love your neighbors you have to understand and respect your neighbors as they are who they are so this isn't about you know playing down our christianity so that we can get along with others it's about living in only our faith in a way that brings us into a plural future and one which of compassion and justice and so i think that when you participate in a religious council or even when you participate you come on sunday you'll see this community of people bonded together by really strong things really strong of values and ideals that cut across our faith traditions and i want to say that our differences are meaningless or arbitrary like this really important differences between each religion but you'll find a moral core and when you're when you open yourself to being  when i wrote my letter about the tree of life shooting i had mentioned that you know one of the sad realities about this world is that someone can destroy much faster than we can all create but there are so many more people who want to faith i ask you to talk a little bit about about that the role of tolerance in the muslim community that i think there is a long history of tolerance of the muslim community and and how that might help help you life you know in the koran it says that if you hurt one muslim it's like you have killed the entire humanity so with those values i don't it's very hard for any of us to to see these crimes and just do not avoid you know that these are definitely fate and what and unfortunately the sad part is i think there's a lot of us voicing that but it's not getting picked up by the media and in the media speaking up all the other way says but not these voices so i actually want to command that bottom line media is actually doing this interview and trying to bring this out because so often this gets missed and  d and so you know i just wanted to add to the fact that i think there's a rule that i don't know how we do it but we need to step up and figure out how we get the media to show a more balanced view and the more the reality on the ground and maybe the one of the two percent that are hijacking the religion and giving this wrong impression  that are hijacking them or attempting to or whatever i think you find value from within within the christianity however if if a white christian man shoots people we say he the idea that that a religion that religion exists outside of interpretation is it's kind of like the constitution of their son but you have to interpret a document you have to interpret a sacred scripture and people who have hatred in their heart or want to justify dominance or persecution are going to look and try to find and interpret the religion in a way to persecute others we see that across and then those who want to work on compassion and love and unity find this very thing think ten fold in theirs in their sacred scriptures and so a lot of it is about how ask you to talk a little bit about yeah so i know we're talking a lot about intolerance and that and you know the opposite of that word is tolerance but i actually like to think of the opposite of intolerance as love  really we're talking about love and we're loving each other deeply and when you ask me about my community you know where i was talking earlier about having been in belmont for some time and then coming to this bit of a realization that oh my god that's my neighbors might not know me so i had almost a little bit of an opposite situation myself i had never lived in a community where i looked like everyone else i grew up actually  asia so most of my childhood was in seoul south korea and then when i moved to boston to go to college i settled in chelsea was predominantly hispanic and so moving to bow my i had a one year old baby and i was pregnant with my nd we said well where's the best community for our young family and we chose belmont and i was in culture shock because i looked like everyone else and they made assumptions about me that weren't necessarily true so after after a little while after a few months of like what do i do about this and how do i grow a community how do i help build a community that i want my children to grow up in and not having a lot of the highs around to you know kind of go into a congregation are have sort of a religious community to fit into very quickly i decided to go to my neighbors and i started by knocking on doors and inviting people over and making them something and getting to know them and i kind of gave myself a little slap on the wrist because i came into this community thinking oh my gosh i everybody here is so you know bland and i look like everyone and shame on me absolutely not as soon as you meet somebody and get to know them even for five minutes even for ten minutes they're a person a whole person right and so you can find things to love about them immediately so i think when we are talking about religious intolerance or you know or are so many of the things that are falling apart that the media chooses to focus on  in this in this world i think really what we can come back that way is love and understanding so the minute you decide to take that step and get to know someone just for five minutes or for a lifetime you will find a way to love them very quickly that's the world i want my kids to live and that's the community that i want to build here and i love that i got to build that  and so so you know i i hear i hear a little bit about what are people are talking about for from your experience do you feel that  service after this on the non visual week three hundred people just from the community showed up for that service that's actually can we talk a little bit about that i meant to ask about that i was unable to that i think that somebody from the larger jewish community one of this kind of nonprofit central organizations suggested this thing i think was called what service so it's quite quite something and people feel grateful to if you say to them here's something you can do or would like to we would like to see you the are you  i think it's not then so over time which is also led the way to something that the school district is doing how to deal with religious holidays you know what used to be what to do in jewish holidays but now it's to was scheduled on in ramadan each day and they give us these dates two years in advance which is so great because i could negotiate with them and say i could remove this a little bit so now they're in the school they found a room and mr one of their principals helped them get a space and talked with them and very very supportive on the other hand if this is my youngest son so i had two boys go through the school system part of it was me not that informed to make the ask but also i felt like in the high school there was still a lot of  that needs to be done and i think they're starting to do that i see the diversity week we did that last year we went in as a panel and talked about the different faiths so i think the work is starting but we there's a lot o average years ago and i said i think there's one on every block and they said what's the tell like and i said bill is a white christian in many ways and in its values it's something changes when somebody you care about is hurt right so that in the middle school if somebody says here's a child in my care that is hurt by something we're much more likely to actually do something than kind of from don't know like belmont is waiting for that actually and i and i have to commend like the belmont religious council even before it was for really pushing it you know some of those relationships within the community and very much so with the school you know with the school community we talk about the holidays that are now printed on the back of you know school calendar and this is the st year of the thing that of the behind the holidays as well and so for the handful of you know students that are part of the by community it means a lot yes it will really means a lot and it also helps them you know identify personally outwardly within there with america groups so that it's wonderful to hear that you know your son has found a group that's willing to pray with my daughter also a china has found interfaith group that now comes to our home every week we called they're called the junior youth spiritual empowerment program and that's legit you can google it but yes so they they get together and they talk about their spiritual  superpowers and they figure out what the community needs and they decide for themselves how they want to serve the community with the capacities that they have within themselves and at this time in their life you know being before high school and it's such a precious beautiful time and it's also kind of weird kind of messy and i actually think about humanity and that side is right now you're talking about you know we've been here for not that long but i see us right now as an adolescent adolescent phase you know spiritually and that what we're doing right now that little bit that we have to each person individually collectively we're going to become the incredible adult you know world that's just going to go yeah that's going to actually bring peace fun earth and that sounds corny but i  definitely adding new flavors to the belmont community and if you could do more of that i mean the feed that was made possible by somebody decided that they didn't have to charge subsidize that willing to subsidize the rand that allowed t stay again it's a very isolating i mean as an immigrant i can speak right from experience to come from a completely different country and to make a home in a country so when we do  sense that so so weak so so we have show up for sure but an opportunity for for those who are non jewish to be become more familiar with there are jewish neighbors there is no substitute for sunday school coloring different scenes from islamic history and you're like oh we have the same sunday school kind of style coloring that we post on bulletin boards you know the common humanity and likewise goin to the temple center i can't think of any faith that doesn't welcome you to come especially if you make arrangements in time  all of it and you know we're all happy to share faith and that's the best way to learn now that the great thing about the interfaith thanksgiving service is that we're all together we've planned something together and you have representatives from a really wide array and belmont you know from catholic and mormon to muslim and behi and  rabbi who isn't seen diego right now but he will be coming back this weekend and be attending the service will lead us in hebrew and english and then different people will be sharing their