PLEASE NOTE: All of the site visits of our Interfaith Ambassadors program are currently cancelled due to the directives to practice social distancing during the Coronavirus pandemic. But we will begin to offer some online opportunities for connecting with people of different traditions and viewing their services for educational enrichment and community building. Stay tuned for more.
Dear Friends:
The IRTPJ has begun to partner with other groups and faith communities to form an emergency response network. In light of the current Coronavirus pandemic, we invite you to partner with us to help support each other’s communities during the present crisis, as well as in future times of risk and uncertainty. We are all working very hard to care for our families and our communities. Some of you may already have regular programs like food pantries, meals on wheels, and missions to the needy. While many of us are part of very solidly connected and supportive faith communities, these can often be somewhat insular and we are unable to benefit from the larger connections that the interfaith community has come to foster. As such we can be very disconnected from one another. This initiative will serve to help communities fill in the gaps where they may exist, so that we can partner to share resources to ensure the safety of each other’s communities and therefore our own, since we are all connected. It will also have the longer-reaching effect of building trust and community between our often disparate groups.
It may be that elderly or infirm members of our particular communities live outside of the geographical area that is normally served by our houses of worship, and they may be at a loss for obtaining groceries or basic necessities during times of social distancing and quarantine. While it may be difficult in times of emergency for members of their community to reach them quickly or regularly to give support and supervision or to carry out welfare visits, there may be members of other faith communities in their neighborhood who have extra supplies or the ability to drop off necessities and items that we are seeing shortages of. And what better way to engender a good relationship between communities than to have emissaries of one sharing resources and basic care and compassion with another? Many Christians have never met a Muslim or a Sikh. Many Jews or Muslims are told by members of their communities not to trust each other, due to certain perspectives of historic interactions. But to know that there are houses of worship from other communities who are willing to lend a hand and ensure the common safety of all of our communities is very valuable.
In order to take the next steps, we ask you to put us in contact with the leaders of your faith community. Many of these folks are likely already overwhelmed with work at this time, so we are not asking much of them. We just need to know if they are interested in coordinating with us during this time of need, in order to help share resources and make everyone’s lives a little easier. They can then delegate someone from your community to be a point of contact. And if you have any extra necessities and urgently needed items, we’ll put them in touch with those from other communities that are experiencing shortages in those areas. It’s just a matter of taking a moment to recognize that we will all be lacking something at some point, even if it is just a caring voice to see if the most at risk members of our communities are alright.
Please email us to indicate your intent to participate in this initiative. We’ll take the next step of putting you in touch with the organizers of this partnership. And for those who feel able, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to the IRTPJ in order to make sure that programs like this, and other extant programs, such as our Interfaith Ambassadors and our Interfaith Solidarity March, are able to continue and thrive in the coming years.
Many blessings to you and your communities and loved ones at this time.
