Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 14, 2014

Sometime during World War II, Manchester clergy leaders started holding an annual interfaith service near Thanksgiving Day to strengthen the community's spirit.

The yearly tradition ended more than 20 years ago, but clergy leaders are holding an interfaith service this month with hopes of again making it an annual event.

Rabbi Richard Plavin has been with the Beth Sholom B'nai Israel Synagogue in Manchester for 36 years and remembers the previous interfaith services. He offered to host the upcoming Nov. 23 service at his synagogue.

"I always thought it was a shame [it stopped] and I thought I would give it a try now," Plavin said. "I reached out to a couple of other clergy people in town who I had a relationship with and they agreed. We are all working together on it."

One of Plavin's colleagues is Pastor Scott Cady of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Manchester.

"We don't want to be in opposition to each other, we don't want to ignore each other and we don't want to misunderstand each other," Cady said. "We want to be partners locally and globally. You have to find different ways to start doing that."

This year's interfaith service will be a step toward such partnership in Manchester, where a variety of religions are represented. In addition to the many Methodist, Baptist, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish representatives who plan to attend the service, members of the new Bayt Ul-Mamur Mosque will also be present.

"It's part of a movement some of us here in town are working on to recognize the diversity in Manchester and getting all those various, diverse types of groups back to realizing they are also part of the community of Manchester," said Phil Susag, an interfaith service planning committee member who attends South United Methodist Church.

"This is a move to go back to where it was in those earlier days," said Susag, who is not a clergy member. "It was very much a community thing, and in this day and age there's more variety than there were in those days."

The interfaith service is not only a time to join together, meet new people and understand different backgrounds, but also a chance to do good. The service will also help support the Manchester Area Conference of Churches, which used to host the event.

See the rest here:

Manchester Clergy Hosting First Interfaith Service In More Than 20 years

Category: Synagogue
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