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On Nov. 29, 1962, Yo-Yo Ma and his sister Yeou-Cheng Ma were preparing to take the stage at a benefit concert for what was to become the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

With many luminaries of politics and the arts in attendance, Leonard Bernstein introduced the duo with a description of the scene.

“Now here’s a cultural image for you to ponder as you listen: a 7-year-old Chinese cellist playing old French music for his new American compatriots,” Bernstein said.

Fifty-five years later, much has changed for Ma, but Bernstein’s depiction of the cellist as a symbol of multiculturalism still rings true. Ma remains one of the world’s most prominent symbols of cultural openness and global collaboration.

At 10:45 a.m. Friday, Aug. 10, in the Amphitheater, Ma will deliver the final morning lecture of Week Seven’s theme, “The Arts and Global Understanding.”

Andrew Russeth will speak at 10:45 a.m. Thursday, August 9, in the Amphitheater on why art, in all its various forms, is essential to everyday life.

Russeth is an art critic rooted in New York and the co-executive editor of ARTnews. Russeth’s blog, “16 Miles of String” has been supported by the Warhol Foundation of Arts Writers Grant Program.

“In this week focused on art and cross-cultural understanding, Russeth turns our attention to the visual arts, using contemporary art on the Amp stage,” said Matt Ewalt, Institution chief of staff, “much like Silkroad has done with music throughout the week — to help us explore examples and consider the impact of cross-cultural artistic collaboration and dialogue.”

Russeth will be giving a broad overview as he discusses the recent visual arts that have caught his eye and the attention of many others.

“I will be looking at issues of migration and refugees through contemporary arts,” Russeth said. “Also, I will be looking historically at a few artists’ practices.”

Russeth also plans to touch on cultural appropriation within the art world.

“The hope is to throw out a bunch of interesting things that are important to me and the art world,” Russeth said. “If the takeaway could be ‘Art is really important, and it can play a real role in bridging communities and making people understand each other,’ that would be very exciting to me.”

There is so much art being made, and knowing that there is always “something new to see and learn” is what keeps Russeth excited about his work.

Russeth believes social media helps publicize art as it places it on a public platform.

“People used to have to wait until the latest copy of an art magazine to see new art,” Russeth said. “Now, people can go on Instagram as an art show is happening and immediately see photographs of works. Of course, that’s not the full experience; nothing compares to looking at a work in person. But in terms of sheer information and accessibility, we never have been living in a time like now and social media is really instrumental in that.”

According to Russeth, the art world is bigger; however, it is also more competitive.

“I will always take more art and more artists over a few artists,” Russeth said.

To anyone hoping to be an art critic, Russeth advises to “see a ton of art, talk to artists and learn.”

This will be Russeth’s first time at Chautauqua Institution.

“I wanted to come purely off the absolute sterling reputation (Chautauqua) has for putting on incredible programming,” Russeth said. “The fact that Yo-Yo Ma is involved is pretty incredible to me. He’s been a longtime role model of mine. I know everyone loves art at Chautauqua, so I can’t wait to meet everyone.”

A 30-second conversation in a Colorado cake shop sparked six years of constitutional debate on local, state and national levels.

Although even the Supreme Court has now declared a definitive stance in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Steven Smith still doesn’t believe there is any legal action that can crown either side completely victorious.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, August 7, in the Hall of Philosophy, Smith, the University of San Diego Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, gave his lecture, “The Cake Artist and the ‘Fixed Star in Our Constitutional Constellation,’ ” as part of Week Seven’s interfaith theme, “Let Them Eat Cake? Defining the Future of Religious Freedom in the U.S.”

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission consisted of three central figures: Jack Phillips, Charlie Craig and David Mullins.

First was Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado.

“(Phillips) describes himself as a cake artist, and in this case that is not just over-promotion or puffing — he actually did study art and sculpture as a young man and decided early in his career that his artistic medium was going to be baked goods,” Smith said.

In addition to being an artist, Phillips is also a devout Christian.

“He believes that he should serve God in all aspects of his life and in particular, (prioritizes it) in his business,” Smith said.

Due to his decision to integrate his faith into his work, Smith said Phillips has declined many orders over the course of his career that express messages “contrary to what he believes to be God’s will.”

“He won’t make a cake that expresses an anti-American message, a racist message, and he has apparently turned down business for Halloween cakes because in his particular interpretation of Christianity, he sees inconsistencies there,” Smith said.

In addition to his other exclusions, Phillips has refused to make cakes for same-sex weddings on multiple occasions because he believes God’s will is the marriage between a man and a woman, Smith said.

Craig and Mullins are a same-sex couple whose businesss Phillips declined in July 2012.

Same-sex marriage was not yet legal in Colorado, so the couple planned to have their wedding in Massachusetts and return to Colorado for a celebratory reception. When they asked Phillips for a wedding cake, he said he could not make it based on his religious beliefs, but would make and sell them any other baked goods. Craig and Mullins promptly left without discussing any details of their wedding cake.

The following day, Craig’s mother called Phillips, and he told her the same information.

Craig and Mullins proceeded to file a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commision.

“They argued that Phillips violated Colorado’s anti-discrimination act, which, among other things, prohibits discrimination in public accomodations on grounds of race, sex and sexual orientation, the prominent criteria here,” Smith said.

Phillips responded to the complaint, saying he had not violated the statute because he did not decline the cake based on the sexual orientation of the couple and raised a First Amendment defense.

In response to Phillip’s First Amendment argument, Smith posed a question: What does the free exercise of religion, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, mean?

Smith said the concepts of accommodation and neutrality have answered that question through the course of “all constitutional tradition.”

Accommodation is the idea that government should try to make room, whenever possible, for people to live in accordance with their religious beliefs, Smith said.

On the other hand, neutrality is the idea that government does not have any obligation to accommodate religion, but it “should not target, persecute or discriminate against it.”

For three decades in the second half of the 20th century, the official position of the Supreme Court was that the Free Exercise Clause requires accommodation.

“If somebody’s religion was being burdened by a law, they should be exempted of it unless the government has a compelling argument in requiring them to comply and can’t alter it in a less constrictive way,” Smith said.

However, in 1990, the court repudiated accommodation in favor of neutrality.

“The court said that as long as a law is religiously neutral and generally applicable, no accommodation of religion is constitutionally required,” Smith said.

According to Smith, the decision to switch to neutrality was seen as a “significant cutback” in the protection of religious freedom.

“At the time, it was almost universally denounced across the political spectrum,” he said.

Eventually, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which re-imposed the accommodation requirement.

However, in the Masterpiece case, RFRA did not apply because the law that was allegedly violated was on the state level, not the federal.

“On that standard, the Colorado judges quite quickly dismissed Phillips’ free exercise objections,” Smith said. “They said the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is religiously neutral; it is not targeting religion.”

Smith then moved on to what he calls “the constitutional heart” of the case — the free speech or “no compelled affirmations” issue.

Smith believes the best example of this issue is the 1943 case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.

In 1942, the West Virginia Board of Education required public schools to make saluting the flag a mandatory part of school activities. Children from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to perform the salute and were sent home from school for noncompliance. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court overruled its decision in a previous case and ruled that compelling public schoolchildren to salute the flag was unconstitutional.

Smith quoted what he considers to be the “most eloquent statement in the case”:

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Smith now calls that quote the “Barnette principle,” standing for the proposition that freedom of speech means the freedom not to speak.

Historically, Smith thinks the principle is important because people in positions of power have shown a tendency to want others to affirm their controversial beliefs. He believes this form of affirmation threatens freedom of conscience more than any other act of speech.

“Being compelled to affirm something that you don’t believe, I think, is more of an invasion on our personal integrity and conscience than being told you can’t say certain things you want to say,” he said.

The Barnette principle applies to Masterpiece in two ways.

First is the “expressive conduct” approach.

“The basic idea behind this approach is that speech or expression can’t be limited to spoken or written words,” Smith said. “Freedom of expression has to include symbolic or expressive conduct like art or burning a flag.”

However, freedom of expression can’t include all forms of conduct, so the conduct being regulated has to be examined to determine how expressive the underlying message is.

“If we take that approach, then the question in the Masterpiece case is something like, ‘Is the wedding cake really expressive?’ ” he said. “Some would say no, the cake is just meant to be eaten.”

Smith said with differing characterizations of what both conduct and expression mean, many First Amendment theorists are skeptical of this approach.

The second approach is “government purpose.”

“If we think the Free Speech Clause is supposed to be a force against government censorship, then it might be that what we care about is not so much whether the conduct is expressive or not, but rather whether the government’s purpose in regulating it is because the government is concerned with the content of what it is regulating,” Smith said.

Smith said if that is the government’s concern, then the First Amendment is “implicated.” If it is not, then free speech is “not implicated,” even if it is clear that expression is involved.

Smith believes this approach does not apply to Masterpiece on the basis of anti-discrimination laws.

“I believe that general anti-discrimination laws are intended to prevent deprivation from goods, services and opportunities,” he said. “These laws are not concerned with any expression.”

In wedding vendor cases like Masterpiece, this does not apply because the complainants alleged little to no material injury.

“In (the Masterpiece case), another baker promptly made a cake for Craig and Mullins, and so they did not claim any damages for the deprivation of a cake,” Smith said.

Instead of material damages, Smith said Masterpiece focuses more on “dignitary harms.”

“The argument is that the refusal of service sends a message that is insulting or humiliating,” Smith said.

However, Smith said people fail to realize that the dignitary harm falls on Phillips more so than Craig and Mullins.

“Not only has the law condemned his particular belief, but he is being required to act contrary … to something that is core in his life,” Smith said.

Smith believes there are strong constitutional arguments in favor of both Phillips and Craig and Mullins. So instead of picking sides, Smith wants people to work toward creating communities where no one is discriminated against based on race, sex, sexual orientation or even religious beliefs.

“I hope we are going to be able to find some way to have a community that is inclusive enough that we can allow (all) people to participate in public life without having to closet, hide or bracket their beliefs,” he said.

Raised in Nigeria, Sweden, Burkina Faso, Vietnam and the United States, Tayo Rockson is no tourist when it comes to communicating across cultures.

The son of a diplomat, Rockson grew up in five different countries on four different continents. His unique upbringing helped shape his life and his outlook on the world. In his lecture, he will discuss the importance of being able to communicate across cultures and embrace global identity at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, August 8, in the Amphitheater as part of Week Seven’s theme, “The Arts and Global Understanding.”

“In a week in which we explore the role of the arts in fostering global understanding, and the arts take center stage in a variety of programs, we also wanted to consider the impact of greater global understanding through culture,” said Matt Ewalt, Institution chief of staff. “Following a morning with Ambassador (Barbara) Stephenson on the role of cultural diplomacy, Tayo, himself the son of an ambassador, will speak to the benefits of cultural intelligence to business, and why our understanding across borders and cultures matters more and more to companies and organizations.”

Rockson is the founder and CEO of UYD Management — a firm that advises businesses on strategies to improve diversity, hiring, inclusivity, retention and social justice.

Growing up, Rockson was exposed to a variety of cultures, and he felt pressured to fit in. This challenge caused him to struggle with an “identity crisis,” but he credits that crisis as the driving force behind his work; he said it made him realize that his life experience allowed him to “see the world through different lenses.”

Rockson is a “third-culture kid,” meaning he was raised outside of his parents’ culture for the majority of his childhood. Growing up, Rockson said that he lost pieces of himself while trying to blend in with the majority.

“Part of being (the son of a diplomat) and a third-culture kid, you’re always in different environments, and there’s this tendency to try to fit in,” Rockson said. “A lot of the time, I tried to fit in, and I would almost lose myself. By the time I was 17, I decided not to lose myself anymore.”

When he was 22 years old, Rockson quit his job to move to New York City, and in 2014, he created “As Told By Nomads,” a podcast that features people who come from multicultural backgrounds. He and his guests discuss global identity and what it means to be a global leader.

“The podcast is what launched my career,” Rockson said. “I started to ask: ‘Why do we live in a globalized, digitalized world, (but) we still have problems that prevent us from communicating across cultures?’ ”

On his podcast, Rockson said he talks to people who have unique perspectives and will ask questions he knows his audience is curious to learn about.

A lover of learning, Rockson said he has grown through his work and wants people to experience that growth in their own lives. This desire to share stories and create change motivated him to create UYD — Use Your Difference — Management.

“I started to look at two places that we spend most of our lives — school and the workplace,” Rockson said. “There are still people that don’t know how to fully be themselves in the workplace and leaders that don’t know how to bring people together. I wanted to use my research (from the podcast) to help UYD Management.”

Through consultations, UYD offers guidance to corporations so they can expand and become more inclusive.

“I think it’s important to embrace who you are because we live in a world that likes to tell people what they can and what they can’t be,” Rockson said. “When you exist in that environment, you are inevitably going to suppress a part of yourself.”

By being able understand different perspectives, Rockson thinks people learn how to empathize, imagine different solutions and solve problems in well-rounded ways.

“Other people are going to come out of themselves,” Rockson said. “That is going to create a community that wasn’t there before.”

Two key principles that guide him through his work, Rockson said, are education and creating platforms for voices that are not often heard.

He thinks there is always more to learn and wants everyone to embrace their individuality and give a voice to those constantly tuned out by a society that is quick to judge.

“I know what it’s like to have your voice taken away from you, so just knowing that I could play a role in helping someone realize the best in themselves (makes my work worthwhile),” Rockson said.

Even before the First Amendment was ratified, Douglas Laycock said practicing religious freedom has never been a piece of cake.

At 2 p.m. Monday, August 6, in the Hall of Philosophy, Laycock, the Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, gave his lecture, “Free Exercise of Religion – from Martin Luther to Masterpiece Cakeshop,” as part of Week Seven’s interfaith theme, “Let Them Eat Cake? Defining the Future of Religious Freedom in the U.S.”

The prelude to America’s “experiment with religion liberty” began with Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation, Laycock said.

“Earlier reformers had been oppressed, but Luther had the enormous advantage of the printing press and he spread alleged heresy on a continental scale,” he said.

Laycock said although Protestants and Catholics were fighting for religious liberty, neither group was ready for it.

“They both assumed that they should enforce their faith wherever the government would cooperate,” he said. “Never forget that it was government, not churches, that had the power to punish and to execute. That is why our constitution protects religion from government, not the other way around.”

However, it turned out many governments were willing to persecute. The resulting persecutions, or “wars on religion,” consumed Europe for the next 200 years, Laycock said.

“Of course, the English experience is most salient in America,” he said. “England was irretrievably Protestant by the end of Elizabeth’s reign in 1603, but the persecutions continued, and religious warfare broke out in intervals. Anglican Puritans’ civil war in the 1640s was a revolution that overthrew a Catholic king in 1688, and a final climactic battle between Protestants’ and Catholics’ claims to the throne in 1746 is within the living memory of the men who wrote the Constitution.”

All of this human suffering led “sensible people” to question the premise: Why not let each individual determine a religious stance for his or herself?

First came the idea of tolerance.

“The state would still designate the true church and support it in various ways, but the state and the true church would tolerate dissenters,” Laycock said.

Religious equality was the second idea, Laycock said.

“Rather than one official church that tolerated all of the others, religious liberty would be a natural right,” Laycock said. “It would mean equal rights for every church and every believer and, eventually, every non-believer as well.”

The concept of religious liberty sparked debate among the American people.

“Defenders of the old regime offered multiple reasons for state control of religion, but all of the reasons had one thing in common: Religion is too important to be left to individuals,” Laycock said.

One of most common reasons for giving the state control of religion was to “save souls.”

“If there is one true faith whose believers will be saved, and many false teachings whose believers will be damned, then heretics need to be forced into the true faith for their own good and also to protect the innocent that they might lead astray,” Laycock said.

Laycock said the argument of keeping the peace was secular and the argument of saving souls was more theological and with both, each individual’s salvation was at stake.

“That turned the old view on its head,” he said. “Religion was far too important to be left to government.”

By the early 18th century, toleration had come — even to New England. First, government officials exempted dissenters from attending the established church. Eventually, they declared that any Christian denomination can hold its own worship service and by the 1720s, the United States and New England were enacting regulatory exemptions for religious minorities.

“First, they exempted Quakers and Baptists from paying a church tax, then they exempted Quakers from swearing oaths, and in 1757, during the French and Indian War, Massachusetts finally addressed the most difficult issue of all and exempted Quakers from serving in the militia,” Laycock said.

During the American Revolution, every state wrote a constitution; the federal constitution followed in 1787.

“Church and state was a major issue in those constitutional conventions, but the fight was over how to finance the church,” Laycock said. Including religion in the state and federal constitutions led to the most fundamental disagreement, Laycock said.

On one side, Americans declared that the constitutional right to religion must include the right to be exempt from laws that interfere with one’s religious beliefs unless the government has a strong reason for refusing an exemption.

The other side of the debate said that exemptions for Quakers, Jewish people and dissenters who refused to pay the church tax were all enacted by legislatures, Laycock said.

“(The legislatures) addressed specific problems,” Laycock said. “They tell us nothing about what rights were made judicially enforceable, and they tell us nothing about any claim to religious exemptions for any new law or new practice that might arise in the future.”

The issue of church and state first reached the Supreme Court in 1878 with Reynolds v. United States, the prosecution of a polygamous Mormon leader.

“The opinion is embarrassing to read today,” Laycock said. “The court said polygamy wasn’t even really a religious practice, and it had been a practice of Asian and African people, but never Europeans.”

Laycock said the court drew a definitive line between belief and action.

“It said you can believe any religion you want, but you have no right to practice it if the legislature says no,” Laycock said.

But the court’s protection of belief was short-lived. In 1890, the Supreme Court upheld a test oath that prevented Mormons from voting in Davis v. Beason. The oath covered not just polygamy, but also “speech, church membership and mere belief.”

“Congress revoked the church’s corporate charter and seized all of its property besides actual places of worship,” Laycock said. “Shortly after, the Mormon Church banned any plural marriages.”

However, in 1892, the Supreme Court had ruled on a case about a Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky. The court declared that civil courts must defer to the highest authority in the denomination.

“That decision has given rise to a principle that churches have the right to control their own internal affairs,” Laycock said.

He said that principle is why the Supreme Court unanimously decided in 2012 that employees in positions of religious leadership can’t sue their churches for alleged discrimination and why churches can’t be required to perform weddings, except in accordance with their own rules.

The debate around the free exercise of religion remained an issue of personal belief until it became a “culture war issue” in the late 1990s, Laycock said.

“Gay rights groups and civil rights groups demanded a total carveout for all civil rights claims, and of course, the sponsors couldn’t give them that,” he said. “Secular civil liberty groups dropped out of the Coalition for the Free Exercise of Religion, and religious groups could not pass a bill without them.”

The most recent example of a culture-based case was the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

“Masterpiece is among a handful of cases where conservative Christians in the wedding business refused to assist with a same-sex wedding and get sued under a state public accommodations law,” Laycock said.

Laycock said vendors, like the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, view marriage as an inherently religious relationship and therefore think of weddings as religious events, too.

“Their job is to make their part of the wedding the best and most memorable it can be,” he said. “(People who provide services for weddings) see themselves as promoting it, celebrating it, and they say they can’t do that.”

Over time, Laycock said cases like Masterpiece have been litigated under state constitutions in blue and purple states with statewide gay rights laws. However, the federal government took a much larger role in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case because Colorado had no previous ruling interpreting the state constitution’s free exercise clause.

The baker claimed that the cake decorations were works of art protected by the free speech clause.

“If you look at the pictures of those cakes, that’s not crazy, but it is an argument with no logical stopping points,” Laycock said. “If cake decorating is speech, then lots of businesses are speech.”

Laycock and a colleague filed a friend of the court brief for Masterpiece devoted to free exercise.

“We said this (wedding) is a religious event; only small business should be exempted and only with things directly connected to the wedding,” he said. “Almost no one took us seriously except for seven justices on the Supreme Court.”

In 2015, William Jack, a Christian activist, tested the flip side of the Masterpiece argument. He went to three different bakers requesting cakes with religious messages hostile to same-sex marriage. Each baker refused to make  the cake, and they were charged with religious discrimination, but the charges were dismissed.

“The same Colorado law that prohibits sexual orientation discrimination prohibits discrimination on the basis of any religious belief or practice,” Laycock said.

Laycock said in its decision of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the Supreme Court proved that the reason for protecting free exercise now is the same as it was 200 years ago: to reduce human suffering and preserve social peace.

“Religious liberty is one of America’s great contributions to the world, and we should not let it slip away either in legal wrangling or in a bitter culture war,” Laycock said.

Diplomats are by definition “strangers in the strange land,” according to Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service Association.

“That’s always been our lives,” Stephenson said, “ … figuring out ‘How do we understand the culture where we live?’ and ‘How do we create a moment of connection where they understand us, and we can have a relationship?’ — which is the whole purpose of being strangers in the strange land.”

As part of Week Seven’s theme, “The Arts and Global Understanding,” Stephenson will discuss “Conducting Diplomacy Through Sharing Music” at the 10:45 a.m. lecture Tuesday, August 7, in the Amphitheater.

“That’s what I wanted to explore: … music as a unique communal and uniquely powerful form of communal expression and vehicle for expressing,” Stephenson said, “but also by participating in it to create a sense of community.”

Although Stephenson is not a trained musician, she said her art as a diplomat is to figure out how to read different cultures, people and their values and then explain her culture to them.

On a higher level, Stephenson describes diplomatic work as “creating a shared experience that enables us to set aside doubt in the sense of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ to walk together toward a common goal. That’s what diplomats do in their highest moments of their calling.”

To Stephenson, music is “the best vehicle for creating that powerful shared experience.”

Stephenson said she often reflects on how people form connections, and she said music is the most powerful “vehicle that we — almost as part of the human condition — have available to us.”

Stephenson said there are many ways that people “might introduce (themselves) and share a culture.”

“We sometimes share food. We sometimes share our story,” Stephenson said. “Even when we are sharing our story, we are often sharing that story with a musical component and often with dance accompanying the music.”

There are many other forms of art that can be used to build connections — for example, fine art — but Stephenson said standing in an art museum looking at artworks is “a lonely experience.”

“You stand there, you stare silently at the painting, and the painting looks back silently at you,” Stephenson said. “And you may try to talk about it (with others) afterward, but it’s not a communal experience.”

Stephenson said music is different because it often involves people coming together to share the experience. That experience can then lead to a shared understanding, Stephenson said, which is the root of diplomacy.

Diplomacy is about finding a way “to grow the space for ‘us’ and shrink the space for ‘them,’ ” Stephenson said, paraphrasing former President Bill Clinton.

“Coming together to share our music is a very powerful communal experience,” Stephenson said.

In the sixth edition of the Interfaith Friday Series, August 3, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, vice president of religion, moderated a number of questions with interfaith advocate Rabbi Asher Lopatin, who represented Modern Orthodox Judaism.

Lopatin is president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, an Orthodox rabbinical school. In August, Lopatin will launch a new Modern Orthodox synagogue in Detroit, as well as starting a university-oriented Center for Civil Discourse. Lopatin has written chapters in over 20 books, as well as numerous articles. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, cochaired the Jewish-Muslim Community-Building Initiative in Chicago, and has been listed several years in Newsweek’s Top 50 Rabbis.

What follows is an abridged version of Lopatin’s conversation. Lopatin and Robinson’s remarks have been condensed for clarity.

From where you sit in your tradition, why should we be moving in an interfaith direction either here at Chautauqua or in the world?

Lopatin: By interfaith direction, my understanding is more interfaith dialogue, more contact with each other. That gets to the idea that I think a richer life is a challenged life, is a more educated life, and I get excited by hearing different views. It is interesting — interfaith does two things. First of all, it does challenge you, and you have to think about your religion more deeply, and that’s healthy. I really think that maybe we should let our kids play in the dirt a little bit more because then they will build up more resistance. So, I like the idea of being challenged. But the other side, which I found very exciting, is finding the similarities we have. Especially Jesus as a Jew, studying the New Testament (and) finding so many central tensions that the rabbis share. (There are also) so many issues that Judaism and Islam share. There are countries in Europe that don’t allow us to slaughter our meat in our traditional ways, and Jews and Muslims stand together on that. Then in sociological ways, how do Muslims in America keep their tradition going in this very secular and, some ways, Christian country? What happens when your little kid comes home, your Muslim kid, and wants to have a Christmas tree in the living room? That is something that Jews and Muslims can deal with together. Both the differences are strengthening, and the similarities are also very supportive.

When you come to the metaphorical interfaith table, what gifts do you bring as a Modern Orthodox Jew to that table?

Lopatin: I think that one of the great things about Judaism is this idea of an evolving and changing world. I think that in today’s times, some things can be very frustrating, and it is important to believe that this world can be a good world. And you see torture going on, and some of these other things you see going on, refugees and bannings from different countries, but this belief that it can get better is a critical idea of Judaism. Along with that is this idea of change without change. You can have kind of radical change without being afraid that you are wiping out your tradition, and Judaism has been very good at accommodating that. When Judaism entered a more benign attitude, let’s say toward Christianity, certainly during the Middle Ages, doing business and being part of it in its own way, the Christian community, it was not seen as we are abandoning our Judaism. It’s seen as a new understanding and a Judaism that was always there. So I actually feel that on many issues — on Israel, Palestinians, on Jews in America. One of these issues, what Judaism should have to offer, is that you can come up with a very different perspective than people have 100 years ago, or 50 years or a year ago, and that is not betraying your religion; it is really being consistent with your religion, it is really what your religion is about. Now, I guess people will say, “Oh you’re deluding yourself, that’s not what Judaism is about.” It will take a lot of arguments, but I think that ultimately, Judaism has that to offer. You see the changes that have occurred without asking people to abandon their passion for their religion.

What gifts do other religions bring to the table that you might benefit from?

Lopatin: I am always looking, first of all, for passion, and passion comes in different ways. In Islam, (we see) the incredible passion of praying five times a day. Now, Jewish prayers are a little bit longer than Muslim prayers, but that model of stick-to-itiveness that Muslims have to a great extent (is good) for Jews to know. When it’s time to pray, you pray. You don’t worry who is around. I think sometimes when we see it in other people and other religions, it gets us to be more passionate, more understanding and more comfortable in asserting who we are. But I also see where it is such a consumer-driven society that (there is) this powerful tradition of Christianity, aestheticism and other worldliness. I mean, Judaism is great because we can work this world so well, and we don’t have to give up enjoying this world. We don’t have to give up working in this world; even traditional Orthodox (people) in Israel are trying to go more into the workplace and out of their rabbinical schools, but there is something about living in other worldly ways, so maybe we can get a little bit of that balance.

Do you have any sacred texts or holy teachings that are telling you that yours is the one true religion?

Lopatin: I guess the area where this is difficult for some or stands out is “chosenness.” Definitely in (a verse meaning): “We are the people that were chosen to receive a revelation.” Islam actually has the same revelation. For Judaism, it’s only the Jewish people, in general, and we distinguish ourselves from other people in that way. There’s a prayer that says, “God did not make us like other nations, and God is in charge of our destiny.” There is a lot of other literature, Talmudic literature, which doesn’t talk about other religions but talks about “them and us.” Zalman Schachter-Shalomi reread that part and said, “God made us like all the other nations.” I’m not saying that is the simple understanding, I do think the tradition is that God chose us to be special, but the fact that the text can be read in that way and can sound that way is amazing. I’m a mystical believer that that is wholesome, contained in the text even though the simple meaning is this chosenness. Even with all the chosenness, it’s not to say in general within Orthodoxy that other nations are not special in their own ways. Judaism is special in a lot of ways, and other nations are special in their other ways. There is a stream, to be honest, within Judaism, within Orthodoxy, that thinks the soul of a non-Jew is different from the soul of a Jew. I don’t subscribe to that, and many Orthodox (adherents) don’t subscribe to that. I don’t know how to explain that. That bothers me a lot. But that’s something you have to accept as an Orthodox Jew; that’s one voice out there. A lot of people that subscribe to that are the nicest people to ever run the world, but they just believe they have a better soul than other people. But that’s one element within Orthodoxy, but that’s been a debate. The fact that Orthodoxy has debated that, their enforcement to say “everyone’s soul … everyone’s equal,” and argued against those that said that there is a difference in soul, shows that Orthodoxy is sensitive to this issue, and there’s really a tradition within Orthodoxy of “We are all chosen in our own ways.”

Do you have extremist practitioners of Modern Orthodox Judaism?

Lopatin: I’m very optimistic. There’s just a big love fest in Orthodoxy. There are those that are extremist against Zionism. Zionism is that sort of balance between parochialism and having a promised land you should live in and also making that land an ethical model for the world. I think Israel strives for that and works on that, but there are those totally against the Jewish state and Israel, and those are the ones that hate that concept of protesting. But you know what’s interesting? Even those who are more extreme are coming around a little bit. Even some that were against going to work, who said, “A man should just stay in rabbinical school,” some of those are starting to say, “OK, it’s OK to be a part of the workforce.” Some of those that were so much against Israel are now much more loyal to Israel actually, even if they don’t believe Zionism is a God-given era. Even on the toughest issues, women issues, gender issues, there’s movement, there is a great deal of movement, (but) it’s slow. Really, I think the most bitterness (comes from) people that are so similar within Orthodoxy. Different factions within Modern Orthodoxy or modern versus centrists and centrists versus ultra. But there is movement, and I’m always very hopeful about that. So we do have our extremists, and the tragedy is, a lot of time, extremists are zero-sum people. They think it’s us or them. It’s either we do good for the Jews, or it’s a loss. If they can understand that this world is not so much a zero-sum world, that it’s a positive sum — we can do good for us while doing good for others. So I think that is the problem that I see, and I hope that’s  where there will be a shift.