Spotlight on CLAL

This June, a CLAL delegation of Jewish leaders from across America will participate in the 12^th Annual Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, a unique forum promoting music and spirituality as sources for world harmony.  The program will offer a colloquium, with featured speaker Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, the only rabbi who is participating, on justice and forgiveness, and how our different faiths can be used to heal not only ourselves, but also the rest of humanity.  The Fes Festival has gained such renown that it is included in the new book, 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die.  In 2001, the United Nations designated it as one of the major events contributing in remarkable fashion to the dialogue among civilizations. 

In addition, the festival will present a special screening of Rabbi Hirschfield’s acclaimed film, Freaks Like Me, that explores religion and our fears of the “other.”  The film, one of only five selected to be shown at the colloquium, looks at how we celebrate our own particularity while staying connected to the wider world.  Bringing the Jewish wisdom tradition to the festival, Rabbi Hirschfield will join with global leaders to address many of the big questions of our time -- peace and forgiveness, globalization and Islam, and the interface between political and spiritual identity.       

“Jewish, like music, is a way of being human,” said Rabbi Hirschfield. “The festival provides an international encounter framed by the openness which music and art create.  Often, the places we tend to find spiritually powerful and Jewishly powerful are not the same, but this is a chance to bridge that divide.” 

In addition to Fes, delegation members will also visit the beautiful cities of Meknes, Volubillis, Marrakech and Sefra.  They will meet with the Jewish community of Marrakech and spend Shabbat with them.

“This is how spiritual capital is built,” said Rabbi Hirschfield.  “We establish relationships, wisdom and trust with people of different religions and backgrounds.  Step by step we create a better world.”