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YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE WRONG FOR ME TO BE RIGHT: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism
By Brad Hirschfield

PRAISE FOR YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE WRONG FOR ME TO BE RIGHT:

“In this compelling and engaging volume, Hirschfield urges people of all faiths to accept their differences while seeking commonality and reaching out to one another with love and forgiveness. . . . Hirschfield’s admirable objective of expanding ourselves to let others in comes across nicely and should attract a wide interfaith audience.”
Publishers Weekly

“A wise and important story, engagingly told. I hope everyone, from the most piously committed to the most militantly atheist, reads it and absorbs its lessons.”
—Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People

“Spiritual sojourners of all faiths seeking sincerity and authenticity of religion will benefit greatly from Rabbi Hirschfield’s candid testimonial of his life’s journey. His visionary first- person narrative reveals that the man who makes the voyage – to the human core of tolerance, respect, generosity, and peace – discovers that the voyage makes the man.”
—Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

“Brad Hirschfield is one of the freshest and most innovative minds in religious thought today. From the ashes of Ground Zero to summits of global leaders, he has pioneered a philosophy of using ancient texts to create coalitions of understanding and hope. Anyone committed to religious tolerance today must understand his ideas – and must put them to work.”
—Bruce Feiler, author of Walking the Bible and Where God Was Born
 

Brad Hirschfield knows what it means to be a fanatic – he was one. As part of a core group of settlers in the West Bank in the early 1980s, he was committed to reconstituting the Jewish state within its biblical borders. However he started to rethink his beliefs there as he witnessed first-hand what extremism can do. Grappling with his own conflicts – as an Orthodox teenager growing up in a non-religious home, leading a prayer service at the Reichstag for Jews and non-Jews alike, going to Moscow as the only rabbi participant in a Muslim-sponsored initiative – Hirschfield began to think about the convergence of different religions in a new way. Now, he is an Orthodox rabbi devoted to teaching inclusiveness and celebrating diversity; exploring the roots of religious, racial, and ethnic conflict; and delivering a message of acceptance that is pragmatic, forceful, and necessary.

How can we create a world with less violence and division? Can we make room for other cultures and beliefs without negating our own? Is there a way to balance commitment and openness without sacrificing one to the other? These critical questions are explored in YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE WRONG FOR ME TO BE RIGHT: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism (Harmony, Jan. 2008), in which Brad reveals how to be passionately committed to one’s faith community while remaining open to other religious traditions. Never dismissing another’s beliefs or treating difference as a zero sum game, he appeals to the common wisdom found in all religions, offering hope and a new perspective to the American spiritual, social and political landscape. In a world of widening cultural divides and spiraling religious violence, it is too much to promise that we can resolve all of these conflicts, but it’s not too much to promise that with the right approach we can at least address them more constructively. Nurturing our ability to make deep commitments while remaining open to new ideas and experiences, Hirschfield reminds us that conflict is an inevitable part of life, a function of being connected to one another, and he shows us how it is also an opportunity to grow closer.

Grounded in biblical texts and interwoven with personal stories, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE WRONG FOR ME TO BE RIGHT looks at how we can create a more peaceful world and honor our own faith while remaining part of the broader society, how to stay open without sacrificing our customs, cultures and traditions. Part inspirational, part memoir, and part current affairs, this powerful book takes Hirschfield’s vision of pluralism to a new level, building trust and respect along the way.

For more information and to order the book, click here, or go to www.bradhirschfield.com.  


   



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