Food, Inc - January 28th at the Action Center to End World Hunger

The Interfaith Experience is proud to bring its first film screening to the Big Apple. Currently on the Academy Award short list for best documentary of 2009, Food, Inc. is a must see for all New Yorkers. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone says, "Don't take another bite till you see Food, Inc., an essential, indelible documentary."

The event will take place Thursday, January 28th at the Action Center to End World Hunger @ 6 River Terrace in Battery Park City. The doors will open at 6:30pm and the film will start promptly at 7pm. Tickets to the event are $10 plus $1.99 handling. Please note that all proceeds for this event will be shared between the Temple of Understanding and the Action Center to End World Hunger. Tickets are available for purchase online from Brown Paper Tickets.



In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising and often shocking truths about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Important changes to note

Thanks to everyone for making 2009 a successful year for the Interfaith Experience. Beginning in 2010, please note a couple of significant issues. First, our January event will not be held at the Rubin Museum of Art, but will take place at the Action Center to End World Hunger. Secondly, when the Interfaith Experience returns to the Rubin Museum of Art in February, we will moving from Friday nights to Wednesday nights. Events will be held in the RMA Cafe and will still begin at 7pm. We look forward to the new year and bringing you more great speakers.

Thanks to Everyone!

Thanks to Katherine Miller for making our first event of our Food and Faith series a successful one. We're excited for the season ahead and hope you can join us next month (November 20th) for Jess Root.

A practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, Jess' talk will address food justice as it relates to her faith’s meditation on interdependence and the aspiring Bodhisattva’s wish to benefit all beings. All based on what she knows best—her own, direct experience and meditations that she credits to her teachers His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa and Vivekan.

As an example, Jess will demonstrate the ocean of difference between sitting down to what can simply be viewed as an ordinary bowl of rice, and sitting down to an extraordinary bowl or rice that’s eaten under the lens of the Buddha’s teachings on ‘dependent arising.’

She’s learned and witnessed that Buddhist reflections such as these have trained her often lazy and scattered mind to slow down, reflect, and practice gratitude. This has influenced her consumer decisions for the better—motivating her to put her money, quite literally, where her mouth is, purchasing Fair Trade, local, organic, and responsibly harvested foods.

Jess Root is a freelance environmental journalist and yoga instructor. Her written contributions can be found in Discovery Communications’ TreeHugger.com and PlanetGreen.com. She’s been featured in Budget Travel, E, the Environmental Magazine, and she has lectured at The Tibet Center. As the manager and yoga instructor at Bodhisattva Yoga, she aspires to crystallize the connection between sustainability, spirituality and wellness.

Food and Faith: executive chef Katherine Miller

On Friday October 23rd, please join us for our new series focusing on Food and Faith. Over the course of the next 8 months, we will delve into how faith interprets and addresses the many issues surrounding food and water: from nutrition and hunger, access to food, to food and water security. Our first speaker is executive chef Katherine Miller.

As the executive chef of EnlightenNext, Katherine Miller is pioneering new ways of understanding health and wellness in the context of conscious evolution and spiritual enlightenment. Her insights and experience have been influenced by spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen, founder of EnlightenNext, whom she has been a student of for 18 years. Her first insight into spiritual life began 28 years ago with the study of Aikido and then Iyengar yoga, which she still practices and teaches today. In the late 80's she discovered the Indian spiritual teacher, Amachi, with whom she spent four years. Her passion for gourmet vegetarian food and optimum health has led to a unique style of cooking that integrates various principles of raw food "cooking," macrobiotics, and the newest scientific research into nutrition. Katherine is currently collaborating with other health professionals on the “Health is Wealth” initiative, a program whose mission is to engender evolution in regards to food and our spiritual, moral and ethical values.

Katherine will be speaking about food and health from her experience as a practitioner of evolutionary enlightenment and the understanding that faith in our purpose in life influences every aspect of our existence, including how we eat. She’ll pose provocative questions, such as: How do our motivations and preferences change as our understanding of life evolves? When we view ourselves not only as part of, but actually responsible for, the evolutionary process, how do we respond? Is the way that we care for our physical being – our health and vitality – reflect the understanding that we are here for a higher purpose? If so, what do we eat?

Our experience of faith and purpose deeply influences our appreciation for the life forms we depend on to live and grow. Our faith is also where we find the gratitude and humility to begin to pose these critical questions. As we find the answers, our goal is to put them into action in order to create a fundamental shift in our shared values – and the foundation for a new culture. What we put on our plates is a big part this.

Thanks to everyone

Thanks to Wesam Berjaoui for his engaging and enlightening talk on Islamic finance which closed out our winter/spring series on Faith and Finance. It was a great way to close out the season before we take a summer hiatus. Thanks again to all of our speakers, attendees and committee memebers for making the Interfaith Experience a success. We look forward to returning on September 25th for our new series on Faith and Food. Stay tuned for more details.

Spring Finale: Islamic finance, June 26th

Please join us for the conclusion of our "Faith and Finance" series. Our guest speaker is Wesam Berjaoui who will be discussing the principles of Islamic finance. At a time when the conventional interest-based global financial system is in turmoil, it is a natural reaction to seek more prudent and ethical alternative systems of financial management. Islamic finance offers one unique alternative and is here to stay. Come learn why Islamic finance is the fastest growing phenomenon in global finance. How does Islamic finance differ from conventional finance? Why does Islamic law, Shariah, forbid Muslims from receiving interest on loans or savings? Please bring your questions, thoughts and enthusiasm to this highly anticipated gathering.

The event will take place at 7pm, June 26th at the Rubin Museum of Art. We look forward to seeing you there.

Wesam Berjaoui is Regional Manager at University Islamic Financial. He graduated from Pace University with a Bachelors degree in Finance. He started his career at Guidance Residential as a sales consultant and worked his way up to District Manager and then climbed steadily up to North East Regional Manager, managing a team of up to eight sales consultants. Wesam recently joined University Islamic Financial in October 2007 as their Regional Manager handling East Coast operations and expansion. His responsibilities extend to currently training and coaching the dynamic sales team as well as helping expand operational states.

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May 29th with Sheila Wall and Michael Pergola

We hope to see everyone on May 29th for our continuing series on "Faith and Finance." We look forward to welcoming Sheila Wall and Michael Pergola from Coalition for One Voice. Please join us...

"Faith and Finance: Can It Make a Difference"

In the past 30 years we have witnessed a series of disruptions to the financial system that have been publicly perceived as scandals that deviate from the norm. They have followed each other with a certain inevitability, and have led to the current freezing of the world economy and the disruption of countless lives.

We will explore this phenomenon, and what we can do individually and collectively to respond creatively to current circumstances. Questions that will be addressed include:
• What characteristics do the people involved in all of these situations have in common?
• How could some of the best trained and most gifted members of our society fail to see the long term implications of their actions
• What, if any, impact did the ethics courses added to the curriculum of MBA programs in the 80’s have on the behavior of financial leaders
• What role does the “ethic of unfettered individualism” and the “argument culture” play in creating our current distress
• How could a deeper experience of ethics, morality and spirituality help us see the opportunity in the current crisis
• How can we understand and utilize the notion of higher consciousness to inform our actions and respond creatively to the challenges we encounter in our personal and professional lives
• What should we expect from our leaders in finance, business and government, and
• How can we create the conditions, individually and socially, that will get us what we need in order for our children and our grandchildren to live meaningful lives in a just society that spans the globe

We will focus on how the consciousness of individuality has played itself out in our institutions, particularly our financial and educational institutions, and offer insights and practices from the great spiritual traditions that can increase our capacity to experience deep inner peace in the midst of turmoil, and to find creative responses and skillful actions in the face of the current challenges.