Food and Faith with Rev. Phil Waldrop

Please join us in the Cafe at the Rubin Museum of Art as we continue our exploration of Food and Faith! On Wednesday March 24th at 7pm, Reverend Philip Waldrop will speak on "Food from an Interspiritual perspective."

While our previous events have touched on the perspectives of Islam, Buddhism, Jainism and spirituality, Rev. Phil will speak from his experience as an Interfaith Minister, an inclusive global spirituality that honors all faiths.

Drawing from many of the world's spiritual traditions, Rev. Phil will identify five spiritual themes and several sub-themes about food itself, its role in our lives, and our relationship to it.

Rev. Philip Waldrop is on staff at the Interfaith Temple of NYC, on the Board of A World Alliance of Interfaith Clergy, Chair of its Standing Committee on Communications, and Publisher of the on-line magazine INTERFAITH Today. He is also a dean of first year students at The New Seminary in New York City and on the leadership team of the NY-NJ-CT Tri-State Council of Men as Learners and Elders. In 2007, he was ordained an Interfaith Minister. The interfaith approach of honoring all spiritual paths and religions, finding commonalities in essence, and seeing the mystical and transcendent as something shared by humanity drew him to this path. In addition to conducting worship services, weddings, funerals, and other customized ceremonies, Rev. Phil is a speaker and facilitator on a variety of spiritual topics, and by appointment, does spiritual counseling and healing using Reiki and Pranic Healing techniques. Rev. Phil is also an amateur cook and likes to make dishes such as healthy soups, sautés, salads, coleslaw and cornbread.

Food and Faith with Imam Khalid Latif

Please join us on Wednesday, February 24th at the Rubin Museum of Art Cafe at 7pm, with Imam Khalid Latif, the first Muslim chaplain at NYU and youngest chaplain in the history of the NYPD. Continuing our "Food and Faith" series, Imam Latif will be discussing the Muslim perspective. What does the Muslim faith dictate to its practitioners in terms of food choice? If you walk into a New York eatery and see that a food is "halal," what exactly does it mean? During Ramadan, what is the role of fasting? These questions and many more will be addressed in this intriguing talk.

Imam Khalid Latif was appointed the first Muslim chaplain at NYU in 2005 where he began to initiate his vision for a pluralistic future on and off campus for American Muslims. He was also appointed the first Muslim chaplain at Princeton University in 2006. Spending a year commuting between these two excellent institutions, he finally decided to commit full-time to New York University’s Islamic Center where his position was officially institutionalized in the spring of 2007. Under his leadership, the Islamic Center at NYU became the first ever established Muslim student center at an institution of higher education in the United States. Imam Latif’s exceptional dedication and ability to cross interfaith and cultural lines on a daily basis brought him recognition throughout the city, so much so that in 2007 Mayor Michael Bloomberg nominated Imam Latif to become the youngest chaplain in history of the New York City Police Department at the age of 24.

Imam Latif has not only managed to solidify the basis of a strong Muslim community at NYU that seeks to emphasize inclusiveness and understanding of others without compromise, but has also worked tirelessly to foster dialogue with people of other faiths in order to clarify misconceptions and encourage mutual education. Through his work Imam Latif has demonstrated not only an exceptional dedication to gaining and disseminating religious knowledge and values, but has begun to carve out a much-needed space for young American Muslims to celebrate their unique identity and have their voices heard in the larger public sphere. He is a sought after speaker, having lectured throughout the United States and in various parts of the world and has been quoted, featured and appeared in numerous media outlets including BBC, NPR, CNN, the NY Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, BET and GEO TV. Amongst many awards and distinctions for leadership and community service over the last few years, Imam Latif was most recently named one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world in 2009 by Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talaal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre.

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

The Interfaith Experience, in partnership with Mercy Corps' Action Center to End World Hunger, 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. Prior to the screening, Dhrumil Purohit will discuss how food and faith interrelate from the Jain perspective. Dhurmil will speak at 6:30 -- please arrive early to get a seat and talk to Interfaith Experience committee members. The movie begins at 7:00. Tickets to the event are $10 plus $1.99 handling. All proceeds for this event will be shared between the Temple of Understanding and the Mercy Corps Action Center to End World Hunger. Tickets are available for purchase online from Brown Paper Tickets or call 800-838-3006.



About Dhrumil:
Dhrumil Purohit is a simple sherpa who enjoys guiding people and communities through the world of holistic healing and spiritual living.

During the day Dhrumil is a founding partner at the Clean Program, a health and wellness company that manufactures and sells detox and cleansing kits. He and his business partner Dr Alejandro Junger MD have a vision to revolutionize the world of cleansing by providing the most supportive detox program on the planet. Dhrumil is also the Chief Community Organizer behind We Like It Raw, the most popular online raw food community. And Lastly, Dhrumil serves as an advisor to a few non-profits including Donna Karan's Urban Zen Foundation.

Dhrumil is based in Delaware, loves his family dearly and strives to be as present as his role model Eckhart Tolle.

About Food, Inc.
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.