Beacons of Hope: Our Interreligious S/Heroes Beacons of Hope: Our Interreligious S/Heroes – Rafi Ellenson and Rabbi Neal Rose
Each month, we honor an individual or individuals whose commitment aligns with the bridge-building efforts of the Miller Center. For September, we shine a light on Rabbi Dr. Neal Rose and Hebrew College Rabbinical student Rafi Ellenson, the Miller Center’s inaugural Neal Rose Rabbinic Intern. This new fellowship was funded in honor of Rabbi Dr. Rose, whose long record of interrelgious engagement as a professor, chaplain, and family therapist in Winnipeg, Canada influences the Miller Center through his son, Miller Center Founding Director Rabbi Or Rose.
Rabbi Dr. Neal Rose was surprised to learn on his 85th birthday that his children—including Miller Center Founding Director Rabbi Or Rose—had organized a rabbinic internship in his honor. Each year, one fifth-year student in the Hebrew College Rabbinical School will serve as the Miller Center’s Rabbi Dr. Neal Rose Rabbinic Intern, selected by the Miller Center in cooperation with the Rabbinical School leadership. “My kids watched us work and interact and teach over the years with people of different traditions in Winnipeg, Canada,” says Rabbi Dr. Rose. “Given the work of the Miller Center to create interreligious dialogue and understanding, this was a delightful surprise.”
Rabbi Rose has enjoyed a long career as a professor, family counselor, and chaplain. He credits his long track record of interreligious engagement first to his lifelong association with Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, who himself fostered deep ecumenical associations with individuals and clergy in the Catholic and later the United Church of Canada communities. Second, to his post teaching at St. Paul’s College, housed within the University of Manitoba.
Because Canadian higher education reflects the English university system, where each constituent college has a religious affiliation, Rabbi Rose was a Jewish academic teaching at a Catholic college, down the block from an Anglican college, and around the corner from a Ukrainian Orthodox seminary. In that stimulating environment he switched from teaching mainly Judaic Studies to teaching world religion courses, where of course this geography shaped his approach: “A significant aspect of my process was to involve people of different religions. Where possible, to have a session before or after a religious service, so students not only got a theoretical sense of the religion, but also an opportunity for encounter.”
Through this approach, delivering this experiential learning to his students, Dr. Rabbi Rose became connected to colleagues in other colleges. The people Rabbi Rose befriended often found their way to the family home. “A lot of [interreligious engagement] took place at our Shabbat table, at Passover meals, other occasions. People of other faiths attending Brit Milah, Bat Mitzvah.”
Rabbi Rose’s interest in religious pluralism began at a young age. “When I was a kid living in Brooklyn, I was always interested in peoples’ religions. The radio was an interesting way of exploring; for the longest time I listened to the Jehovah Witness radio program. On Sundays I would listen to the various 15 minute spots of Christian programming.” Eventually this interest led Rabbi Rose to learn about Hinduism and Buddhism.
Then, when he moved to Winnipeg, he built relationships with Muslim leaders and learned more about the Muslim community. Soon he was presenting in courses teaching about different religious traditions to young people in Canada. He began meeting people from Canada’s Aboriginal community. “That’s a whole story by itself, the revitalization of their community,” says Rabbi Rose. “Their effort to repossess their religion and spirituality.” Rabbi Rose was able to support this effort by teaching St. Paul College’s first courses about Aboriginal religion.
Rabbi Rose’s interreligious work has always been rooted in relationships: “It’s very human. You can’t get it from a book. It’s about human contact, the absolute respect for basic humanity. You can read all you want, but you have to meet people.” As mentioned above, many of those relationships were built at the Shabbat table, where Rabbi Or Rose witnessed his father’s work firsthand. “Or has created a theory of practice around interreligious dialogue,” says Rabbi Rose. “Mine was deeply personal, that doesn’t take away from its value, but Or has developed a theory. He is able to spread the tent very wide. I think it’s wise to concentrate on the education of clergy, to open them up to the work. They meet in a friendly and neutral context where they can talk to each other in a direct way, and satisfy their curiosity.”
It is fitting, then, that the Miller Center will host an internship in Rabbi Neal Rose’s name. This student will work closely with Rabbi Or Rose and other Miller Center leadership, gaining experience in organizational leadership and decision-making while contributing to the outreach and educational efforts of the center.
Below, read a Q&A with the inaugural Dr. Rabbi Neal Rose Intern, Hebrew College student Rafi Ellenson.
About Rafi: Rafi Ellenson (he/his/him) is a student at the Hebrew College Rabbinical School and the Rabbinic Intern at the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership. Prior to rabbinical school he lived in Jerusalem working for the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants and for 0202: Points of View from Jerusalem. While in Jerusalem, he was awarded the Dorot Fellowship where he studied literary translation. In rabbinical school, he has worked as the Associate Director of the Dignity Project, Rabbinic Intern and Lead Facilitator of the Bronfman Fellowship, and as the Director of Hebrew Programming at URJ Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute (OSRUI). Rafi’s writing has been published in Verklempt!, Ayin Press, and Jewish Currents and he is the Hebrew translator of a collection of haiku by the poet E. Ethelbert Miller, the little book of e (City Point Press, 2024). He is a graduate of the Individualized Bachelor of Arts program at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT.
What aspects of your internship at the Miller Center are you most looking forward to?
Hebrew College has been host to the Miller Center for eight years and in that time has ran so many innovative and meaningful programs. Between the fellowships they operate that serve youth, college students, and senior religious leaders, programs with the BTI, one-off lectures, and day-long seminars, the Miller Center has had and currently has a diverse portfolio and sets of populations that they serve. Unfortunately, I don’t think that many of the students in the rabbinical school know about it! What I most look forward to in my work is acting as a bridge between the rabbinical school of Hebrew College and the Miller Center and ensuring that the two can act in symbiosis.
What do you hope to learn from your time working closely with Or and other Miller Center leaders?
The Miller Center is full of brilliant thought leaders and interreligious activists that I hope will broaden my horizons as I enter my final year (God willing!) of rabbinical school. I hope to learn to approach my studies and my work beyond rabbinical school with an ear and an eye towards the multiplicity of voices both within the Jewish tradition and in other religious and wisdom traditions.
Is there anything from your experience as a literary translator that you find reflected in the work of interreligious dialogue and engagement?
Translation is an art form that requires deep attention to text, culture, people, history, and context. To render one set of words into another requires immersing yourself in the worlds of both the host and target language. The idiomatic nature of one language does not automatically translate into another, it requires sensitivity, research, and relationship.
I believe all the same is true in interreligious dialogue and engagement. I approach this work much as I approach my passion of reading and translating Hebrew poetry. To engage across lines of difference in religion and culture, it is imperative to pay attention to not only what people are saying and doing, but what lays behind what people are saying and doing; to find the subtext and intertexts that they are using in their engagement with you. Ultimately, it is this type of relationship building—acknowledging someone’s full context and sharing your own—that allows for meaningful and profound connection across lines of difference.