A Year of Praying Together in Jerusalem

SAource: Elijah Interfaith Institute. Praying Together in Jerusalem

From Elijah Interfaith Institute

Throughout 2024 we have been honored to serve as a global meeting place for religious voices and for the aspiration of prayer for peace and for human dignity. Our gatherings, ranging from weekly to monthly, have kept up the momentum of a community and have provided continuity of teaching and inspiration for hundreds of faithful of all faiths, worldwide.

It has been a true honor.

Growing the Friendship and Hope Movement

Friendship and hope are Elijah ideals that we spread through all of our activities. These two ideals address key needs in today’s world. That is why we seek to grow them, and to expand the circle of participants in a movement of friendship across faiths and hope for all.

2025 will be inaugurated by the launch of a new online platform for a movement of friendship and hope. A sophisticated, state of the art platform, that combines the best of all existing major tools – facebook, youtube, community building tools and more, will be launched, with the help of Silicon Slopes, our Utah based partners who believe in Elijah’s vision and would like to see it growing into a global reality.

The platform is designed for religious leaders and communities. It is a tool for teaching, sharing, offering prayers, engaging across faiths, coming together in acts of service for the common good and more. It is everything that a platform should be in order to provide enrichment, engagement and audience for religious leaders. With the help of this platform, we seek to take the Friendship Across Religions initiative, to the global community.

The Elijah Summer School

The Elijah Summer School has been a mainstay of Elijah’s contribution for more than a quarter of a century. Every year, religious leaders, scholars, seminarians and others have convened for cutting edge programs that increase understanding between faiths and allow participants to explore the depth of their own faith. Hundreds have been transformed. Careers have been shaped. Vocations, especially in the interfaith field, have been realized. Relationships have been formed. And, of course, lasting friendships have been created.

Following the pandemic, and with the introduction of distance learning tools, we have expanded our summer school to include distance learning. Participants have had the possibility of benefiting from the spiritual riches of Jerusalem on site, or of tapping into the wisdom of a global community of scholars and religious leaders online.

We are proud to continue the summer school tradition. This is the time to announce the theme for the 2025 edition. We will focus this coming year on the theme: Visions of the Afterlife.

Rationale – All religions have a vision of the afterlife. Often, it is the driving force of the religion, motivating many of its actions.

How does the vision of the afterlife shape the entire faith? How similar or fundamentally different are visions of the afterlife? Can they provide a fruitful ground for encounter? How do all religious visions relate to a contemporary view of the human person?

These are some of the questions that will be the focus of our attention. Join us July 20th-24th; 27th-31st, in Jerusalem, or online

Global House of Friendship and Hope

As we continue to deliver a vision of global vision of interreligious friendship and hope, we set our sights on the Global House in Assisi.

The Goals of the Global House of Friendship and Hope are:

• To serve as the worlds’ first museum on prayer and spirituality.
• To provide inspiration for individual and collective growth, interfaith understanding and harmony.
• To break boundaries and forge bridges of friendship across faiths and nations.
• To serve as a place of learning about the religions and the spiritual life of humanity.
• To provide opportunities for cultivating spiritual experience and growth.
• To serve as a symbol and a home for collaboration and redefining relations between religions.
• To build on the perception and reach of Assisi as a place that unites the world’s many faiths in spirituality and friendship.
• To headquarter the global movement of Friendship Across Faiths, spearheaded by the leaders of all faiths and its global initiatives and campaigns.