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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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