Originally published April 20, 2010

BENYAMIN COHEN (Author of “My Jesus Year”): I grew up in the heart of the Bible belt in Atlanta, Georgia, one of eight children, the son of an Orthodox rabbi. I’m the only one that didn’t go into the family business. They are all rabbis or married rabbis.

I was always jealous. I grew up across the street from a Methodist church, and literally my bedroom window looked out at the church parking lot, and every Sunday morning I would see it was packed, and living in the Bible belt there are churches on every street corner, and their parking lots are full every week. Maybe I could go to church—not to convert to Christianity. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to go to find out what got people excited about worship, what got people excited about their religion. Maybe I could go and tap into that spirituality and find out the secret that I was never taught growing up, and maybe I could bring that back and apply it to my own Judaism.

Here’s one thing that I learned. I haven’t even walked into a church, and here’s already one thing I could write down and tell my rabbi—first-time visitor parking. I’m not talking about bringing Jesus into the synagogue. It wouldn’t hurt, it wouldn’t kill you to put a little first-time visitor parking sign in the parking lot.

I didn’t know going to church that they talk about the Old Testament. I assumed Jews have the Old Testament and Christians have the New Testament. I didn’t realize they have both, and this pastor got up and started giving an Old Testament sermon, and the way he was describing his interpretation was completely antithetical to what I had learned growing up. What came out of that moment was that I didn’t realize I cared so much about my own Bible.

At this Episcopal church they had a ritualistic service every week, and they had these nice traditions, and I was like that’s such a nice, sweet thing to have traditions and ancient rituals. I was like that sounds familiar. We have that in synagogue, and it kind of made me look at my own rituals with a new, fresh perspective.

Orthodox Jewry and Mormonism have a lot in common. We are both minorities in America. We both have special dietary—they can’t drink caffeine, and we have to keep kosher. They wear special undergarments, we wear special undergarments. There’s a lot of laws that dictate all their lives, and so for me I felt a real kinship with the Mormon community, and I went knocking door to door with these two female Mormon missionaries, and their conviction, these are girls 19- and 20-years-old, and their conviction for their religion was just awe-inspiring to me. I’m sure the woman whose house we were visiting, I’m sure she’s wondering why the Mormons brought their accountant with them. You know, what is he doing here?

I was feeling guilty at the end of the year that I kind of strayed from my own religion, and so I wanted to cleanse myself of that guilt, so I did what any good Jewish boy does, and that’s go to confession. I asked my Catholic friend, Vince, if I could do this, and he said, “No, only Catholics can go to confession, but I will sneak you in.” It was a very meaningful spiritual experience, and an interesting postscript to that whole episode is that the priest, now that the book has come out, the priest actually knows that I went to confession with him, and he called me and thanked me. He is so happy that I had a meaningful experience with him.

I for one feel a lot closer to a religious Christian than I do a non-religious Jew, because we have so much in common. People ask me if I found Jesus in church, and I personally did not, so to speak, find Jesus, but what I did find was true spirituality. That’s what I found in these places: the lack of cynicism, the openness to the experience, and the belief in God, whoever that God may be.

BENYAMIN COHEN (Author of “My Jesus Year”): I grew up in the heart of the Bible belt in Atlanta, Georgia, one of eight children, the son of an Orthodox rabbi. I’m the only one that didn’t go into the family business. They are all rabbis or married rabbis.

I was always jealous. I grew up across the street from a Methodist church, and literally my bedroom window looked out at the church parking lot, and every Sunday morning I would see it was packed, and living in the Bible belt there are churches on every street corner, and their parking lots are full every week. Maybe I could go to church—not to convert to Christianity. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to go to find out what got people excited about worship, what got people excited about their religion. Maybe I could go and tap into that spirituality and find out the secret that I was never taught growing up, and maybe I could bring that back and apply it to my own Judaism.

Here’s one thing that I learned. I haven’t even walked into a church, and here’s already one thing I could write down and tell my rabbi—first-time visitor parking. I’m not talking about bringing Jesus into the synagogue. It wouldn’t hurt, it wouldn’t kill you to put a little first-time visitor parking sign in the parking lot.

I didn’t know going to church that they talk about the Old Testament. I assumed Jews have the Old Testament and Christians have the New Testament. I didn’t realize they have both, and this pastor got up and started giving an Old Testament sermon, and the way he was describing his interpretation was completely antithetical to what I had learned growing up. What came out of that moment was that I didn’t realize I cared so much about my own Bible.

At this Episcopal church they had a ritualistic service every week, and they had these nice traditions, and I was like that’s such a nice, sweet thing to have traditions and ancient rituals. I was like that sounds familiar. We have that in synagogue, and it kind of made me look at my own rituals with a new, fresh perspective.

Orthodox Jewry and Mormonism have a lot in common. We are both minorities in America. We both have special dietary—they can’t drink caffeine, and we have to keep kosher. They wear special undergarments, we wear special undergarments. There’s a lot of laws that dictate all their lives, and so for me I felt a real kinship with the Mormon community, and I went knocking door to door with these two female Mormon missionaries, and their conviction, these are girls 19- and 20-years-old, and their conviction for their religion was just awe-inspiring to me. I’m sure the woman whose house we were visiting, I’m sure she’s wondering why the Mormons brought their accountant with them. You know, what is he doing here?

I was feeling guilty at the end of the year that I kind of strayed from my own religion, and so I wanted to cleanse myself of that guilt, so I did what any good Jewish boy does, and that’s go to confession. I asked my Catholic friend, Vince, if I could do this, and he said, “No, only Catholics can go to confession, but I will sneak you in.” It was a very meaningful spiritual experience, and an interesting postscript to that whole episode is that the priest, now that the book has come out, the priest actually knows that I went to confession with him, and he called me and thanked me. He is so happy that I had a meaningful experience with him.

I for one feel a lot closer to a religious Christian than I do a non-religious Jew, because we have so much in common. People ask me if I found Jesus in church, and I personally did not, so to speak, find Jesus, but what I did find was true spirituality. That’s what I found in these places: the lack of cynicism, the openness to the experience, and the belief in God, whoever that God may be.

Click here to view a gallery of paintings by David Gelernter.

At the core of personal trauma there is often a loss of faith in life’s order and stability. When faced with a crisis, some people turn to religion. Others turn to artistic expression. David Gelernter turned to both, and his new book Judaism: A Way of Being (Yale University Press, 2009) displays a unique entwining of the two.

Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University whose scientific mind has long looked toward the future, some say predicted it. The “tuple spaces” paradigm for parallel distributed computing that he introduced in the 1980s became the basis of many computer communication and programming systems. His book Mirror Worlds (Oxford University Press, 1991) is said to have foreseen the Internet and inspired the programming language Java.

In June 1993, while going through a stack of mail in his Yale office, Gelernter opened a package he believed was a doctoral dissertation. Smoke billowed out and the package exploded. It was a mail bomb sent by Ted Kaczynski, the man the FBI dubbed the Unabomber, and it permanently damaged Gelernter’s right hand and eye.

Gelernter recovered from his injuries but emerged an impassioned conservative critic of American life and politics. In recent years, he has traced America’s moral decline to a class of intellectuals he says came to the fore as the country’s new elite in the 1960s, hijacked cultural discourse, and corrupted social values.

If the bombing prompted political polemic, it also drew Gelernter closer to religion. This is not to say he was new to Judaism. David Hillel Gelernter, the grandson of a rabbi, grew up a Reform Jew. Before he decided on computer science he received a master’s degree in Hebrew Bible. The Orthodox Judaism he has turned to more recently, however, and that he celebrates in his new book is the one he sees as pure and authentic, the kind of religion capable of drawing the world back into secure order. It is Judaism without the complexity introduced by gender equality and other modern revolutions. Gelernter presents himself as a local guide to the faith, offering to lead Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike into what he calls “the inner courtyard” of Judaism to see what cannot be seen from the outside. His book, he claims, is “Judaism at full strength, straight up; no water, no soda, aged in oak for three thousand years.”

For Gelernter, to understand Judaism you must see it. Far from being allergic to images, Judaism is a religious tradition passionate about the beauty and aesthetics of life. The Hebrew Bible is itself pictorial, with stories and lessons conveyed through vivid imagery, from the dove with an olive branch in its beak to the Burning Bush. “Judaism,” Gelernter writes, “tells Jews what is right—and adorns the bare thread of human life with sanctity, jewel-by-jewel, until a Jewish life glows with soft color: warm amber and silver, cool fragrant yellow and glowing orange and translucent purple-rose.”

Gelernter is an artist, after all, and considers painting the oldest strand of his personal history. He took art lessons as a child, and as a teenager living on Long Island traveled regularly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan to copy Degas in pencil and charcoal. When he lost function in his right hand after the bombing, what worried him most was his ability to continue painting. Slowly, Gelernter learned to use his left hand the way he once used his right, and so painting has remained central to his identity and intellect.

Images are also central to his book, structured around four “image-themes” (separation, veil, perfect asymmetry, and inward pilgrimage) that outline the codes and aesthetics of what Gelernter says is a “common Judaism.” “My basic themes take the form of images,” he explains, “because Judaism is less a system of belief than a way of living, a particular texture of time.” Each theme conveys one central facet of Judaism and also serves as a microcosm of the religion as a whole.

The idea of separation refers to man’s struggle to transcend nature and create himself in God’s image. Many biblical images convey the essence of separation, such as the parting of the Red Sea, the waters forced apart at Creation, and the Torah scroll held wide and open in front of a synagogue congregation (a ritual called hagba). Separation, Gelernter explains, guides halakha, the set of Jewish laws that dictate religious practices and beliefs, as well as numerous aspects of daily life. Keeping kosher and setting the Sabbath apart from the work week as a day of rest are acts of separation that Jews are obliged to live by. These practices, says Gelernter, turn everyday life into a continuous process of sanctification.

The image-theme he calls “veil” conveys the principle that while one cannot see or know God, one can comprehend God’s inconceivablessness, symbolized by a sacred veil. Images of the veil in Judaism include Moses veiling his face at Mount Sinai after meeting with God, a prayer shawl or tallit draped over a person at prayer, the curtain hanging in front of the Holy Ark in a synagogue, and the mezuzah that encloses a small scroll of biblical text. These images, Gelernter suggests, can help us grasp the deeper and more elusive question of how man can engage with a transcendent, ineffable God.

There are those who will disagree with many of the views that run through Gelernter’s book, such as his claims that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in Western history; that God has withdrawn from the modern world; that Reform and Conservative Judaism do not work; and that the purpose of life is to marry and rear a family. In a chapter on his third theme, “perfect asymmetry,” on the importance of marriage and the family, Gelernter is not subtle about his social critique. He argues that the feminist effort for male and female equality “is an act of aggression against both sanctity and humanity.”

Aspects of the text are indeed narrow and partial, but the image-themes still allow for more expansive thinking. With the theme of “inward pilgrimage” Gelernter broaches the problem of how to reconcile a just God with the reality of a cruel world. Judaism tells us that lo bashamayim hi, “the Torah is not in heaven”; it must be interpreted and applied on earth. According to Gelernter, interrogation of the world around us and inner doubt are equal parts of the Jewish journey.

Eight glossy reproductions of paintings by Gelernter are tucked inside the book, products of his own journey. They are not illustrations of the image-themes, but rather colorful and delicate ornamentations of Jewish text, coming out of a tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Gelernter works with acrylic, collage, and gold leaf. Butterflies are a recurring motif. In one painting, the Hebrew phrase Ha’Mavdil bein kodesh l’chol, “Who separates between the sacred and the ordinary,” is enhanced with orange and magenta and bejeweled with a golden butterfly that helps form one of the letters. Marking the transition between sacred and secular time, this blessing is recited while holding a flickering candle at the end of the Sabbath. Gelernter’s artwork sanctifies the blessing, just as the thematic image of separation sanctifies life.

The indigo, cerulean, and crimson butterflies embedded in his paintings exemplify the delight that, for Gelernter, gives meaning to religious life. “Judaism is above all a religion of joy,” he asserts repeatedly throughout the book. At the center of “the vast, intricate, beautiful palace that is Judaism,” he writes, is “a thread of ecstasy…the whole word, space and time and suffering and all, pulled together by triumphant jubilation.”

The Judaism Gelernter lays out in Judaism may not be triumphant for everyone. While he claims to present the “whole” of Jewish life, some may find that a Judaism devoid of contemporary innovations lacks the interpretive essence so central to the religion. But Gelernter’s idea of image-themes and his own paintings succeed in areas where his text might not. They give permission to those who practice Judaism and those who study it to seek meaning and connection to the tradition not only through text but also through images, aesthetics, the senses, and the soft “glow” of color.

Juliana Ochs has written most recently for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on “Painting a Jewish Memory Book” and “The Story of the Hebrew Book.”

Paintings by David Gelernter:

DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: What role does faith play in a delivery room? If you ask one doctor in Atlanta, the answer is a big role. Dr. Joseph Tate delivers babies the old-fashioned way, using methods some obstetricians call risky. But his patients say God guides his hands. Mary Alice Williams has our report.

MARY ALICE WILLIAMS: Babies always surprise you, and most expectant mothers hoping for this joy, and chaos, fully expect to deliver a healthy baby — naturally.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Thank you Dr. Tate.

WILLIAMS: The birth of Sarah Miller’s two daughters surprised her and her husband Bill. She was unable to dilate enough to allow for natural birth. They were delivered by cesarean section.

SARAH MILLER: It makes it very hard to breast-feed. It makes it hard to do anything and bond with the baby, and I just want a vaginal birth.

UNIDENTIFED BIRTH HELPER (to patient): This baby is so good.

WILLIAMS: Vaginal birth after c-section — or VBAC — carries a rare but real risk of uterine rupture, life-threatening to both mother and child. Most obstetricians won’t risk it.

Dr. JOSEPH TATE (DeKalb-Gwinnett OB/GYN, Norcross, GA): She’s going to do it this time.

WILLIAMS: Dr. Joseph Tate risks VBACs all the time, even when the odds are against him.

Dr. TATE: I didn’t say to Sarah — I could say to her, “Look, you had two shots at it, and you didn’t perform. Tough. I’m going to do a cesarean.” I got to look at it positively. I will give her a fair shot at it, as long as she and the baby are doing well. That’s always the bottom line.

WILLIAMS: Dr. Tate, known as “Doc T,” is the sole practitioner of DeKalb-Gwinnett OB/GYN in Atlanta. It’s a family business. His wife Phyllis and daughter Elizabeth work in the office. He hasn’t had a vacation in 13 years because he works a super-human schedule.

Dr. TATE: We have, oh, another one, two, three, four that are within a week, another four that are two weeks within, another five that are three weeks.

WILLIAMS: Orthodox Jewish women make up about 20 percent of Dr. Tate’s practice. The rest are women of all faiths. How many babies has he delivered?

Dr. TATE: Somewhere over 5,000.

WILLIAMS: Sarah and Bill are hoping to make it five thousand and one.

Ms. MILLER: Well, I’m connected with a lot of mother groups online, and basically Dr. Tate’s name comes up over and over again, because there is nobody else.

WILLIAMS: That online mother’s forum is the International Cesarean Awareness Network — ICAN.

KATE SANDHAUS: Doc T is the only actual OB who participates. This is a one-in-a- million doctor. This is not just any doctor.

WILLIAMS: Kate Sandhaus, just three weeks before delivering her second child, arrived on Doctor Tate’s doorstep desperate for a VBAC after her first was born by a frightening emergency c-section. Doc T agreed to help her.

Ms. SANDHAUS: He’s available to all of us in a way that — I just — I don’t know any other doctors like that. I think that Doc T is committed to doing what’s right. He’s not swayed by what’s convenient, and the reason he practices medicine the way he does is because of his faith.

WILLIAMS: Doc T is an Orthodox Jew, a faith that requires of men many obligations, including praying three times a day.

(to Dr. Tate): What does prayer do for you?

Dr. TATE: It’s a communication with God. Judaism is establishing your own relationship with God. It’s a personal relationship. We don’t believe that God just kind of sets things out here and then you willy-nilly go your own way. We believe he does take a personal interest.

WILLIAMS: Dr. Tate is a pillar of the men’s study group at Beth Jacob synagogue in Atlanta. His rabbi, Ilan Feldman, calls him his go-to guy and a stickler when establishing the religious calendar.

Rabbi ILAN FELDMAN (Congregation Beth Jacob, Atlanta, GA): He’s got a clock which is connected to Pueblo, Colorado, an atomic clock because he’s that precise, and no matter what the synagogue clock says, when his clock says it’s time to begin, we begin.

WILLIAMS: On the Sabbath and high holidays Orthodox Jews may not carry things outside the home. So Doc T, a crack engineer long before he was called to obstetrics, constructed an eruv — a religious boundary that binds the entire community into one household.

Rabbi FELDMAN: So that for the purposes of Jewish law, an individual would be able to carry or transport items outdoors on the Sabbath on Shabbat.

WILLIAMS: As for Dr. Tate using his cell phone and delivering babies on the Sabbath, Jewish law makes exceptions.

Rabbi FELDMAN: Jewish law does have adjustments, so to speak, for people who are serving matters of life and death, and certainly a medical doctor like Dr. Tate would be governed by that exception.

(to Rabbi Feldman): Do you suspect that his Judaism makes him a better doctor?

Rabbi FELDMAN: There’s no question about it. In my opinion, the defining quality of a doctor beyond his training and his intelligence is his humility, and Dr. Tate is devoted and humbly in the service of his patients and of their Creator.

MICHELLE FRANK: People all around America, especially in the Orthodox Jewish community, really know about him — just a great asset to us.

WILLIAMS: Michelle Frank belongs to Dr. Tate’s synagogue. Three years ago in New York — with 26 people descending for Passover Seder — she went into premature labor. Rachel was born by cesarean.

Ms. FRANK: Physically it was really atrocious. I actually couldn’t even sit up for about 36 hours after she was born. It was just excruciatingly painful.

WILLIAMS: She’d been assured delivering naturally the next time would be no problem. She was in for a shock, as are many women in her circumstances.

Ms. FRANK: They’re absolutely not getting to do it. You have major hospitals in Atlanta who deliver, say, 16,000 babies a year, and they have c-section rates close to 40 percent.

WILLIAMS: Nationally, more than 9 out of 10 births following a c-section are surgical deliveries. Emory University Hospital Midtown, where Dr. Tate delivers, supports VBACs. But studies show more than a quarter of hospitals don’t or if they do can’t find doctors to perform them. Dr. T delivered Michelle’s new baby Danielle by VBAC.

Ms. FRANK: You’re on cloud nine. It’s so unbelievably amazing. It’s just the way that a woman was made to deliver a baby.

WILLIAMS: (to Ms. Frank): Do you think that his Orthodox Jewish faith makes him a better doctor?

Ms. FRANK: I think it makes him a better doctor, because I think that it helps to instill a lot of confidence in him. He does things that no other obstetrician will do. Whether they can or can’t they just won’t, and he’ll tell you that he really feels like God just sort of guides his hands in his deliveries, and some of the things that he does, and some of the stories that have been told, there’s just no way to do that on your own. I mean, you have to have help, and he attributes that help to God.

Dr. TATE: When you understand that there is another power in the world, and it is not just about you, then God gives you the ability sometimes to do things beyond what you particularly can do.

WILLIAMS: Natural births mean less blood loss and risk of infection for the mother and fewer respiratory problems for the newborn. But on this Sabbath day, there’s a problem with Sarah. Her tailbone is blocking her baby’s birth.

Dr. TATE: What I don’t tell people always is when I’m in tough situation I’ll close my eyes and I’ll say a silent prayer, and I want Him to let me know if this is something that can be done, let me do it, let me do it well. But if it’s something that can’t be done, well, let me know, and if I need to do a cesarean to—that’s the right thing, then we’ll do that. I need help, and I’m not ashamed to ask for it.

WILLIAMS: The result? A healthy seven-pound, two-ounce girl delivered naturally. This baby surprised everyone.

Ms. MILLER: Thank you so much.

WILLIAMS: And before you know it, this tiny newborn will join this crowd — every one of whom was delivered by Dr. Tate.

I’m Mary Alice Williams for RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY in Atlanta.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a story today about two young men who grew up together best friends — one white, one black — and then took different religious paths. One became an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, the other a Muslim. Today they argue, of course, but as Betty Rollin reports, they’ve found their theological differences don’t matter nearly as much as friendship and laughter.

BETTY ROLLIN: A couple of old friends shooting baskets — and not shooting baskets — in downtown New York City. Charlie Buckholtz and Sedar Chappelle met when they were in grade school in Silver Spring, Maryland. Charlie was not only the new kid in school, but one of the few white kids. He was having a hard time until Sedar came along.

SEDAR CHAPPELLE (to Charlie): You’re a very lucky man.

CHARLIE BUCKHOLTZ: Everyone respected him. He was sort of like the mayor of the school. So the fact that he kind of took me under his wing made it so that I was okay with everyone.

SEDAR: I went to summer camp, and at this summer camp I was the only black boy in this group of strangers, and I was very badly treated. So when I came back to school after the summer camp and meeting Charlie, the first thing that I did, I said, “Okay, this is the chance for me to take care of him, because I know how it feels.”

ROLLIN: The friendship grew, and at Charlie’s bar mitzvah there was Sedar, along with his later to be famous comedian brother, David Chappelle. Sedar and Charlie’s friendship continued throughout high school.

CHARLIE: I think that from the day we met each of us has always had a very profound sense that we have something to learn from each other.

ROLLIN: Then the accident.

CHARLIE: I was in this horrible car accident, and I was, I think, unconscious for a day or two, and I woke up heavily sedated with tubes in my chest.

SEDAR: They did not know whether he would live or die, and so I dropped everything, and I rushed over to the hospital as fast as possible.

MARJORIE BUCKHOLTZ (Charlie’s Mother): He got there, and I grabbed him and David, too, and we were, you know, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s get in there!” And we were stopped by this enormous battle-axe of a woman who said, “Where do you think they’re going?” And I said, “Well, they’re coming in to see Charlie.” And she said, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s family only.” And I said, “They’re my sons. And, I didn’t think about it, really, but she gave me such an incredulous look, and at which point David looked up and said, “Hey, don’t you watch ‘Different Strokes’ lady?” And she let them in.

SEDAR: It made me feel very warm and very welcomed. It gave me respect for Charlie and his family for the rest of my life.

ROLLIN: Neither Charlie nor Sedar were particularly religious growing up. Not until college did they begin their spiritual journeys.

SEDAR: I was going through this religious revival for Christianity. But the way that — but the racism that was at the Christian camp, it broke my heart completely, and so I was very confused at the church for a number of years. So when I went to college I started meeting Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I began to open my mind to other religions. Charlie was doing the same thing at the same time.

ROLLIN: Charlie’s journey led him to Israel, where he became an Orthodox rabbi.

CHARLIE (Praying in Hebrew): Adonai…

ROLLIN: Meanwhile, Sedar was exploring Islam. At first, there were new conflicts.

CHARLIE: When Sedar first started becoming involved in orthodox Islam there was definitely a feeling — he was very excited, he was a new convert, and he was definitely interested in converting me.

ROLLIN: Well, that could be very annoying.

CHARLIE: It was annoying. It was annoying. I mean, we were such old friends that we were sort of used to annoying each other and taking it in stride.

ROLLIN: There were other theological spats.

CHARLIE: There is a doctrine in his religion which he adheres to. The doctrine is that Islam is the kind of preferred religion. Other religions are acceptable. Other religions should be allowed to exist. But really Islam is the preferred religion.

ROLLIN: But don’t you feel that way about Judaism?

CHARLIE: No, that’s not a position that Judaism takes.

ROLLIN: Sedar also differs with Charlie about the question of the afterlife.

SEDAR: In his worldview, in his values, this world and this life is much more important to him than death or the life after death.

ROLLIN: And is that what’s important to you?

SEDAR: Well, for me, this life is temporary and temporal, and the life after death is eternal.

ROLLIN: Their theological differences, far from separating them, have just given them that much more to talk about.

CHARLIE (talking with Sedar at restaurant): There are still strong voices and strong strains. It seems that like that people are doing very, you know, bad sort of militant actions. Would you disagree with that?

SEDAR: Yeah, I would disagree with that.

CHARLIE: Really?

SEDAR: Yeah, I would disagree with that.

CHARLIE: Really?

SEDAR: To me I think it’s a very small percentage of people. Most Muslims, all they care about is family values.

ROLLIN: The most important part of the friendship, they say, is the wisdom shared from each religion.

CHARLIE: When I’m going through a hard time, it’s not always easy for me to find the wisdom in my own tradition that helps me to get through what I’m going through. But if I talk to Sedar about it and, you know, he’s had a similar struggle or a similar issue, and he looks into it, and he has more clarity than I do about it because I’m suffering at that moment, so he can find something within his own tradition, some piece of wisdom, and give that to me, and it’s really a gift.

ROLLIN: Both friends have had brushes with extremists. Sedar at one point befriended John Walker Lindh before his capture in Afghanistan. And Charlie was close to a Jewish settler on the West Bank.

CHARLIE: One of the guys that I knew that I studied with for a while, and was a very, very sweet person, ended up getting involved in basically a Jewish terror cell and attempting and thank God failing to do a really horrific act. I came to understand that it’s really just a function of isolation. When you isolate yourself from other — from a diversity of people and a diversity of views, then you can just kind of build your own system, and everything is internally confirming, and everything makes sense to you, and it’s just a closed system, and those closed systems can be very dangerous.

CHARLIE (talking to Sedar at restaurant): Well, what do you think would be like a good step towards resolving that?

SEDAR: I definitely think more of this — more dialogue between you and me and Christians and Jews and Muslims and Zulus. More dialogue.

CHARLIE: You really, you feel strong about the Zulus, that they should be involved in this?

SEDAR (Laughs).

CHARLIE: You always mention the Zulus.

SEDAR: Hey man, you know what? This is why I love you, man. This is why I love you.

CHARLIE: This is why I love you.

ROLLIN: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Betty Rollin in New York.