- We're not meant to live in silos.

We're meant to live together.

(light upbeat music) Mount Calvary is a Baptist church located in the historic south end of Albany.

Reverend Dixon was ahead of his time.

He understood the value of different communities coming together and how we could learn from one another.

- Reverend Dixon was a mentor to me.

When I first came to Congregation Beth Emeth in 1985, soon thereafter at a community event, he and I struck up a friendship and, in time, decided together that we should build on that friendship and bring our two communities together to build better understanding and better interfaith relations.

So we began, over the years, a variety of different programs and activities that would bring our community together.

- Rabbi Shpeen would come to our church and preach, and Reverend Dixon would go there.

We had these annual services where we would share with one another.

- [Scott] Many times, very often to our great enjoyment, their choir would come and sing at the services too, which was always a big hit amongst our congregation.

Those pulpit exchanges then branched out to include dinners too.

- You have the opportunity to gain more respect for one another and realize how you can learn so much more when you take the time to talk to people, when you take the time to eat the food that they eat.

- We hosted a few Black Jewish Seders.

Our Passover Seder celebrates our redemption from slavery.

We were strangers in a strange land.

We were slaved, and therefore we are commanded not to treat others in the way that we had experienced.

And I think that message resonates in both communities.

- The Holocaust, slavery, you've got to see that there are similar struggles there.

People lost their lives, lost family members, lost families, lost generations.

And if we don't understand the commonality that comes out of that, then we're missing a lot.

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