Fellowship's revival critical

Welcome back to those of you who may be returning to theFellowship after a long absence and welcome to those of you who arenew to the Fellowship. For whatever reason you are here thisevening, we are happy to have you in our midst.

Most of you are aware that the Fellowship was founded in 1993 bya handful of caring people, Christians and Jews, who were concernedabout the presence of anti-Semitism in the town and who sought toattack this problem by promoting fellowship, understanding andrespect through education, dialogue and interaction. The Fellowshipbegan as a grassroots effort, recruiting from various houses ofworship within the community people who might have an interest injoining the effort. I was one of those early recruits and for thenext 10 years the Fellowship became a passion for me. I saw so muchgood being done. I saw bridges being built, I saw people ofdifferent faiths and beliefs sitting together at the table andcoming away with a better understanding and a new appreciation forone another. I saw new lights shining where once the darkness ofignorance had prevailed. And, I saw a newfound respect being formedbetween Christians and Jews within this community.

None of this came easily or without problems and setbacks alongthe way, but we all continued to work together keeping our goals insight. We worked hard sponsoring events such as Fellowship Week andFellowship picnics; hosting luncheons and dinners featuringnationally known speakers in the field of interfaith relations,establishing interfaith dialogues where we gathered together todiscuss our beliefs, our concerns, our differences and ourcommonalities; creating scholarships for teachers to attend seminarsin the program Facing History and Ourselves so this program could besponsored in our Palm Beach County school system; and by sponsoringan Art and Essay Contest in our local school system challengingstudents to create an essay or an artistic creation representingtheir thoughts in regard to a subject involving interfaithrelationships. Looking back, I am almost overwhelmed by all we didand all we accomplished.

Tonight we are here to announce our return. Those same few peoplewho saw to the founding of the Fellowship almost 18 years ago saw aneed to revive the mission of the Fellowship. Some have told us theFellowship is needed now more than ever in this new era ofincivility; of noisy, hostile rhetoric in the political arena andthe media; of callous and irresponsible use of the Internet; offactionalism resulting from radical extremism, often in the name ofreligion; and of "targeting" those who do not believe as we maybelieve.

We have returned, not because we want to. We wish we could havedeclared victory and folded up our tent. We have returned, rather,because, unfortunately, we find it once again necessary to addressnot only the problems we initially sought to address but others.And, address them we will with renewed vigor, with renewedenthusiasm, with renewed efforts and with renewed resolve towardmaking this community a better place in which to live.

We will not tackle all the problems, but with your help we canchip away at them little by little. So, welcome back friends, andthanks for caring enough to be here this evening. Town Attorney JohnRandolph is chairman of the Palm Beach Fellowship of Christians andJews. He wrote this for a recent meeting of the Fellowship.