Sarah Bassin ’04 Receives Fellowship to Promote Interfaith Understanding

Sarah Bassin ’04 (Overland Park, Kan.) is building bridges between people of different religions in Chicago this summer through a fellowship from the American Jewish Committee.

“The Jewish-Catholic connection is very strong here [in Chicago] — it’s a wonderful coalition,” says Bassin, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Alpha Theta (history) academic honor societies. She notes that there seems to be a little more tension between Jews and other Christian groups due to differing opinions on the Israel-Palestinian situation.

A history and religion major, Bassin has always had an interest in interfaith activity, primarily because her mother’s family is Catholic and her father’s is Jewish.

“I had a really good experience with the two faiths, but I’ve come to realize that’s not always the case,” she says. “I want to try to iron out those differences as much as I can.”

Bassin’s experience will include teaching college students how to dialogue with those of different faiths during the American Jewish Committee’s Israel Activism Weekend. She likely will use a model produced by Lafayette’s Hillel Society, which she leads as president. She will also compile a Jewish-Christian interfaith prayer book for a November clergy retreat in Chicago.

“I have a lot of high hopes for the workshop program I will be doing [for the Israel Activism Weekend],” says Bassin. “Hopefully other campuses will have the luck that Lafayette’s campus has had. I just want to spread the love.”

She will spend her senior year analyzing the Jewish perspective on interfaith dating and marriage for an intensive research project in pursuit of departmental honors in religion.

“I ran into some resistance when I dated outside my faith,” says Bassin, explaining that her parents’ successful relationship has motivated her to challenge the widely held notion that interfaith marriages do not work. She will focus primarily on Reform Judaism, the branch of Judaism in which most interfaith marriage occurs.

Last fall, Bassin conducted EXCEL Scholars research on Just War theory and Jewish traditions similar to it with Stephen Lammers, Helen H.P. Manson Professor of Religion. She spent the second half of the semester assisting Lammers in his continuing research on Catholic Just War theory and its relationship with the United States-Iraq war.

In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students collaborate with faculty on research while earning a stipend. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.

Bassin also conducted an intensive research project on liberation theology guided by Richard Sharpless, professor of history. She explored a variety of sources in her study, including Liberation Theology by theologian Gustavo Gutierrez and Stupid White Men by political satirist Michael Moore.

“I was most interested in the aspect of religion that compels people to examine or act upon social concerns,” she explains. “My own tradition in Reform Judaism has a strong emphasis on tzedakah, ‘social justice’, and tikun olam, ‘healing the world’. Liberation theology is like the Catholic counterpart to those Jewish concepts.”

Bassin spent last summer working as a social action intern at Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in Washington, D.C., and taking a class on modern Jewish literature through the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. She hopes to work with a service corps for a year after graduation before beginning rabbinical studies.

Bassin has taught fifth-grade students at an Easton-area synagogue and is co-chair of QuEST, Questioning Established Sexual Taboos. She recently won the Porter Bible Prize, awarded for high proficiency in the study of religion. She also was the inaugural recipient of Lafayette’s Ludwig and Beatrice B. Muhlfelder Scholarship, presented to a student whose academic program includes a focus on Holocaust studies.