We here at JTS stand proudly with Hartford Seminary, which has been a very good partner with us in our efforts to foster relations with the American Muslim community. We have engaged with them in a three-year project, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of America, on Judaism and Islam in America. We are happy that Hartford has reached out and made this student exchange program available to JTS students. We reject the characterization of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger that Hartford Seminary is a hotbed of “activist Islamist organizations.” As they point out, Hartford trains Muslim Chaplains for U.S. government facilities. We at JTS see Hartford as positive and responsible partners for clergy education on interreligious relations. We work with them in the spirit of interfaith harmony. We are dismayed that the Connecticut Jewish Ledger instead stirs fractiousness among our religious counterparts in America.

Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, Ph.D.
Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interrelisioius Studies
Director, Milstein Center for Interrelisious Dialogue
Jewish Theological Seminary

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Editor’s note: See The Jewish Ledger response here.