Growing up, Shana Rosenberg lit candles every Friday to commemorate the beginning of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. It was a time for her to spend with family, even when life got busy, always finding the time to light them.
Having moved into residence in her first-year at U of T, Rosenberg was determined to keep Shabbat as a part of her new life on campus.
After her don — the student leader in her residence — told her she couldn’t light candles in her dormitory due to residence guidelines, she took to celebrating Shabbat outside. Huddling around the steps of Old Vic, Rosenberg and a few friends lit candles, until the next Friday when security requested them to stop.
Eventually, she and her friends were able to arrange something with the Office of the Dean of Students; they could use a private dining room in Burwash Dining Hall and occasionally Alumni Hall every Friday evening as well as on certain Jewish holidays to light candles. They now finally had a warm space to come together and celebrate Shabbat.
Second-year urban planning student Katrina Eilender began lighting candles with Rosenberg in their first-year, 2023. “It became a three-person club that basically existed in name only,” she explained.
“But [we thought] ‘What if we actually turned this into a real club?’… Slowly, it grew.”
Taking initiative
Shabbat is a Jewish day of rest which begins Friday evening and ends Saturday evening. The celebration of Shabbat on Friday at sunset traditionally involves sharing a meal with family and friends. The candles that were once lit during Shabbat merely as sources of light are today lit in commemoration of a tradition of spending time with loved ones.
Shabbat is a reminder of our paralyzing smallness, mortality, and the limits to our knowledge and understanding of the world, ourselves, and each other.
In practicing Shabbat, celebrants preserve a space in time away from the chaos of everyday life, dedicated to being present and connecting with others. “If everything is getting paved over and urbanized and turned into suburban sprawl, with parking lots everywhere, Shabbat is a park,” said Eilender, co-president of the Victoria College Shabbat club alongside Rosenberg, in an interview with The Varsity. “It’s like a preservative green space — you can’t pave over that time with anything. You have to keep it to just exist and be a human.”
In a world where many of us find ourselves spending so much of our lives online, it is essential to have a moment where you can remember what it is to be in touch with your surroundings, with fellow people, and with yourself as a human being separate from technology.
In Judaism, Shabbat is a foretaste of eternity on Earth; it is supposed to be a moment of rest and peace and a glimpse into the state to come after death. Shabbat is meant as a time to be in the presence of God and each other, a moment without work and worries. It is also about taking time to spend with friends and family.
As the club began to quickly expand, Jewish and non-Jewish students came each week to share pizza with friends. It grew to include celebrations of Jewish holidays and “Lunch and Learns,” during which professors of Jewish studies spoke about everything from the history of Shabbat to translations of scripture.
“If you [want] Shabbat distilled down to a sentence: for six days a week, you do the things you need to do [to] keep sustaining life [and] on Shabbat, you do the things that make life worth living,” explained Eilender.
In the fall of 2024, Eilender proposed to Rosenberg to host interfaith Shabbat dinners with other faith and religious groups on campus. They also reached out to student groups such as the Muslim Students’ Association and the Queer Muslim Network to co-host events. Eilender saw sharing religious traditions and engaging in theological discussions as ways to bridge communities and build more understanding between people from different faiths and traditions.
She wanted to create an inclusive space where people could practice and discuss faith no matter where they are on the religiosity spectrum. The club would also be a space where visitors and members would be able to experience faith apart from a political or ideological context.
“We wanted a place that was just more about community… that was more about being together, teaching and learning about the culture and the religion and getting a break,” she said.
Eilender was also motivated by her own curiosity. “I have Christian friends, I have Muslim friends, and the conversations that we have are always really interesting,” said Eilender. So she thought, “What if we could scale that up a little bit?”
On February 7, I attended the first official interfaith Shabbat the club hosted, funded by the Hart House Good Ideas Fund. People filtered into a private room in the Burwash Dining Hall as the sun began to set. When it was time to light the candles, the tables were filled with an intermingling of undergraduate students, older students returning to divinity school, a Buddhist divinity school student, an atheist, two PhD students in Jewish studies, and a Christian minister and professor at Emmanuel College.
After lighting the candles, a blessing of the bread, a serving of food and drinks, and songs, the discussion portion of the evening began. Attendees took turns reading passages from texts by Jewish theologians, discussing the importance of rest and rejuvenation across religions. For example, Muslims celebrate ‘Friday Prayer or Jum’ah, a day dedicated to formal prayer at the mosque. Many Christians celebrate Sunday as the day of rest, where they pray, take communion, and connect with others at church.
As we discussed Shabbat as a foretaste of eternity, a student remarked that they used to want to convert others to their religion, believing it was for the other’s spiritual benefit — it would guarantee them a spot in Heaven. However, they have since realized that, despite being a member of a religion, they have no say in what qualifies as faith or where someone gets to spend their afterlife — only God knows.
They paused as if unsure of themselves. Others at the table nodded, muttering assent. This student reminded me how faith can be a way to sublimate the fear we feel in uncertain circumstances — such as what comes after death.
The next reading was from a book called The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. A famous quote of Heschel’s spoke to this sentiment of uncertainty: “Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.”
Shabbat is a reminder of our paralyzing smallness, mortality, and the limits to our knowledge and understanding of the world, ourselves, and each other. It compels us to sit with the inglorious aspects of our humanity. In doing so, it grounds us, providing a glimpse of what it means to be present.
A new era of interfaith discussion
Few things in history are without precedent, but interfaith dialogue comes close.
Though informal interfaith exchanges took place earlier, the origins of the interreligious movement are often traced to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago — widely regarded as “the first formal gathering of representatives of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions.”
This movement’s foundation was distinct from other moments of religious tolerance in history because it recognized that different religions can hold legitimate claims to truth. Its broader adoption in the late twentieth century is closely tied to the rise of multicultural and secular societies.
Interfaith initiatives still carry a certain strangeness. While working on this article, a friend asked me if I think interfaith initiatives can be logically coherent. After all, if someone seriously believes in their religion, does it make sense to accept that others can also hold legitimate claims to truth? There is something agnostic about interfaith practice, as if participation implies uncertainty about one’s own beliefs.
There are many ways people have tried to make sense of interreligious practice. In the Hebrew Bible’s book of Isaiah, it is famously written, “There is no other God but me.” The obvious reading of this sentence warns against polytheism and, perhaps, interreligious dialogue.
Yet some have seen it differently: if there is only one God, why must he warn against worshipping others?
Still, there is something wishful about interfaith initiatives. At times, I imagine religious texts as puppets, with us as the ventriloquists, trying to make them speak the language of modern values and concerns.
At the Shabbat club’s Lunch and Learn, English and Jewish Studies Professor Andrea Most elaborated on this theory, noting that one of the first words used for God in the Hebrew Bible, “Elohim,” is plural.
She suggested that this plural form could point to a jealous, rather than singular God, one desperately trying to assert his dominance over others. In other words, although the Abrahamic God wants his followers to only worship him, the text does not discount the existence of many other gods.
These speculations may seem like a stretch, but they underscore the importance of reconciling interreligious thought, not only for many theologians but also for religious individuals.
Judith Newman, professor of Hebrew Bible at Emmanuel College and early Judaism at the Department for the Study of Religion, shared that she was “raised in the Episcopal Church” — a branch of the Protestant denomination of Christianity called Anglicanism. Her father even taught the Old Testament at an Episcopal seminary, preparing students to become ministers.
After completing her undergraduate degree, she spent a year abroad at a kibbutz — socialist, communal living spaces in Israel, meaning “gathering” in Hebrew — a left-wing commune founded by members of the Dutch Reformed Church. The kibbutz was established to improve Jewish-Christian relations following the Holocaust.
“I realized during that year… there’s so much I did not know about other faiths,” said Professor Newman.
Interfaith conversations can be a way of grappling with fundamental tensions with traditions — including what it means to be queer and religious, as well as generational divides and sexual politics.
Later, she became involved in interfaith exchanges in New York with Jewish seminaries. “I’ve always been a questioner [of faith] anyway, so, I appreciate parts of Judaism, just like I appreciate parts of Christianity — [though there are] some parts I don’t appreciate as much.”
Just as there are commonalities between religions, there are also incommensurate differences — such as the belief that Jesus is the Christ, which is considered heretical in both Judaism and Islam. For Professor Newman, there are profound incompatibilities between religions that someone mature in their faith must accept.
In the pursuit of interreligious cooperation and tolerance, it’s easy to collapse these complex traditions. However, faith involves much more than the Ten Commandments or a few selected slogans about caring for strangers and neighbours.
How open you can become without ignoring the complexity of a tradition is a tricky line to tread. At what point do so many core beliefs get compromised that the tradition ceases to be recognizable? Many religious communities in Canada’s pluralistic culture have grappled with this question.
“It was just a few years ago,” Newman recalled, “that… one of the clergy [in the United Church] just didn’t accept God — so, [she] was an atheist… The question was, is that repudiating the faith or not?… They decided, in fact, it was.”
The clergy member was ultimately removed in a 19–4 vote by the United Church of Canada committee tasked with reviewing the case. The decision came after months of reports and hearings.
While this decision was controversial within the United Church, Newman remarked that it likely wouldn’t have been in most other religious communities, where religious essentialism — the belief that a religion is made up of fundamental, immutable qualities — is normalized.
Perhaps interfaith dialogue is tolerable and even desirable to many faith communities today in a way it would not have been in past centuries. Participants are no longer seeking a singular idea of truth or morality in religion, but rather connection, identity, and direction.
Connection in the digital age
Humans and human connections in this generation are heavily dependent on technology, which plays a significant role in our lives. Many religious celebrations, however, emphasize the importance of human connection without technology or another crutch, where people connect simply by virtue of being human.
Although essential to modern society, technology can distract us from real connections. At the dinner, participants discussed the perils of depending on phones, noting how they make it difficult to focus and detract from time spent with friends and family.
It may seem strange to look to religious texts for guidance on how to relate to one another in the digital era. However, there is no denying that the modern, digital, and globalized world is still divisive — whether politically, culturally, or socially. This divisiveness has made maintaining community strength increasingly difficult, yet it has also made it more important than ever.
It is no surprise, then, that many are turning to religious practices to escape the fragmentation of the modern world. Gen Z, in particular, has seen a rise in interest in religion and theology for this very reason. Religious spaces and discourse offer an outlet for many to explore this need for community.
As long as we keep talking
All the conversations that surrounded me at the interfaith Shabbat dinner made me wonder, amazed: are we seriously looking to find wisdom on how to exist as human beings in the digital era from a thousand-year-old text?
But, perhaps, that is not the point.
Perhaps people seek interfaith dialogue not for knowledge but as a structure and entry point to talk about modern struggles. Faith, then, is not a source of truth; it’s a source for conversation.
The Centre for Inquiry Canada conducted a study in January that suggested that the percentage of Canadians who identify as irreligious increased from 16.5 per cent in 2001 to 34.6 per cent in 2021.
As Canadians have become less religious over the past few decades, places like Toronto now embody both religious diversity and marginality. Divinity schools — graduate programs in religion and theology — like Emmanuel College have responded to this new reality by expanding their programs to include options such as Buddhism and interfaith initiatives.
Data from a 2023–2024 study by the Pew Research Center suggests the decades-long decline in religious observance in North America may be leveling off. As religious communities adjust to their new marginality, they’ve withdrawn the boundaries of what is permissible and who can claim membership.
The people I met at the dinner were not there to search for answers in the texts about how we should live but to find ways to live now. God is an abstraction — but it is through the constant act of reinterpretation that people and communities create meaning from religious tradition. This may be their power.
Interfaith conversations can be a way of grappling with fundamental tensions with traditions — including what it means to be queer and religious, as well as generational divides and sexual politics.
As people in Canada become more secular, Eilender pointed out that other religious groups also experience marginalization. She gestured in the air, saying, “The world is heading in a bleak direction.”
But when we come together with the desire to learn from one another and contribute something important, “you can find that we all [end] up in the same place,” as Eilender put it.
However irreconcilable each of our beliefs may be, “We have similar fears.”
