Formation 3-Day Retreat
Dates: November 13-15
Location:
Holy Mountain Franciscan Retreat Center at Graymoor
40 Franciscan Way
Garrison, NY
Cost: $325, all-inclusive
The Community at the Crossing is a program of weekly fellowship, education, prayer, and formation in New York City, overseen by the Chemin Neuf Community, where Christians from different churches and backgrounds can grow in understanding rather than simple acquisition of information and can practice healthy dialogue and disagreement. This three-day retreat, hosted at the Holy Mountain Franciscan Retreat Center, combines the CatC’s annual educational modules on the history of Judaism and the history of Christianity, introducing in a single weekend the entangled but distinctive historical trajectories by which these traditions have become what they are today: diverse, divided, and in search of peace. The program will explore such questions as:
- How do Jews understand themselves as a people and a nation?
- How did Christianity become divided into so many separate churches?
- What is the “ecumenical movement” and how has it approached reconciliation and peacemaking between the churches?
- What is the relationship between Jewish law and theology?
- What do Jews and Christians have to say to one another today?
- What are the goals of interreligious dialogue?
In addition to the educational modules and unstructured time for socializing and enjoying the beautiful environment at Graymoor, participants (belonging to any religious tradition or none) will have opportunities to participate in Kabbalat Shabbat at Beacon Hebrew Alliance, Mass with the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, and private contemplative reflection on the themes of the weekend. Meals are included in the cost of the retreat, which is $325 for the three-day program.
About the Instructors:
Benjamin Kamine holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures at The Jewish Theological Seminary and Assistant Teaching Professor of Interreligious Engagement at Union Theological Seminary. In this role, he also works as Associate Director of the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue at JTS and as a Special Advisor in the Office of the President at Columbia University. His academic work focuses on classical Rabbinic narratives and the ways they reflect boundary-making and boundary-crossing with other cultures, especially Christianity and Islam. He has also written on modern interreligious dialogue and its challenges. Recent publications include: “Said Jacob in the Name of Jesus: Early Rabbinic Exclusion of Jewish-Christians from the Chain of Tradition” (2025), and “The Personal Before and After the Political: Case Study of a Dialogue Methodology for Crisis” (2024), co-authored with Elena Dini and Mohammed Gamal Abdelnour.
Aaron T. Hollander is Executive Director of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, Editor of Ecumenical Trends, and Adjunct Faculty in Theology at Fordham University. He is a scholar of theology and culture with his PhD from the University of Chicago. He serves on the steering committee of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and the summer faculty of the Centro Pro Unione in Rome; from 2022-2024 he was President of the North American Academy of Ecumenists. He is the author of Saint George Liberator: Hagiography as Resistance in the Modern Mediterranean (Fordham, 2026) and the editor of Saints in Divided Societies: The Political Aesthetics of Holiness (Fordham, 2027).