A Window On Religion And Tolerance

Tour of Worship Places Exposes Md. Students to Several Faiths

Where Yalda Jafari comes from, there are no churches or synagogues. In fact, girls in her northern Afghanistan town had no schools for five years under the Taliban.

As if to make up for lost time, the 16-year-old sophomore from Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville kept raising her hand yesterday as she and her classmates gathered around the handwritten Torah scrolls at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, which was preparing to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah today.

"Why are there three pieces?" asked Yalda, who came to the United States five months ago through a year-long exchange program. "Why is it not a small book, like the Bible or the Koran?" As the synagogue's executive director answered her queries, the student held up her digital camera to capture everything.

Yalda and about 50 other Wootton students were on an unusual field trip that took them to Washington National Cathedral, the Islamic Mosque and Cultural Center and the synagogue. They marveled at stained glass and gothic arches, watched Muslim men perform noon prayers and heard about the history of the Jewish community in Washington, all in an effort become familiar with religious traditions many had never seen up close.

"We as Americans tend to know very little about other religions, other languages, other cultures," said Lili Monk, who brought her AP human geography class, students from a comparative religion class and members of the school's Muslim Students Association. "Many of the major conflicts around the world are religious, and the more the kids learn about faith and tolerance and have a better understanding of them, they will be in a better position to address these issues."

With Christmas approaching and Hanukkah starting tonight, the adults said they hoped to make students think beyond the annual blur of shopping and partygoing. "Wouldn't it be great if they went into the real world believing that everyone has the right to worship in the way they want to?" said Amy Buckingham, who teaches the comparative religion students.

At the cathedral, diffuse light tinted the students' faces as they heard about the 10,000 pieces of glass that went into one window and the 125 tons of bronze bells that hung above where they stood. They saw the painting of Halley's comet on a ceiling, stood beside the crypt where Helen Keller was buried with her teacher, Annie Sullivan, and heard about the small Darth Vader figure built on the outside of the cathedral.

As their school bus pulled up to the mosque, the girls pulled scarves over their heads (and checked to see whether they clashed with their Ugg boots). "I think I look stellar," said Jessie Parzow, 18, her blond hair falling forward from her scarf.

"This is my first time in a mosque, and I'm Muslim," said Fred Zahedinia, 17. He explained that his family is Iranian and "has some religion, but we're not religious." He had been to synagogues, however -- "lots of bar mitzvahs."

Inside, the students sat on intricate oriental carpets beside marble columns and watched mosque librarian Abassie Jarr-Koroma demonstrate how Muslims pray. The Massachusetts Avenue mosque, built in the 1940s, is open to all Muslim sects and displays the flags of many predominantly Muslim countries outside.

"As a Muslim you are required to pray five times a day, unless you are insane, you are confused or the woman is going through the menses," Jarr-Koroma told them. "On any given day, people from 35 to 93 nations are worshiping here."

As he spoke, men trickled in for noon prayers. The imam called out "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest"). After watching them kneel and rise in unison, the students quietly filed out and pulled on the shoes they had taken off before entering.

Back on the bus, Lebanese, Iraqi, Pakistani and Afghan students compared notes. This mosque was similar to ones they had seen in the Middle East, although a couple had seen one in Syria that was about the size of the cathedral.

"My dad says there's synagogues and churches in Iraq, and they're all beautiful," said Zohair Asmail, 14.

Jessie said she was surprised that the worshipers at the mosque did not all look Middle Eastern. "We didn't expect them to look African and Asian," she said.

At the next stop, she got another surprise. At the Orthodox synagogue her family attends, men and women are separated, and the Torah is never taken out of the ark unless special prayers are said first.

But Craig L. Sumberg, executive director of the Sixth & I synagogue, opened the scroll with no fanfare and said it had been written before World War II and rescued from the Holocaust.

Imad el-Amine, 14, whose longish hair tumbled out from his baseball cap, said he would have liked to have prayed at the mosque. He said his great-grandfathers were supreme ayatollahs in Lebanon and noted that men in his family wear black turbans to denote their ancestral connection to the prophet Muhammad.

Is that why his baseball cap was black? "No, that's nothing to do with it," he said. "It just looks cool."