Ed. Note: A reminder from Rev. Susan Kershaw about tonight's community lecture at St. John's Episcopal Church...CCB

Community Lecture: Abraham’s Family Reunion with Jim Levinson and Javed Chaudhri, Tonight, May 16, 7 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Elm and Westminster Streets, Walpole.

Jim and Javed were instrumental in interfaith work in the Brattleboro area. Abraham’s Family Reunion is an effort to build understanding and community between the three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

 F. James Levinson, Ph.D has been serving as Spiritual Leader (Shaliach Tzibur) of the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community (BAJC) since 2001. Earlier he served in the same capacity at Temple Israel in Athol Massachusetts for 13 years. Levinson is a member of the local clergy association and a founding member of the social action-oriented Brattleboro Area Interfaith Initiative. Under his leadership, BAJC was nationally recognized for its efforts to facilitate Muslim-Jewish understanding through the Salaam-Shalom Program. Levinson also was an organizer of the 1995 interfaith commemoration in Poland of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Levinson has been involved in international nutrition work in Asia and Africa for the past 44 years, and has been on the faculty of MIT, Tufts University and the SIT Graduate Institute in Vermont.

 Javed Chaudhri was born in Pakistan near the Afghan border, and grew up in the Pakistani Western Himalayan school, the Lawrence College. In 1965 he arrived in Vermont to attend Marlboro College, graduated with High Honors in History, returned to Pakistan for 5 years and worked for Unilever. In 1971,  he returned to the US to attend the New School in NYC and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, earned  a graduate degree in Anthropology, taught briefly at the Community College of Vermont and then settled down in Montreal. In 1980 he again returned to Pakistan shortly after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and stayed for twenty years, traveling to India, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. He became a well known and successful business manager and consultant, taught business in graduate school and re-established close ties with many of the political and military personalities as well as business leaders whom he had grown up with. He has spoken at various fora, schools, colleges, churches and peace rallies in the United States on Afghanistan, Iraq, Islam and the Muslim World.  Javed is a lay member of a unique interfaith group, the Brattleboro Area Clergy whose members seek to work in unison as inheritors of the Abrahamic tradition. Javed is married to Yasmeen a graduate of  Antioch New England Graduate Center and is a teacher in Brattleboro. Their eldest son Tariq also graduated from Marlboro College and their twin sons Taimur and Tahir, born in Montreal, also studied at the same college.

 The lecture is open to the whole community and is free. For more information, please call 756-4533 or 756-2962.