COMMON HERITAGE CLEAR IN 3 FAITHS' SPRING OBSERVANCES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 3, 1993                   TAG: 9304050249
SECTION: RELIGION                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE CORNELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium
COMMON HERITAGE CLEAR IN 3 FAITHS' SPRING OBSERVANCES
It's a time to remember. Yet it applies to today, linking past with present. It looks, from different backgrounds, to one creator God in thanksgiving and hope.
These are common characterisTtics of key religious observances of three related faiths whose celebraTtions come close together this season.
They speak a common word of peace and caring for human life and deplore blaming misdeeds of indiTviduals on the rest of a shared faith.
Such notes were sounded on approach of the Jewish Passover on Monday through April 12; Christian Holy Week preceding Easter, April 11; and last week's festive culmination, Eid-ul-Fitr, of Islam's monthlong fasting of Ramadan.
The calls for peace, compassion and tolerance were shared by leaders of the three religions.
Rabbi Gary Bretton-GranaTtoor, interreligious affairs director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, denounced reacTtions to the World Trade Center bombing that put "collective guilt" on Muslims, said such stereotyping was the "seedbed of prejudice and intolerance."
"It's racism," said the Rev. George Keith of Manhattan's St. George Episcopal Church.
Mohammed T. Medhi, secretary-general of the Council on Islamic Affairs, said: "Scapegoating all Muslims is regrettably the pattern of much Western thinking, and exceptionally painful to us.
"Islam is against violence," he said, quoting Muslim scripture, the Koran, in condemning aggression as contrary to God's will. Similar insistence on peace threads the Bible of Jews and Christians.
It's part of the common heritage of the three religions which have adjoining holidays this spring.
The remembering is a particular emphasis of Passover and Easter, both of which recall God's redeeming action in history, and which also see those past events as ever-present realities.
"Passover is the ultimate remembering," says Rabbi A. James Rudin, interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee. "It teaches us over and over to remember the exodus."
Furthermore, God's freeing of Jews from slavery in Egypt, which Passover celebrates, is seen not just as a past event, but as a continually recurring process that saves Jews through the centuries, now and in the future.
"The genius of Passover is that we speak of it in the first-person plural," Rudin said. "We don't say, `They were slaves,' but, `We were slaves,' and, `God took us out.' It's as if we are there, living it ourselves."
That's the approach of the Passover Seder, the lengthy, ceremonial meal with its symbolic foods and retelling of the deliverance from Egypt, coupled with reminders of deliverances from ordeals in other lands since.
"The exodus is repeated in almost every generation," Rudin said citing modern-day flights of Jews from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia.
The Seders are held in Orthodox and Conservative Jewish homes on the first two evenings of the eight-day Passover observances, and only on the first evening by Reform Jews.
A Passover Seder was Christ's Last Supper before his arrest and crucifixion, which Christians mark next week. Palm Sunday this weekend recalls his entry into Jerusalem. Next Sunday commemorates his Resurrection.
Just as Passover celebrates freeing of the Jews from thralldom - past, present and future - so Easter celebrates freeing of believers from bondage to sin by Christ's taking it on himself and triumphing over it.
"Passover and Easter are related," says Keith, noting that the Christian liturgy celebrating the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, is derived from the Passover Seder.
"Remembering" is a constant refrain in that church ritual of shared bread and wine, recalling Christ's injunction to remember his presence in those elements in time and beyond it, both then and now.
His crucifixion and resurrection "are brought into the present with remembrance," Keith says. Just as death "passed over" Jewish homes marked with lamb's blood in Egypt, he adds, Christ is called the "Lamb of God" that defeats death.
As the liturgy puts it, "Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us."
Like the pre-Easter period of Lent, the Muslim Ramadan fast stresses giving alms to the poor.
Medhi said the "happy circumstances" of the three holidays occurring near the same time "is a healthy sign of better unity of American Muslims, Christian and Jewish believers in the book."
The Koran refers to Jews and Christians as "people of the book," the Bible, which Muslims also affirm, tracing their line to Abraham and regarding the Jewish prophets and Jesus as prophets.
"We all believe in the one God," Medhi said. "We appreciate the bounty of God through the years, past and present."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB