Professor Yehezkel Landau
Receives Special Award
Yehezkel Landau, Faculty Associate in Interfaith Relations at Hartford Seminary, has been named a recipient of the 2009 Living Spirit Award by The Spiritual Life Center of Bloomfield, CT.
Prof. Landau is receiving the award for his outstanding contributions to the community, especially as director of the Seminary’s Building Abrahamic Partnerships Program and co-founder of the Open House Center for Jewish-Arab Co-Existence in Israel.
“Your continuous work in so many capacities has helped to build a stronger, more loving community for the people of God,” the Center wrote in its letter informing Prof. Landau of the award.
Recipients of the award have given evidence of witness of faith through service, openness to people and organizations of diverse faith backgrounds, commitment to sharing spirituality with the larger community and witness to the possibility of transformation of individuals, relationships and structures.
The Spiritual Life Center will present the award to Prof. Landau at a dinner on April 20 at the Pond House Banquet Hall in West Hartford.
Prof. Landau has taught at Hartford Seminary since 2002. After earning an A.B. from Harvard University and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, he made aliyah (immigrated) to Israel in 1978. His work has been in the fields of interfaith education and Jewish-Arab peacemaking.
Prof. Landau directed the Oz veShalom-Netivot Shalom religious Zionist peace movement in Israel during the 1980's. From 1991 to 2003, he was co-founder and co-director of the Open House Center for Jewish-Arab Coexistence in Ramle, Israel.
He lectures internationally on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations and Middle East peace issues, has authored numerous journal articles, co-edited the book Voices from Jerusalem: Jews and Christians Reflect on the Holy Land (Paulist Press, 1992), and authored a research report entitled “Healing the Holy Land: Interreligious Peacebuilding in Israel/Palestine” (U.S. Institute of Peace, September 2003).
The Building Abrahamic Partnerships program is a weeklong training program that offers a practical foundation for mutual understanding and cooperation among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Participants learn about the tenets and practices of the three faiths, study texts from their respective scriptures together, attend worship at a mosque, synagogue, and church, and acquire pastoral skills useful in interfaith ministry. Building on Hartford Seminary’s strengths as an interfaith, dialogical school of practical theology, this team-taught program is a resource for religious leaders who are grounded in their own traditions while open to the faith orientations of other communities.
