Rabbi leads interfaith delegation to Iran
For the first time, an American rabbi will be traveling to Iran Tuesday on a mission of interfaith dialogue and understanding.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, one of the early forces behind the Jewish Renewal movement in America, will co-lead a delegation of 21 peace activists to the Islamic Republic on a mission "to humanize the face of Iran, lest we end up with a disaster of global proportions we cannot imagine,"
Gottlieb
said her participation in the mission came out of Tuesday's threat by Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton that an Iranian assault on Israel would be met with an American response that would "obliterate" Iran.
"It is important to negotiate and not threaten obliteration," Gottlieb believes, "in particular because there are between 30,000 and 40,000 Jewish people living in Iran, the oldest extant Jewish community in the Middle East, which has been there since the first exile in 586 BCE."
