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ICUJP Friday Forum
August 8th, 7:30-9:30 am Pacific  

Deborah Kapchan - Taking Leave: Between Faiths and Belonging 

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Event Description: 

Once a year, go somewhere you have never been before. – Dalai Lama

While in Jerusalem in September 2023, just before the current war, writer and ethnographer Deborah Kapchan performs the pilgrimages of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with flashbacks to her in-depth experiences in all three religions. Can one practice multiple faiths without contradiction? As violence continues to rage in the Middle East, Kapchan discusses her forthcoming memoir, Taking Leave (Duke University Press), grappling with what history has deemed irreconcilable.

Kapchan chronicles her search for a “spiritual method, another way of living, of being and seeing.” Born in 1958 to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother who converted for marriage but returned to the church after the relationship crumbled, the author grew up “between faiths.” After moving to Morocco as an adult, she developed an “almost alchemical attraction” to the mysticism of Sufism, and later to the mind-expanding trance ceremonies of the Gnawa (a tradition that combines sub-Saharan African rituals and music with North African beliefs), finding in these practices the ability to see beyond “the fabric of misrecognition that keeps humans gently asleep in our dreams... wherein we mistake what we can see for all that is.” In 2018 she moved to Abu Dhabi and, somewhat improbably, found her way back to Judaism. While she draws elegant parallels between faiths, Kapchan is at her most revelatory when she’s exploring spirituality itself as a kind of endless search for meaning—“taking leave” of one religion, identity, or mode of thinking to seek another—as well as contemplating the limits to that process.

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The author of six books and numerous essays, as well as a Guggenheim Fellow, Deborah Kapchan writes about the stories, art and culture of North Africa and the Middle East. Her book, Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry was shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association’s prize for poetry in 2021.

Her forthcoming memoir, Taking Leave, is the latest entry in Duke’s Practices series.

7:30 - 7:35  Log in and socialize
7:35 - 7:45  Welcome and introductions 
7:45 - 7:50  Reflection (5 min. maximum)
7:50 - 9:15  Program and Q&A
9:15 - 9:20  Announcements
9:20 - 9:30  Closing circle and prayer

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Facilitator: Rick Banales
Reflector: Maggie Hutchinson

** Meetings begin promptly at 7:30 am Pacific. **

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ICUJP Friday Forum 08/08/25
Time: 07:30 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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