The ICJS inaugurated its tenth anniversary with a flurry of programs, many of them revolving around the book of Genesis. In the three-month scramble to configure Talking About Gene-sis: A Resource Guide for the Bill Moyers series, we became increasingly preoccupied with the gaps in our educational practices -- in our schools and universities, as well as in our churches and synagogues. Could the stories of Genesis provide a venue for encounters that enable us -- Jews and Christians, whites and blacks, men and women, rich and poor, believers and non-believers, young and old and those in between -- to come face-to-face with one another? In cities such as Balti-more where the racial and religious divides are broadened and deepened by socio-economic and educational chasms, could these biblical narratives offer a meeting ground? Could these stories draw people out of their comfortable and familiar en-claves into a world distant enough from their own that they might explore unexamined assumptions and forge connections of unflinching honesty, trust, understanding, and even inti-macy that crisscross this city?

The range of experiments launched this past year is amply described in this newsletter, and they demonstrate a commit-ment to extend the programming reach of the ICJS. With the support of the Revson Foundation, the ICJS was able to collaborate with thirty Christian and Jewish congregations across Baltimore, and this venture provided a template for an educational initiative that involved seniors and juniors from twenty-five high schools. At the insistence of participants, plans are well underway to invite new congregations and schools to enter a new phase in the project during the coming year. Genesis seminars at the House of Corrections in Jessup, the retirement community at Roland Park Place, and the Johns Hopkins University also confirmed our intuitions that people from every corner of the city are hungry to develop new habits of mind and heart. Over and over again we encountered people who are eager to grapple with the ambiguities of their sacred stories in a setting where they can learn the art of adjudicating conflict. Lamentably, this ability to engage our differences is underdeveloped within most American settings, most especially congregations. Yet I am more convinced than ever that these spiritual and intellectual qualities (or lack thereof) in no small measure influence the health of the larger society to which we belong -- tempted as we Americans are by the simplicities of political as well as religious funda-mentalisms.

This coming year the ICJS will develop a curriculum that explores Jewish and Christian visions of the future. After all, our ancestors have not only bequeathed us a past; they have handed us contrasting, sometimes conflicting, notions of the future. The hopes and fears that loom on the horizon of the religious imagination assume myriad shapes and forms -- "the Kingdom of God," "the messianic banquet," "heaven and hell," and "utopia." These images of "the end" powerfully impinge on the present, shaping our political as well as religious behavior.

The poet Keith Waldrop claims that "anyone who sleeps sleeps heroically." By extension, perhaps it is fair to say that anyone who dreams dreams apocalyptically. Wild and luxuriant en-counters between the forces of good and evil at various times and places keep us tossing and turning in the night. And what is true for us holds equally with respect for our religious traditions. Jews and Christians construct their dreams for the future out of elusive desires, terrors, and hopes. These visions reveal the destructive as well as creative impulses within the religious imagination. Most of us neglect the unruly world of prophecy. We too easily become obsessed with cracking the code and no longer cultivate an ear for the poetry of apocalyptic faith. Yet the eruption of millennarian fantasies is spewing into our culture, prompting us to explore the threats and the promises that reside in our dreams for the future. In cooperation with the American Visionary Art Museum and the Walters Art Gallery, the ICJS will probe the legacies of the past and the visions of the future that lay claim to us in the present.

So we bounce from "the beginning" to "the end," always circling back from whence we came. The bold leaps are a sure sign of the vitality of the ICJS as it embarks on its next ten years. We are grateful to all of you who have supported the dreams of the ICJS with your gifts of time, energy, and money. Our $5 million endowment campaign is nearing completion, and we have grand visions of a full-time Jewish scholar on our staff. Hopefully, the funding will be in place for this essential voice before the final day of reckoning! Ever onward!