Anyone walking into the Alice H. Cook House in the early evening of March 27 could see it was no ordinary night at the residence hall. Numbered tables filled the lobby, which had been set off from the dining room with a white cloth barrier. Servers were preparing a meal in the conference room nearby, as people milled about before sitting at the tables.

The stage was set for the annual "I Believe in ... Dinner," an interfaith diversity event created three years ago by Lee Leviter '08. This year, about 125 diners attending, sitting at assigned seats so that guests of different faiths were next to each other.

A hush came over the tables as Leviter explained that over the course of the meal, guests were to share ideas and mix beliefs and to speak their minds, he said, because it is important for us to explore commonalities among religions and that "we are all here to learn."

Representatives from five religions, including Rev. Robert Smith of the Cornell Catholic Community and Rabbi Ed Rosenthal from Cornell Hillel, offered short prayers with English explanations if the prayer was in another language. Then dinner, catered by the on-campus kosher dining hall 104West! was served, and discussions began.

One table discussed how morals and ethics are related to faith and how actions might be influenced by personal ideologies. A better understanding of the answers to these questions, said Will Blashka '08, might help to foster peace in a world where so many conflicts are religion based.

"Cordial dialogue about religion is rare," he added, perhaps because people are so passionate about religion. On college campuses, he noted, few people tend to talk about religion. But coming to the dinner, said Cristina Munk '09, students show they are actually willing to engage in discourse about faith. "It's good that we share what we believe," she said.

At another table, said Ben Arfa '08, guests came from a variety of faiths, including Judaism, Islam and Mormonism. They discussed how religion affects their lives on a day-to-day basis, touching upon such topics as religious dietary restrictions and how Mormonism is portrayed in the media.

This was Arfa's first time attending the dinner, he said, noting that he learned a great deal about different religions, including his own. In talking with fellow table members, he said, it became clear that many religions are not wholly inconsistent with one another, which is important for people to understand.

The event began as an independent project of Leviter's, but now it is a collaborative effort by a newly founded group, the Interfaith Council at Cornell (ICC), which tries to promote opportunities for understanding and cooperation among belief systems.

Jill McCoy '09 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.