Imam Feisal and Cordoba House took part in the annual L’Chaim Prize presentation in January. Rabbi Erica Gerson and her husband, Mark Gerson, a businessman and entrepreneur, founded the prize and give $500,000 each year to different Christian medical missions selected by a panel of local and American medical professionals, who assess where the money is most badly needed. A group of imams, Protestant ministers, rabbis, Catholic priests, and other people of faith gathered at a restaurant that is about as all-American as it comes — the New York Yankees’ Steakhouse — to show interfaith support for the cause. This year’s prize winner was Dr. Russ White, the chief surgeon of Tenwek Hospital in rural Kenya, who has led efforts to fight heart disease across East Africa.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said that interfaith support was “a sign of the times,” which demonstrates that “most people are good.” He added: “If the news depicted and reported on the amount of good things going on in the world… it would vastly outnumber the news that is discordant.”
