The Board of Deputies of British Jews and various Synagogue bodies are gearing up for the UK’s first Interfaith Week (on November 12), and Jewish participation promises to be significant. I believe that this can be a real opportunity to build better understanding between faith communities in Britain. But it is not without its pitfalls.

One mistake that inexperienced interfaith dialoguers make is to try to identify the commonalities between various faiths. They might point to what appears to be similarities between Judaism and Islam in, say, the way in which prayer is conducted or fast days are observed.

I have experienced this first-hand because I used to do the same thing. It is attractive because it allows for the scoring of easy points without any serious intellectual or emotional investment. It is also painfully dishonest. To declare similarity between Judaism and Islam on the basis that their practitioners fast or pray is to betray an astonishing superficiality that does not do justice to either faith.

More importantly, the instinctive desire to find commonalities between faiths fundamentally undermines the whole point of interfaith dialogue in the first place, which is to learn how to respect those whose faith is profoundly different from your own.

This idea is poignantly illustrated in a Talmudic story (Tractate Rosh Hashanah 19a.): It once happened that the Roman authorities forbade the Jewish people from studying Torah, from circumcising their sons and from observing the Sabbath. What did Rabbi Yehudah ben Shamuah and his colleagues do? They went to take advice from a well-connected Roman noblewoman, who advised them to take to the streets and to protest as follows: “For the sake of Heaven are we not your brethren? Are we not all children of the same father? Are we not all children of the same mother? Why are we singled out from among all other nations for such harsh punishment?”

Upon close examination this story betrays a paradox. On the one hand the rabbis are appealing to the Romans on the basis of their common human heritage and similarities. Yet at the same time they appear to undermine the argument of commonality by insisting that they be allowed to observe their own distinct and very un-Roman Jewish rituals.

This, however, is the whole point of the story. The rabbis are demanding the freedom to be different. They are arguing that respect for the other is not contingent on similarity of behaviour or understanding but rather on our commonality as human beings. Every member of the human race shares a common ancestry going back to the first man and woman. That is all the similarity that we need. It is our shared humanity that binds us together despite our various faiths and distinct world views. In other words, a Jew does not respect a Muslim because Islam is somehow similar to Judaism but rather because the Muslim is a fellow human being.

This, I believe, is a much more honest, realistic and productive path to interfaith work. It is also much more demanding. There are profound differences in how various faiths conceive of God and instruct their adherents to behave. Honest interfaith work takes as its point of departure that I will never truly understand the faith of the other, nor will I necessarily see any reflection of my own faith in that of the other. I must learn to navigate without such comfortable landmarks and signposts. Different faiths cannot all be conveniently collapsed into a basic common language. This is neither possible nor desirable. Most importantly it is unnecessary. We already have a common language: our humanity. Interfaith week should be about celebrating it.

Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer is Rabbi of Borehamwood & Elstree United Synagogue and adviser to the Chief Rabbi on Jewish-Muslim relations