report on the Weekend of Twinning of Mosques and Synagogues Across North America

See below text of a speech I gave at Reform Congregation Kenesseth Israel in suburban Philadelphia on the recent Weekend of Twinning of Mosques And Synagogues Across North America, held November 21-23. The event was a great triumph for the premise that American Jews and Muslims can build an alliance based on friendship and trust that will be a win/win for both communities. It was also a great moment for me as the principle organizer of the twinnings around the continent. The speech gives a good précis of the impact on thousands of people around the country.
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We have just came through a thrilling experience, part of an ongoing process which we believe we will fundamentally change Jewish-Muslim relations in North America for the better, During the weekend of November 21-23, 50 mosques and synagogues across North America twinned with each other….There were twinnings in 20 states and the province of Ontario—from New Haven, to New York City Long Island and Westchester, County, NY, north and central New Jersey to Pennsylvania; your own Reform Congregation Knesseth Israel twinning with the Islamic Society of South Jersey to Baltimore and suburban Washington to Charlotte, Atlanta, West Palm Beach, Dallas, Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Denver, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area and Greater LA.

The word ‘historic’ gets thrown around a lot, but the fact of the matter is that never before has there been such a large-scale event linking Jews and Muslims across North America, or for that matter anywhere in the world.

The Weekend of Twinning was sponsored by my agency, the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, with the endorsement of the World Jewish Congress, Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Canadian Association of Jews and Muslims. The theme of the Weekend of Twinning was confronting ‘Islamophobia and anti-Semitism Together’ and most congregations dealt with that issue but with many others as well. In the past two weeks, I have been calling participants around the country to get their assessments and what has come through more than anything else has been the joy of mutual discovery. When Muslims came to the synagogue and had the chance to listen to a Jewish service or Jews to the mosque to listen to a Muslim one or in the discussions that ensued during the Weekend of Twinning, they have come away amazed by the similarities, by the sense of common themes, customs and beliefs.

Providentially, given the Torah portion of the week, a lot of the discussion focused on the beginning of our people’s troubled relationship, the story Abraham, Sarah and Hagar and of Isaac and Ishamel coming together to bury Abraham. In a number of cities, there were moving discussions of about the meaning of the story of Ishmael and Isaac coming together to bury Abraham, their father, and people reflected as to how Abraham would have felt knowing having two estranged sons and imagined what his hopes would have been for the future of his descendants. The common feeling was that he would have wanted our peoples to reconcile and that his descendants living today—Jews and Muslims right here in North America, in suburban Philadelphia and south Jersey—have a unique opportunity to begin that process.

I want to read you a statement by Samira Kanji of the Noor Cultural Center in Toronto that I believe gives voice to the sense of accomplishment, excitement and even euphoria felt in many mosques and synagogues across North America. Ms. Kanji wrote after the event;

I think we're all of a mind on the amazing reception that we've seen from our community members to our twinning programs. Clearly, the yearning for reaching out and finding amity is great, sitting so close under the surface that it needed just the tiniest little raindrop of facility to bring such a burst of enthusiasm. All of us marveled at the display of warmth on both sides at every level… There is no dearth of interfaith dialogues taking place all over, but I imagine very few of them bring about actual engagement where it matters - within members of communities. Our twinning with one another was felicitous, in that it produced a program that I believe yields great promise for a new kind of relationship within our estranged family.”

My fiancé Tatyana and I had the chance to have Shabbat dinner now with Rabbi Sussman, and I was delighted to hear how well your own program went. The idea of an exhibition of calligraphic art in the Jewish and Islamic traditions is an exciting one, showing again the commonality that Jews and Muslims are finding in so many areas, such as dietary laws, laws concerning burial and so many others.

In opening event in Los Angeles, which I attended, at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, there were Jewish and Muslim prayer services during the event and Jews were welcome to watch or even participate in the Muslim services and vice versa. I attended the Muslim services—honestly I was the only Jew who chose to take part—but there must have been as many as 50 watching—and the Muslims, who came from a somewhat conservative, Saudi-funded mosque called the King Fahd Mosque, told me afterwards how incredibly moved they were to be holding their service in a synagogue –to be so warmly welcomed and received—none that I spoke with had ever been in a synagogue before. For their part Jews said they were fascinated to observe Muslim prayer for the first time and how right it felt to them that it was happening in their home and how much they look forward to visiting and praying in the King Fahad Mosque. And scores of members of both mosque and synagogue have begun an ongoing discussion as to how to move forward.
Here are some of the practical results that came out of the Weekend of Twinning:

• In St. Louis, Congregation Brith Shalom Knesseth Israel and Dar-ul-Islam Mosque promised to work together in the future for vigorous prosecution of hate crimes and to explore other venues for joint participation in the political process.
• The Jam-e-Masjid Islamic Center of Boonton N,J. and Temple B’nai Or of Morristown said that based on sense of commonality coming out of discussion on Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, they inted not only to work together in that field, but also to work together on county wide issues—poverty and better zoning
• At USC—The Jewish and Muslim students pledged to each other not to invite speakers by either community that would be hurtful to the other side. We will consult with each other before tendering such invitations. This is significant and hopefully can become a model for other campuses across the country, where invitations to controversial speakers by one side or the other often becomes flashpoints for confrontations.
• At NYU—Jewish and Muslim students dressed in each other’s clothing for several days and walked around campus disguised as the Other to see what kind of feelings that brought up. One Jewish young man of about 21 who said he plans to become a rabbi spent two days in full Islamic regalia, and told young Jews and Muslims gathered for a debriefing that he felt shame and hurt at the sarcastic comments he heard from his friends, who laughingly asked him how it felt to play ‘terrorist’ and other such remarks. I asked the young man whether he felt hurt as a Jew or a Muslim and he replied as some of both. He said he was hurt that Jews would commonly make bigoted comments seeing Muslims in such dress, and that until two years ago, when he took part in a spring break trip of Muslim and Jewish students to New Orleans to build houses together for Katrina victims and in the process came to know and like many Muslim students--he would have done so himself. And a Muslim girl, born and bred in Pakistan said something almost identical about her own experience dressed as a Jew.

So we had an inspiring breakthrough. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that all opposition to Muslim-Jewish rapprochement have disappeared. There are powerful people out there like Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who assert that we should treat all American Muslims as potentially dangerous. They portray the pro-peace, pro-engagement message being articulated by groups like ISNA, MPAC and the Fiqh Council of America as a kind of ‘soft jihad’ to lull America into complacency. And most outrageously they continue to insist that the American Muslim leader with whom we are working do not oppose Islamic terrorism and will not say so explicitly, although I personally have heard many of them say so openly and explicitly multiple times.

These people, who use McCarthyist smear tactics and guilt by association, essentially oppose treating American Muslims like full citizens who deserve all civil and human rights and to whom we as Jews should reach out, as we reach out to Catholics, Protestants, blacks, Hispanics and all other people. And they have been ferociously attacking Rabbi Schneier and the whole twinning process in op-eds and e-mail campaigns ever since.

Pipes and Emerson are hardly alone. There are many in the Jewish community, including people in powerful and influential communal positions who share this perspective. Others ridicule the effort by FFEU, the Union of Reform Judaism and other groups to American Muslims, saying what we are engaged in is meaningless ‘kumbaya’, which has little significance in the real world because we don’t focus on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians and don’t get the Muslims to declare themselves Zionists and sing ‘Hatikvah’. Now, it is true that we choose not to focus on the ‘800 pound elephant in the room’ as people have rightly referred to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, although it is not true to say that we are hiding from it or denying its existence. In the guidelines I sent to participating mosques and synagogues, I said it was totally appropriate to acknowledge the existence of the conflict and the pain we all feel about the violence and suffering endured by our Israeli and Palestinian brothers and sisters, but that the conflict should not become the focus of the twinning because it would be a source of dissension and discord and it would prevent us from making progress on building ties of mutual respect and trust between Jews and Muslims in North America.

But let me directly address the ‘kumbaya’ issue. In truth, the blossoming Jewish-Muslim relationship in North America is not about kumbaya or about wooly headed liberalism on either side. I have been accused on occasion of being a wooly headed liberal myself and would plead more or less guilty as charged—although I’m less wooly headed than I used to be, but I can assure you that neither Rabbi Marc Schneier or Ronald Lauder fits that bill. No, this relationship is growing because, in a very tachlis sense, it is a ‘win win’ for both communities.

How so? For the Muslims, it is important because they need protection—proteksia—from efforts to strip them of their full rights as U.S. citizens, and the support of American Jews can be critical in blowing those attacks out of the water. But why, you may ask, is Muslim-Jewish raproachment good for the Jews? The answer should be obvious, but is lost on too many in our community. If you treat a whole community like potential criminals, some of them, particularly the young, may decide that since they are doomed to be treated as terrorists they might as well become terrorists. But if you treat them as full members of society with every prospect of advancement, they have every impetus to embrace America and its promise.

Depending on the estimate, there are 3-5 Muslims in this country. Since 9-11, tougher immigration regulations has no doubt slowed the inflow, but no one is suggesting that they be expelled. So they are here on a permanent basis. Therefore, we have a fateful choice; either help them to integrate like every other immigrant group that has come to America, to make sure they have a stake in the American dream, or risk happening here what has happened in Britain, Spain, France and other countries where large Muslim populations are not able to integrate with the ease they have here—horrific acts of terrorism committed by home grown terrorists, who became so embittered by the perceived lack of opportunity to become full Britons, Frenchmen and Spaniards, that they turned on their own countries. And for that to happen would NOT be good for the Jews—especially given the special animosity of Muslim extremists toward the Jews because of Israel-Palestine, which we saw exhibited with such horror by the terrorists in Mumbai.

Thankfully, survey after survey has shown that American Muslims want to be both American and Muslim. They do not see the two identities as incompatible at all; they do not see Islam as opposed to democracy. Our job should be to help them in that effort for their and for our own. I believe the two communities will be able to do a lot together with much more effectiveness on a host of issues than they can do on their own. Jews and Muslims making common cause has a ‘wow’ factor to it that can accrue to our benefit on many issues such as:
1. Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. It is not news and has little impact when the ADL denounces anti-Semitism. It IS news when a mosque and synagogue do so together and denounce Islamophobia as well. Not the least of it is confronting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in our own communities; getting Jews to acknowledge that Islamophobia exists and is a real problem for American society and equally as important, getting Muslims to acknowledge the existence of anti-Semitism and pledge to combat it, instead of saying fliply, ‘We can’t be anti-Semites, because we are Semites ourselves.’ Getting Muslims to acknowledge and oppose anti-Semitism is a huge step forward and it happened repeatedly during the WOT in dozens of cities across North America.
There are so many other issues we can confront together; health care, immigration, housing---we all have stakes in fighting these. So, let us form alliances through a group like Habitat for Humanity to build houses together for the homeless and for victims of foreclosure. The students from NYU started their warm relationship two years ago by travelling together during spring break to New Orleans to work together building houses for those who lost their homes to Katrina. As a result they formed a bond that allowed them two years later to feel safe enough to don each others’ clothing, to share intimate thoughts and to relate to each other to the amazing extent they have come to do so.
Let’s repeat that all over North America…
I believe we North American Jews and Muslims have a moral obligation to come together as friends and allies and work together for the betterment of our two communities and for American society as a whole. And in the process we will be making a statement that will impact our brothers and sisters in Israel and Palestine—that Muslims and Jews can learn to like and trust each other. And if we can do it, in time, so can they. Despite 100 years of conflict, they don’t have to remain enemies forever; they don’t have to sacrifice the next generation and the one after that to death and violence. As Theodore Herzl said in another, but connected, context, ‘If we will it is no dream.’

It took 100 years and more for Jewish-Muslim relations to reach this level of hostility, and it may take 100 years to reverse the damage, but let us resolve to commence this long uplifting journey today. For the sake of our own children and of the children of Israel, we can do nothing less.