A Pakistani Muslim and an American Jew break the ice over Jewish-type food at the Muslim Jewish Conference in Kiev to bring together young Jews and Muslims from around the world.
By SYMI ROM-RYMER, OSAMA NADEEMSymi Rom-Rymer, Georgi Vogel Rosen and Osama Nadeem.(photo credit: Georgi Vogel Rosen: (pictured at the Muslim Jewish)
It began with bagels and schmear. From talking on the balcony of a hotel on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine, came an unexpected point of common ground between a Pakistani Muslim man and an American Jewish woman. How did he, never having met a Jew before, know about such a staple of American Jewish cuisine and the appropriate Yiddish expression? she wondered. How could she not realize how pervasive American popular culture is among educated Pakistanis? he asked himself.At that moment, they began to realize not only the geographical distance that separated them, but the psychological one as well.We are that Pakistani Muslim and American Jew. If our interaction had ended there, it would have remained a fun but ephemeral memory of a time when two strangers had an unexpected connection over a silly cultural reference.Instead, it was the beginning.In July of this year, we participated in the second Muslim Jewish Conference (MJC) in Kiev, a six-day event designed to bring together young Jews and Muslims from around the world. Founded in Vienna in 2009, the MJC sees the annual gathering as an opportunity to “surmount the barricades between our respective communities and build ties of friendship and trust,” in the words of Ilya Sichrovsky, the conference secretary-general. At the MJC, we connected with our peers in an atmosphere that fostered open, honest discussion, and developed friendships with people whose relationship is too often described solely in negative and violent terms.As the week progressed, we became less tentative about addressing the difficult topics: Israel, terrorism, the Holocaust.These discussions, while important on their own, morphed into something larger and more meaningful as we tackled these themes not only on an intellectual level, but also on a personal one.THIS WAS never clearer than during a conference visit to the Babi Yar memorial site, where Nazi officials murdered thousands of Jews in 1941 over the course of two days outside Kiev. As an American and as a Jew, one of us had grown up with the narrative of the Holocaust, had heard countless survivor testimonies and had made many pilgrimages to memorials and concentration camps. As a Muslim and a Pakistani, the other had grown up in an atmosphere of xenophobia with only the most basic knowledge of the Holocaust.For her, the opportunity to share a part of her history in such a personal way created the crucial space needed to begin other, deeper conversations about individual narratives.For him, walking in the footsteps of those who had been massacred sparked a deep sense of sadness about the fate of Jewish victims. Overwhelmed, he offered a silent prayer at the side of the ravine. Being there also brought to mind the senseless deaths of members of his own family, who were killed at gunpoint at a ravine by an armed mob during the violence that followed the partition of British India. While acknowledging the distinctiveness of each of these events, we began to empathize with each other’s losses and develop a stronger sense of solidarity between Muslim and Jew.
At the end of the conference participants gathered near the Babi Yar memorial, all of the Muslim participants spontaneously formed a circle and began to recite the Fateha, the traditional Muslim prayer for the dead. It was poignant to stand with a group of people, so often depicted as being at war with each other, jointly mourning for those who had lost their lives.At that moment, we were no longer Jews or Muslims, but simply people remembering a historical trauma together. We were all so engaged in the immediacy of the moment that the Jewish participants didn’t realize until later that they hadn’t said a communal kaddish.Leaving the MJC bubble can be jarring.Back home, it is easy to slip back into the familiar rhetoric of fear, apathy, distrust or hate. In the United States, advocating for greater understanding and tolerance is often frustrating and littered with challenges.Some of those challenges stem from mistrust in the dialogue partner and ambivalence about what can truly be accomplished. In Pakistan, politicians and journalists are routinely “punished” by extremist groups and harassed by intelligence agencies for holding dissenting opinions. Those who want to change the status quo are forced to exercise great restraint.Given these obstacles, we realize the immensity of what lies behind the deceptively simple words of interfaith dialogue: trust, friendship and honesty. We may be idealistic, but we are not naïve. To apply these words means not only talk, but concrete action. A YouTube channel featuring Muslim and Jewish personal stories, Facebook pages designed for interfaith discussion and collaboration, and yes, conferences, all take abstract ideas and bring them into the real world. Despite the frustrations and dangers that exist when engaging in this type of activity, these are all happening now, in real time, on a global scale.A cynic could be forgiven for being skeptical that by simply connecting on a personal level, Jews and Muslims can change entrenched attitudes with which previous generations have struggled and that they have too often failed to overcome. Yet as we look at our experience as participants in the MJC, we also realize how much we gained over six short days. We know that it takes more than one addition to our circle of friends and more than praying together to have the impact we envision.But one has to start somewhere, so why not with bagels and schmear?
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