When e-mails circulated nationwide falsely identifying President-elect Barack Obama as a Muslim, it prompted former Secretary of State Colin Powell to address the prejudice fueling the rumors.
“Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country?” Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in October. “The answer is no, that’s not America.”
In an effort to eradicate Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, three Bay Area synagogues and Islamic centers will participate in the first-ever “Weekend of Twinning,” a nationwide event starting Friday, Nov. 21. It brings together Jews and Muslims from 50 synagogues and mosques to battle prejudices within and against their communities.
“It’s important for people who would be suspicious of each other because of their background to talk directly and develop human contact,” said Rabbi Melanie Aron of Congregation Shir Hadash in Los Gatos. “What happens in communities builds the foundation for what other political work needs to be done.”
This weekend, Shir Hadash, San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El and Congregation Beth Emek in Pleasanton will partner with Islamic Network Groups in San Jose, the Islamic Society of San Francisco and the Imam Ali Islamic Center in Castro Valley, respectively, to experience each other’s rituals and create an interfaith dialogue between congregants and mosque members.
At Shir Hadash, the twinning event will span two days, starting with congregants visiting the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara on Friday, Nov. 21. The next day, Muslims will join Jews for worship, a roundtable discussion and lunch. Ameena Jandali, a founding member of Islamic Network Groups, and Aron will speak.
“In Northern California, it’s especially important that the Jewish community view inter-religious dialogue with more than just the Christian community in mind,” Aron said. “People come to Silicon Valley from all over the world, yet we don’t have much of a track record with Muslims, Asians or Latinos.”
Rabbi Richard Winer will be one of three featured speakers as Beth Emek hosts a lecture, Q&A session and dinner Saturday, Nov. 22. Also slated to speak are Imam ul-Hassan from the Imam Ali Islamic Center and Fareed Younis, an Islamic scholar and educator.
“Most people who take these opportunities find that people who they haven’t had the chance to interact with are just like them,” Winer said. “This strengthens our ability to interact freely with people who we may not have had the opportunity to do so before.”
The twinning project was launched a year ago when the New York-based Foundation of Ethnic Understanding, led by Orthodox Rabbi Marc Schneier and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, invited 13 Jewish and 13 Muslim spiritual leaders to a meeting.
“Our goal was to enlist 25 synagogues and 25 mosques, but we ended up with double the number,” said Schneier, whose foundation has largely concentrated on Jewish-black relations.
“Both American Jews and Muslims are children of Abraham and citizens of the same country, and we share common faith and destiny,” he said. “Of course, we cannot ignore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s the elephant in the room. But I see the emergence of moderate, centrist Muslim voices, particularly in the United States, and we must do everything possible to encourage such voices.”
Urging Jews to reclaim some of the passion they invested in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ’60s, Schneier said that a similar outreach to Muslims “can serve as a paradigm for Europe” and perhaps even for the Middle East.
At Congregation Emanu-El, Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe will participate in afternoon prayer with roughly 600 Muslims at the Islamic Society of San Francisco on Friday. That evening, they will join Emanu-El congregants for Shabbat services and a lecture by Imam Ghali, founder and former president of the Islamic Society of San Francisco.
Jaffe hopes his congregants will embrace the concept of twinning and recognize that religion stems not just from Judeo-Christian roots, but Islamic ones as well.
“If you’re looking at 2,000 years of history, there was a very tight bond and deep similarity between the Islamic and Jewish communities. Both held each other in very high regard.
“In our modern text, due to political ramifications like the Middle East conflict, we tend to speak about Islam as the ‘other’ as opposed to the Judeo-Christian relationship. Historically, that is inaccurate. We want to focus on our share of roots and commonalities.”
JTA staff writer Tom Tugend contributed to this report.