Bob Silverman, a Jew who spent most of his diplomatic career in Muslim-majority nations, will now reach out to Muslims in his own country. The American Jewish Committee recently hired him as its first U.S. director of Muslim-Jewish relations.
A U.S. Foreign Service officer for 27 years, the native of Des Moines, Iowa, served in Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, as well as in Israel and Sweden. He retired from the government last year.
Now 58, he works at the New York headquarters of the AJC.
Silverman talked about his new assignment with RNS.
RNS:
You speak Arabic, which must be helpful in your new line of work.
Bob Silverman: The assumption is for this job that you have to know Arabic. But most American Muslims don’t know Arabic. They’re American; they speak English. And one-third of Muslim Americans are African American.
I speak Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Azerbaijani and Swedish. I translated a book from Arabic to English. The languages do help, but it’s more of an understanding of the culture that’s important — the ability to see through other people’s eyes.
So what book did you translate?
It was a famous Egyptian’s travel account of his trip to Israel, a bestseller in the Arab world. Ali Salem was a famous playwright who wrote mostly humor. His spot-on characterizations of Israelis and how he interacted with them are very funny.
His book was published in 2002 and he was banned by the writers syndicate in Cairo because the book was considered “normalization,” and you were not supposed to think of Israel that way.
Why has the American Jewish Committee become the first major American Jewish group to create a job like yours? Why now?
The political climate in our country has really shifted since 9/11, but in the last year presidential elections have highlighted fear mongering about Muslims. There are legitimate security concerns about terrorism but that has really nothing to do with the American Muslim community at large.
There are some elements we have to be careful of in that community just like there are elements we have to be careful of in other communities, and there are ways to address those concerns in a prudent way. But that should not deter people from doing outreach to this important and growing community.
The American Jewish community is a well-established minority group that is quite self-confident in this country, and I think it’s incumbent upon us to show support for fellow minorities. AJC has a proud track record on this. We were very much engaged from the very beginning of the civil rights movement. In the same way, it is quite appropriate for us now to be reaching out to Muslims. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s in our collective self-interest as Jews.
What do you want to do with this new job?
I want to move beyond nice discussions and interfaith gatherings at a local level. They are uplifting and important and there’s quite a bit of Muslim-Jewish engagement going on. But we’ve got to scale it up to form real networks to do policy advocacy on a national level.
I’m only three weeks into the job. But I’ve already talked to Muslim leaders who would be interested in working on this and, in very broad strokes, I imagine it would support minorities’ freedom of religion, support for immigration.
I also want to push back against anti-Semitism within Muslim communities, and also anti-Muslim sentiment in American society at large. We will also work on a better understanding of Israel among Muslim Americans. That will be a hard one.
What would you like to convey to Muslim Americans about Israel?
We want to help ensure that what is taught in Muslim religious schools in the U.S. is nuanced and objective about Israel. And we have to educate American Jews about Israel, too.
Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, but it’s also a democratic state for all the people who live in it, the only multicultural democracy in the Middle East.