Updated on Jan. 16
The line of people waiting to pick up their free produce snaked down the block and around the corner on Wednesday morning in front of the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California in downtown Oakland.
Inside the center’s metal gate, more than a dozen Muslim, Jewish and Christian volunteers stood behind a long table handing out fresh fruits and vegetables, all donated, to the nearly 200 mostly elderly clients who showed up for that day’s food distribution, an activity that takes place every Wednesday.
This is a project of Faith Trio, which brings together members of the Islamic Cultural Center, Piedmont’s Kehilla Community Synagogue and the Montclair Presbyterian Church for fellowship and social action.
In addition to the on-site distribution, Faith Trio volunteers prepare sandwiches and hot meals with food donations, much of it from the Support Life Foundation, and sort through donated clothing and toiletries, all of which they hand out Wednesday and Friday mornings to people on the streets of West Oakland and in homeless encampments. They also bring food and other supplies to local families in need, and they get together for an annual dinner and other social events to build community within their own ranks.
Berkeley resident Geri Degen, a member of Kehilla, has been volunteering for the Wednesday food distribution for several years.
“It’s one of the nicest things I do all week,” she said, as she handed a fresh red pepper to an elderly Asian woman, who promptly tucked it into her rolling cart. “The rest of the world is so crazy. This is a breath of fresh air. To have all these religions working together is so inspirational, especially in these times.”
Faith Trio got its start shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack when a local Muslim woman and her two adult daughters walked into the Montclair church as an act of reconciliation. An alliance of Muslims and Christians emerged, joined in 2005 by a contingent from Kehilla. Today members of Oakland’s Temple Sinai almost always show up for food distribution too.
The on-site food distribution really got going around six years ago, said Payman Amiri, acting executive director of the Islamic Cultural Center.
“It was the beginning of Covid, and we started small,” he said. “It was January, a really cold day. We had one food stand and about 40 boxes of food. Now it’s a large program.” The 200 people served weekly doesn’t include the street handouts or the home deliveries, which go out to about 300 families, he estimated.
“The purpose is to uplift people’s dignity,” he said, explaining that some needy people are too embarrassed to show up in person for the free food.
At 9:45 a.m. Amiri prepares the volunteers by starting with a prayer circle. He recites “The Opener,” a verse from the beginning of the Quran that he describes as a universal prayer. He says it in Arabic and then English: “We seek refuge in God from evil and evildoers. In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate.”
The prayer is meant to strengthen the volunteers, he said.
“We need positive energy to serve people,” he told the group. “We’re going to go out there and meet people in different states of mind, and we need to be merciful and compassionate to them.”
Lea Delson is one of the regulars from Kehilla. She’s been involved with Faith Trio since 2011, brought onboard to organize a series of interfaith art exhibits featuring local artists from all three communities.
Delson spent her teenage years in a small town outside Beersheva, where her father taught engineering at Ben-Gurion University. Although she got to know many Jewish Israelis, she said, she had very little contact with her Arab neighbors.
“I’d wanted to get involved in Jewish-Muslim dialogue for a while” after reading in J. about the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group, she said, explaining why she joined Faith Trio.
Delson said there was no break in volunteer activity after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and during the war in Gaza.
“We continued with the same work,” she said. “We really try not to talk about it a whole lot and just focus on doing the work together.”
Suzaun Hirbod, a native of Iran, coordinates the off-site food and supplies distribution. She said her team sees most of the same people every week. Many of them are now housed, but they know where and when she’ll be showing up, and they are still desperately in need, she said.
Hirbod concurred that there was no internal tension within Faith Trio after Oct. 7.
“I did not feel it,” she said. “I separate people from their government. We talked about it, and the Jewish people said how sorry they were [about Gaza]. But I said, it’s not you.” When Israel bombed Iran over the summer, some of the Jewish volunteers even sent her a letter of apology.
“I wish everyone could be this way,” she said, looking around at all the volunteers busily handing out produce, wheeling carts of prepared meals to the delivery van and piling up empty boxes for later sorting.
“Just by humanizing people on the other side of a dispute, we can do a lot to diminish hate,” Delson added. “I’ve gotten to know Muslims as friends. And I really relish the friendships I have developed.”