Students from Al-Iman School in Queens and Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange gather during a field trip to a mosque and synagogue, both in Manhattan, on Oct. 16. They are participating in Abraham’s Vision’s Unity Program, supported by a yearlong curriculum including classroom learning and face-to-face interaction.
Photos courtesy SSDS
October 30, 2008
Arielle Herzberg, a student at Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, experienced a first on Oct. 16.
“I have never been inside of a mosque before and I found it fascinating,” she wrote in her journal the day of her visit to the 96th Street Mosque in Manhattan. “The imam who spoke to us informed us about Muslim holidays and traditions. Ultimately, he recited a verse from the Qur’an.”
After responding “Aleikum asalaam” to the Muslim religious leader’s greeting of “Asalaamu aleikum,” Arielle writes, “I was very proud of my Arabic. It meant a lot to the Al-Iman students that I was attempting to speak the Arabic language, and I felt like I was taking small steps toward peace.”
Arielle was one of 13 seniors from the Schechter school in West Orange and 12 seniors from the Muslim Al-Iman School in Queens who together visited the mosque as well as the Park Avenue Synagogue that day.
The trip was the first of six interactions the students will share through February as part of a yearlong curriculum known as the Unity Project, created and implemented by the San Francisco-based Abraham’s Vision. The organization was founded in 2003 to help Jews and Arabs find common ground.
Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, Abraham’s Vision founder and codirector, is assistant professor in the Theology and Religious Studies Department of the University of San Francisco, where he holds the Swig Chair of Judaic Studies. He was educated in day schools through 12th grade and at Jewish summer camps.
He wrote in an e-mail to NJJN, “I came to the realization that the two greatest ‘others’ for the Jewish community are Muslims and Arabs (and obviously there are also individuals who identify as Muslim Arabs).”
Hahn Tapper lived in the Middle East for more than five years, including four years in Jerusalem, 12 months in Cairo, three months in Morocco, and two months in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
His ultimate goals for Abraham’s Vision are “to train students to develop a heightened awareness of their individual and collective identities, to deepen students’ understanding of the role each one of them plays in inter-communal conflict, to have our students examine the social inequalities that exist in American societies and beyond, and to empower our students to become catalysts for change.”
Abraham’s Vision currently has two active projects: the Unity Program, the year-long curriculum for high school seniors, and the Vision Program, implemented on college campuses. While Unity focuses on Islam and Judaism, Vision is structured more narrowly around dialogue on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The students in the sukka at the Park Avenue Synagogue.
The Unity Program, now in its fourth year, was first implemented in New York. The Al-Iman school was paired for the first three years with the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan. The stated goal of the yearlong curriculum is to educate high school students about Muslims, Jews, Islam, and Judaism while strengthening the relationships students have within their own communities and religious traditions.
“It shatters stereotypes,” said Unity director Houda Abadi in a phone conversation. “It provides a safe space to ask any questions — even weird ones.”
This year marks the expansion of the program to New Jersey. Schechter stepped in to replace Heschel, which is no longer participating.
Hahn Tapper acknowledged that while he has found a general reluctance among both Jewish and Muslim schools to participate, Abraham’s Vision’s tracking efforts since the program’s inception reveal that “a high percentage of our Unity Program graduates are engaged in on-campus activities (inter-group activities, conflict resolution studies) as a direct result of their having taken the Unity Program course.”
In addition to the six field trips, the unity project includes a classroom curriculum taught in both schools by the same pair of teachers, an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab. The course is required for all seniors at Al-Iman; it is an elective at Schechter.
“In the world we live in, it’s important for students to have knowledge of the world around them,” said SSDS dean of students Adam Shapiro in a prepared statement. He called the shared learning experiences “very powerful.”
The classes include formal learning and reading as well as guest speakers and films. After one October class, in which she directed several questions at Marjon, the Palestinian teacher, Arielle wrote, “I loved today’s class! It was so much fun to learn about Islam and it was so interesting to ask questions to Marjon. Relating Islam to Judaism was especially interesting. There are so many striking similarities between the two religions: both are monotheistic, both believe in equality, and both believe in improving the world at large.”
On the Oct. 16 field trip, Imam Shamsi Ali welcomed the students to the mosque and introduced them to the Koran and to Muslim prayer ritual. Rabbi Michael Graetz greeted them at Park Avenue Synagogue, where he shared aspects of Judaism and sat with the students in the sukka. Schechter student Seffi Kogen chanted the week’s Torah portion.
The formal structure of the day gave way to informal interaction. Arielle finally met her pen pal, Suneala, and they “instantly became friends,” she said. The Muslim girls showed the Schechter girls how they put on a headscarf; one Schechter boy explained to an Al-Iman peer the custom of wearing a kipa in a synagogue sanctuary.
The teens said, sometimes awkwardly, that they have more in common than they realize.
Describing his favorite interaction of the day, Seffi told NJJN, via e-mail, “I was talking with a Muslim student who was garbed (for comedic effect, we later discovered) in very traditional Muslim dress. We got to the topic of college and I told him that I plan on spending a year studying in Israel next year. When I asked him what he was doing for college, he said, with a perfectly straight face, that he didn’t plan on going. I began to wonder if this was prevalent among Muslim students. Then he grinned and said, ‘No, I’m just messing with you, man.’”
NJJN contacted several Muslim students, but they did not respond to a request for an interview.
--TOP--
Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com
