If I Had an Iftar

For the past few months I have been working up a project to bring Jews and Muslims together for a series of parties - once every quarter, say. I found a Mulsim man who's interested in the same thing. I'll refer to him as my Muslim Partner, or "MP" for short.

He and I finally met last night. It's the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, during which devout Muslims fast during all daylight hours. There's a feast each evening, needless to say; it's called the iftar. Last night my MP invited me to a very large celebration indeed at the Islamic Center down near USC.

The similarities and differences between his community, his beliefs, his practices and mine are fascinating. For instance, a couple of times during last night's program, someone stood up and chanted a selection of Muslim scripture from memory. In Judaism, although we often memorize sections of Torah, we generally don't memorize the chant that goes along with them; it was explained to me that when it comes to the written scripture, the rabbis consider it wiser to read from the written text even if we have the section memorized. I expect to learn a great deal more from my MP in the future.

After speaking with him, though, I had a moment of doubt. He told me about the attitude of most Muslims toward Jews, and it's everything I was afraid it would be; suspicious, closed, angry and ultimately prejudiced. The people I met at the Islamic Center welcomed me without hesitation, but my MP tells me that that attitude is pretty rare.


What's worse (to my mind) is that I see the same habit of thought making inroads among the Jews. Few Jews that I know hate Muslims, although some do. More depressingly, more and more Jews think of Muslims with deep resignation, as if they had no ears.

There's a lot of work to do, clearly. At least, though, I have now confirmed that my project is one worth doing. If nothing else, my own nervousness at finding myself among a group of Muslims, warm and friendly as they were, is enough to show that the conversation between us could use some refinement.

My heartiest thanks to my MP for the lesson. Now let's go out and change the world, shall we?

Benshlomo says, There's nothing like sharing food to make you feel friendly.