Shireen Quaizar was wracked with doubt. For years, the varsity psychologist has been lively in Muslim-Jewish interfaith dialogue, however the Israel-Hamas war left her reeling.
“What are we doing with talking to one another?” she recalled considering, frustrated by a conversation concerning the exact variety of Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike. “This doesn’t work.”
But she decided to fight that thought and tackle the hard discussions once more. Later, Quaizar, who’s Muslim, met with women like Aviva Seltzer, the daughter of a rabbi and a Jewish school principal who was raised with the assumption that “but for the existence of Israel, we’d all be dead.”
The two had come together for a conference in New Brunswick, New Jersey, convened by the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a company looking for to construct trust and friendships between Muslim and Jewish women.
These conversations have gotten increasingly difficult, with the war and its polarizing reverberations in America testing and straining some interfaith relationships greater than ever. For many, the losses are too personal, the emotions too raw.
The latest violence, triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, is prompting some to query the purpose of those conversations — and how one can have them — while steeling the resolve of others to maintain going.
“We’re very courageous, you and I, because we don’t stop talking,” Seltzer told Quaizar. “The minute we stop talking, there’s no hope.”
Quaizar nodded and said, “We’re doing the toughest work at once.”
At the event, Sisterhood co-founder Atiya Aftab, a Muslim, told participants that simply showing up was an achievement. Next to her, Roberta Elliott, who’s Jewish and the nonprofit’s president, said she couldn’t have gotten through the previous weeks “without my Muslim sisters.”
They’ve seen the challenges mount.
There are “all these barriers now to come back to the table,” Aftab said in an interview.
She’s questioned why she’s not walking away herself.
“Sometimes it seems insurmountable to have conversations with individuals who have a diametrically different viewpoint,” Aftab said. “Faith is what keeps me there — and hope.”
Part of the issue of discussing the war was underscored in responses to the organization’s public call earlier for a cease-fire. Elliott said some Jewish women would have preferred the group advocated for a humanitarian pause as a substitute.
More recently, heated debates also erupted over what to call Israel’s military motion. Tensions flared on members’ WhatsApp groups.
“We’ve needed to remind those that they should step back, that they should take deep breaths,” Elliott said. Still, she said, “that is what we’ve been preparing for … to attempt to be a comfort for one another and check out to realize something together.”
But within the Israeli-Palestinian context, some critics say many interfaith efforts fall short. Detractors argue that specializing in Muslim-Jewish relationships also risks inadvertently reducing the conflict to religion, ignoring all aspects at play or overlooking the variety of communities, including non-Muslim Palestinians and Jewish supporters of the Palestinian cause.
Aftab said wading into areas of disagreement, especially after establishing trust, is essential for meaningful interactions.
“This isn’t a spiritual conflict, but this conflict is typically clothed in religion,” she said. “I feel our faith groups can encourage us to do the best thing, to treatment the wrongs, to get up for justice, to get up for all times.”
Andrea Hodos, associate director of Los Angeles-based NewGround, one other Muslim-Jewish partnership, said religion is “not your entire puzzle,” but is a chunk of it and that helping people understand these items is essential.
Some, she said, are saying, “‘How can you only talk at once? People are dying.’” But “if we’re not doing our work to assist people see each other, we’re all going to stay in our silos and it actually makes it more dangerous.”
It’s hard for some that the group isn’t taking certain positions, Hodos, who’s Jewish, said, adding that political motion isn’t its role.
“We attempt to get individuals who have differences of opinion to have the opportunity to listen to each other.” That way, once they are doing advocacy, they will consider more perspectives and have compassion for his or her side and the opposite, she said.
The Kaufman Interfaith Institute held a gathering that highlighted the challenges ahead, said Fred Stella, who’s a member of the organization’s advisory board.
“People were on the lookout for statements from us,” he said. “The query is, how do you reply to something like this without either offending considered one of the edges or just mouthing virtually meaningless platitudes?”
His group has mostly focused on fighting antisemitic and anti-Muslim hate, which has risen throughout the war. “The only thing I feel we within the interfaith community can do … is to proceed to remind people of our shared humanity.”
Interfaith advocates say they’ve also seen bonds — old and latest — nurtured.
“Even when individuals are in deep disagreement, there’s a terrific deal of goodwill and attempts to achieve out,” Hodos said. “Not everyone can do it. Some of the groups have just been … very quiet and I feel people have, for now, walked away from the table.”
Others are newcomers. In Teaneck, New Jersey, two highschool students and friends — Rawda Elbatrawish, who’s Muslim, and Liora Pelavin, who’s Jewish — said they organized events for conversations and education on the conflict.
They wanted attendees to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. “The whole point … was to essentially understand the opposite perspective and why someone believes what they do,” said Elbatrawish, who was born in Egypt.
Pelavin — who has relatives within the Israel Defense Forces and a rabbi mom who’s been involved with human rights organizations — said some participants lauded the importance of interfaith events and the deeper connections of in-person conversations.
She and Elbatrawish “come from different perspectives,” she said, but each desire a cease-fire.
At the Sisterhood conference, Quaizar said communicating with Jewish members has helped her through her anger. It’s OK, she said “for me to grieve for my people in addition to for people on the Jewish side.”
But she recalled struggling at one point before the conference with staying in such dialogue. She then attended a Sisterhood chapter meeting, feeling in turmoil. Everyone cried, she said. That gave her hope. “They weren’t crying for Jews or Muslims or Israelis or Palestinians; they were crying for individuals who have been suffering.”
On the conference sidelines, Quaizar told Seltzer: “I actually have a really unfiltered way of talking” but don’t mean to cause hurt.
Seltzer reassured her: “You speak unfiltered, in order that’s how we get to the core.”
Seltzer found the event eye-opening.
“A variety of the speakers said you may hold two feelings in your heart at the identical time,” she said. “I never knew I could try this.”
Continuing to speak, she said, was crucial.
“You want peace; you would like your loved ones; you would like your own home; you would like your kids to grow up completely happy, similar to me.”
At the tip of the day, the 2 women tightly embraced.
“People are offended and individuals are in pain and it goes around and around. … We have to search out a strategy to stop,” Seltzer said. “Or there is not going to be anything left for our youngsters.”
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