U.S. Jews, Muslims Strive to See Beyond Mideast Conflicts : Reconciliation: Conference organizers hope to encourage grass-roots dialogue as part of effort to overcome longstanding mistrust.

Rabbi Paul Tuchman could barely contain himself.

“I never thought I’d ever sit in a room and hear a rabbi explain the Koran and a Muslim scholar explain Torah,” he said, his voice laden with emotion.

Tuchman, a Reform rabbi from Flint, Mich., was one of about 175 American Jews and Muslims who met last week in an effort to bolster relations between the two groups, which are often suspicious of one another because of competing loyalties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Their tenuous dialogue has been further strained in recent months as the Middle East peace process has bogged down over terrorist acts against Israel, and Palestinian perceptions that Jerusalem is stalling on handing over promised self-rule.

The peace process was the number one topic of discussion at the daylong meeting, billed as the first such gathering aimed at building dialogue on a grass-roots level. But it was in moments such as Tuchman’s joy that conference organizers are basing their hope that Muslim-Jewish relations in the United States can transcend events in the Middle East.

“After Sept. 13,” said Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor, referring to the date of the 1993 White House peace accord signing ceremony, “my office was besieged by calls. Everyone wanted to engage in dialogue.

“But it all collapsed within six to eight weeks because everyone spoke first about the Middle East, rather than trying to understand each other’s faith and each other as humans,” said Bretton-Granatoor, interreligious affairs director for the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

Mahmoud Ayoub, a Lebanese-born professor of Islamic studies at Philadelphia’s Temple University, said, “The challenge for us is can we accept the validity of our tradition without denying the validity of others.”

Still, last week’s gathering, held at a large Reform Jewish synagogue in a northern suburb of Chicago, reflected how deeply the Middle East tension skews Jewish-Muslim relations.

When Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, the African American Muslim leader, said, “Israel has done some ugly things in the Middle East,” many of the Jews visibly stiffened.

Most of those in attendance come from Judaism’s liberal Reform movement or are associated with Mohammed’s ministry, the largest African American Muslim organization in the nation. Nearly a dozen of Mohammed’s top regional officials from around the nation came to the meeting.

Both groups have been in the forefront of American Muslim-Jewish dialogue.

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Largely absent were members of Jewish groups more critical of what they view as American Muslim sympathy for the aims of Palestinian militants. Also missing were representatives of some Muslim organizations that have blamed Jewish groups for using the threat of terrorism to stir up broad anti-Muslim sentiments.

Those antagonisms threatened at one point to scuttle the conference, which was co-sponsored by the American Muslim Council, a Washington, D.C.-based political lobbying group that some Jewish activists say is closely aligned with Palestinian militants. Council officials have condemned terrorist attacks but do not hide their criticism of Israeli policies or their support of the militants’ desire to establish a Palestinian state.

If Muslim-Jewish dialogue is to be successful, honesty must be its hallmark, said Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations. He confessed to feeling vulnerable as a Jew and a supporter of Israel in the face of 1 billion Muslims worldwide.

But he also noted that American Muslims, who lack the political power achieved by American Jews, must also feel vulnerable.

“These are the flashes of pain I glimpse, my friends, when I look into your eyes,” he said. “These are the flashes of fear that I ask you to recognize when you look into mine.”

From the mutual recognition “of our complex fluid identities,” Schindler said, “our dialogue can proceed.”