UCLA Muslim, Jewish Students Build Bridges

Like Muslims everywhere, the UCLA students gathered at sundown this week to break their daylong fast during the holy month of Ramadan. But there was one twist: The food was kosher, provided by Jewish friends.

The joint iftar celebration Thursday night reflected a burgeoning effort to forge ties between young followers of the two faiths, overcoming historical campus tensions between them, the emotions fueled by the Mideast conflict and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Before a gathering of about 60 students, UCLA law student Mairaj Syed recited a prayer to break the fast and Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller reminded the two sides of their common spiritual heritage.

The prophet Muhammad recommended that Muslims observe the Jewish day of fasting on Yom Kippur, the rabbi noted, linking two pillars of practice in both faiths.

“We need to see religion as a force to bring people together,” said Seidler-Feller, director of the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA. “When you open the door and say, ‘Come celebrate with me,’ you’re opening up your heart.”

Interfaith Ramadan celebrations also seem to be proliferating beyond the campus. Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council said more people are reaching out to Muslims since the terrorist attacks, curious about the faith and wanting to show support.

The Muslim council plans iftars with a Jewish temple and the Japanese American community next month, while the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California will sponsor an all-faith iftar in Pasadena on Dec. 9.

At UCLA, the Ramadan event capped two years of efforts to build bridges between Jewish and Muslim students that began with a friendship between Seidler-Feller, a longtime peace activist, and Fadi Amir, a Muslim of Palestinian descent.

Amir, a gregarious senior majoring in political science, immigrated to the United States from Jordan at age 10. Though his father fought the Israelis in the 1967 war, he made several Jewish friends here through his barber business, Amir said.

After he retired, the elder Amir would invite those friends over to cut their hair, drink coffee and talk Mideast politics. Such experiences, along with his father’s tales about the horrors of war, influenced the young Amir.

After Amir landed at UCLA, he said he was bothered by the tension between Muslim and Jewish students. During celebrations of Israeli Independence Day, he recalled, some Muslim students showed up with anti-Israeli posters.

“Even if I agreed with what they were saying, I didn’t think their actions were conducive to solving the problems, and would [even] make things worse,” he said.

In late 1999, Amir wrote an article in the campus Daily Bruin asserting that the Mideast conflict--and the spillover tensions on campus--would not be solved until both sides acknowledged their joint blame and grievances. Seidler-Feller saw the piece and sent him an e-mail: “Fadi, you are my brother in peace.”

The rabbi put Amir and other Muslims in touch with several Jewish students, and a group of eight met for the first time last year for an ice-breaking lunch.

Among the Jewish partners is Jacob Zakaria, 19, a political science student who immigrated here from Iran in 1989. Back home, even as he prayed every night for the safety of all Jews, every day at his public school he was made to recite “Death to Israel! Death to America!” In Iran, he had no Muslim friends and never celebrated a Ramadan iftar, he said.

But Zakaria quickly made Iranian Muslim friends in America because of their common Persian heritage. Only in America, he said, could he be free to forge such friendships.

“We have an opportunity here to do what generations of my family in Iran could not do, and that’s to befriend each other,” Zakaria said.

In May, the students erected a three-day “peace tent” on campus, inviting people to sit down and talk over their differences. Many of them also participated in an unusual course taught earlier this year by Seidler-Feller called Voices of Peace, which explored the Arab-Israeli conflict.

‘The Truth Is in the Middle’

Speakers included Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration’s Mideast peace negotiator, who challenged students to propose ways to restart the stalled process. For a final project, they worked in teams to come up with plans for sharing water resources in the Holy Land and resolving other disputes.

Emily Kane, 19, a second-year student in Jewish studies, said the course transformed her views on the Mideast conflict. Educated at what she called a “very Zionist” Jewish day school near San Jose, Kane said she never learned that both sides had legitimate claims to the land.

“What the class taught me was the truth is in the middle, and the center line is the only place we can expect people to go,” Kane said as she munched hummus and pita bread at the Ramadan event.

After winter break, the students said, they plan to meet regularly for talks, lectures, social events and humanitarian activities, such as a clothing drive for needy Palestinian children. They also plan joint celebrations of each others’ religious holidays, and possibly a Mediterranean music concert.

“We are the leaders of tomorrow, and we want to be leaders of tomorrow together,” said Benjamin Nebati, a senior majoring in political science.