Jewish and Muslim Students Transforming Conflict?

Sara Hadi and Rebecca Katz, two Muslim and Jewish graduates from the Al-Iman School and the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in NY, partnered and produced a ten-minute documentary upon their graduation from the Unity Program, a full-year high school course that educate Muslim and Jewish students about Islam and Judaism while strengthening the relationships students have to their own religious tradition.

In the documentary students share their experiences as Jewish and Muslim teens living in the US, modeling how transformative the Abraham's Vision inter-group education programs are. Saleha Lodhi, an Al-Iman School alumna, shares with us her fear when at the beginning of the year-round course. "I was afraid of talking to them. I didn't know what to expect or what they wanted to expect from us. I didn't know that we were actually going to get along. I didn't know that we were just ordinary regular people".

Students from the 2005/2006 Unity Program talk about their personal experiences and how it has had an impact beyond their expectations. Heschel School alumna, Sharon Bukspan, shares how the Unity Program exceeded her farthest expectations, eloquently stating, "And I learned through my own experience that 'interfaith dialogue' doesn't have one definition because our definition kept changing as we kept seeing what was possible what we could learn and what we could learn about ourselves and each other... see[ing] how much was possible. Interfaith dialogue isn't just going into a room and talking and sitting around and doing icebreakers and things like that. It's really about having an experience and going through a transition and learning".

visit www.abrahamsvision.org.

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Nonprofits & Activism

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