The Los Angeles Times reports that Muslim and Jewish American advocacy groups are “forging alliances like never before in reaction to the president’s rhetoric and action toward Muslim immigrants.”
In New York last week, nearly every day there were interfaith conferences or prayer services occuring (which also involved Christian groups). On Sunday, Jewish delegations turned out for a 10,000-plus protest. One sign read: “Granddaughter of Holocaust survivors standing with refugees, Muslims immigrants.”
Al Hadj Talib Abdur-Rashid is an imam of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, and was one of several Muslim leaders who appeared at a Brooklyn rally last November, after a playground was vandalized with graffiti and swastikas. “We have common interests,” said the imam. “The same kind of people who bomb synagogues [also] bomb black churches and now mosques.
The Times makes the point: “To many Jews, Trump’s targeting of migrants from predominantly Muslim countries evokes painful memories of Jews who were forced to identify themselves with yellow stars before their extermination at the hands of Nazis — and of the countries that turned them away when they tried to flee.”
“It speaks to a lot of people very personally because their own families have stories about being refugees.,’’ said Shuli Passow, a rabbi at New York’s B’nai Jeshurun, whose own Polish grandparents were hidden in barns and basements during the Holocaust. Ms. Passow said there is a religious edict to take in refugees. “One of the core tenets of the Jewish religion is welcoming the stranger.”
