At a time when Jewish and Muslim communities are often described through the conflicts that divide them, a conversation in Atlantic City offered a different starting point: What happens when people choose to know one another first?
That was the question at the center of “Remembering Together, Honoring Differences: A Jewish-Muslim Dialogue on the Holocaust,” which brought Dr. Ari Gordon, American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) director of Muslim-Jewish relations, together with Atlantic City Councilman and interfaith leader Kaleem Shabazz. Additional partners included Jewish by the Shore, Board of Jewish Education, Bridge of Faith, and Stockton University’s Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center.
Rather than focusing solely on Holocaust history, Gordon and Shabazz discussed how education, media, relationships, and local partnerships can help communities resist hatred and learn to disagree without becoming enemies.
Marcia Bronstein, regional director of AJC Philadelphia/ Southern New Jersey, opened the evening by placing the conversation within AJC’s broader interfaith mission. “When we choose to remember together, listen to one another, and honor the dignity of each community’s story,” Bronstein said, “we strengthen bonds of trust that make democratic and civic life possible.”
Bronstein said AJC, which helped transform Christian-Jewish relations, now sees Muslim Jewish relations as one of the important interreligious challenges of the 21st century. “The common ground is not necessarily agreement on every issue,” she said, “but a willingness to work together on shared concerns such as religious freedom, hate crimes, and protecting houses of worship.”
Irvin Moreno Rodriguez, director of Stockton’s Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center, then offered an example of why those relationships matter. After the program was announced, Rodriguez said he received a message expressing surprise that a Jewish-Muslim dialogue was taking place, along with sweeping negative claims about Islam. He shared the response to illustrate what can happen when people form opinions about entire communities without personal relationships or meaningful encounters.
“Statements like this are not rooted in relationships,” Rodriguez said. “They’re rooted in assumptions.” He added that such views are “not rooted in conversations, but they’re rooted in stereotypes,” and “not rooted in encounters, but they’re rooted in distance.”
That set the stage for Gordon and Shabazz.
Gordon described AJC efforts to bring Muslim and Jewish communities together through education and storytelling. He discussed a Moroccan initiative that began with Muslim college students studying Jewish heritage and that developed into a professional network. Through AJC’s partnership with the group, participants have worked on Holocaust and genocide education with educators from throughout the Muslim world.
That work includes stories of Muslims who protected Jews during the Holocaust, including the Moroccan king who resisted discriminatory measures against Jews and individuals who helped Jews obtain false identity papers or find refuge.
Gordon said the goal is not to create a sanitized version of history, but to create an opening for difficult conversations. “We figured out how to have an educated story that educated,” Gordon said, while acknowledging that the approach could not “skip over challenging” subjects such as propaganda, competing historical narratives, and the conflict surrounding Jerusalem.
One Holocaust education video reached roughly 11 million views, Gordon said, challenging assumptions about what people are willing to watch online. “I believe that people out there are looking for education,” he said.
Gordon expressed that education must go beyond simply providing information. Young people also need critical thinking and digital literacy to distinguish fact from misinformation, recognize bullying, and understand when online behavior becomes dangerous.
Shabazz connected that concern to the decline of traditional journalism. “There used to be a time when, in classrooms, they had” access to newspapers and other traditional sources of information, Shabazz said.
He then asked, “How can Muslims and Jews create a media presence that is honest and credible?” Gordon’s response was one word: “Trust.” Trust, Gordon explained, allows people to disagree without abandoning the relationship. Jewish and Muslim partners can advocate for their own communities while recognizing that cooperation can benefit both.
As an Atlantic City official and longtime participant in interfaith efforts, Shabazz has seen the value of building those relationships before a crisis occurs. That normalization may have been one of the evening’s most practical lessons.
Interfaith cooperation does not have to begin with a crisis or a formal statement. It can begin with a meal, a conversation, a shared project or simply getting to know someone from another religious background.
The observation underscored a central message of the evening: Jewish and Muslim communities do not have to agree on every political issue to recognize that hatred directed at one group is not made less serious by hatred directed at another.
Gordon suggested that sports, arts and cultural activities could give Jewish and Muslim young people opportunities to build relationships before asking them to navigate complicated questions about religion or politics.
The evening ultimately returned to Rodriguez’s challenge: Bridge building requires people to remain engaged even when conversations become uncomfortable. “If we want peace, we must be willing to be vulnerable,” Rodriguez said. “If we want understanding, we must be willing to be uncomfortable. And if we want a different future, we must be willing to invest in relationships.”
For the participants, Holocaust remembrance was therefore not simply a look backward. It was a challenge to consider what the lessons of history require of people today.
In Atlantic City and the local community, that work is already underway not only through formal dialogue, but through the relationships and partnerships that make difficult conversations possible when they are needed most.