In early 2024, in a packed room in a university on the West Coast, a student shared that she lost family in Gaza. A Jewish professor shared that her nephew in the Israel Defense Forces was killed trying to protect festival-goers at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel.

What would happen next? 

The student and the professor sat together, spoke together and hugged each other out of support, recognizing that both had lost, recalled Marium Mohiuddin, an anti-bigotry instructor and founder of Isma/Shema.

Isma/Shema facilitates workshops on campuses across the country, led by Muslim and Jewish educators. The name Isma/Shema translates to “hearing” or “to listen” in Arabic and Hebrew. 

This is the second semester that a series of four sessions has been delivered at Chico State, and they are open to students, staff, faculty and community members. 

“It’s really important that we just recognize, because we are Muslims and Jews, that there’s a lot going on, and there’s a lot of vilification, and there’s a lot of antisemitism, Islamophobia that’s really baked into our American history,” Mohiuddin said. “We need a space to talk about it, and examine it and take it apart.”

This spring, the workshops—which are part of the Diversity Certificate Program—center on Jewish and Muslim identity. The session topics include: the history, demographics, and geography of Jews and Muslims; the internal diversity and power of Judaism and Islam; Zionism, anti-Zionism and Jewish-Muslim relations; Jewish and Muslim identity in the U.S.

“Each time we come, it’s always such a pleasure, I’m so happy to see that people are interested in conversation, that there’s so many different points of view that come in,” Mohiuddin said. “We’re not ever trying to restrict it and say, ‘Oh, well, you don’t agree with us, you can’t be here.’ Because that’s really not the point. The point is actually, ‘Oh, you don’t agree? That’s great.’ How can we still be in the same room, have a conversation, be civil, right?”

Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon, an educator at Isma/Shema who specializes in antisemitism and issues related to Israel-Palestine, noted this brand-new material was developed for Chico State based on conversations with University Diversity Officer Joseph Morales and input from community stakeholders. 

“We’re trying to build people’s literacy around topics that we feel people are not well-educated in, such as antisemitism, Islamophobia, Israel-Palestine,” Ungar-Sargon said. “We believe actually, that part of the discomfort that people have around these issues is that they feel like they can’t trust the information that they’re getting. So we’re very intentional in how we present that information.”

A main priority in their programming is that sides aren’t taken, explained Mohiuddin.

“We’re not asking people to change their positions,” she said. “We’re trying to provide education and literacy about the situation so that people can make more informed decisions. And also, so that when things do come up, or a case of antisemitism does arise, that people can understand, ‘Why would someone take this offensively?’ or ‘Why is this term hurtful?’ and ‘How do I proceed forward and maneuver through this and really try to have better dialogue?’”

The educators aim to give people the tools to have productive conversations out in the world, Ungar-Sargon explained, including a combination of nonviolent communication and active listening, which are directly related to literacy-building. 

“I think that it’s absolutely radical in today’s day and age to give people the tools to listen to each other across difference,” he said.  

To demonstrate how literacy-building and communication tools go hand in hand, Ungar-Sargon gave an example of the hot-button topics of Zionism and anti-Zionism. The first step to having a productive conversation is to understand the various definitions people may have for the two terms, he said. 

“Giving people the sort of spectrum of there are different kinds of Zionists, there are different kinds of anti-Zionists, these are the sorts of people you might encounter,” Ungar-Sargon said. “The literacy-building is like, here are the different kinds, and then the tools are before you start the conversation, clarify with the person—What do they mean by these words?”  

In sharing the presentations, the Muslim and Jewish facilitators are committed to teaching about antisemitism and Islamophobia together, and teaching about Jewish and Muslim history together, noted Ungar-Sargon. 

“We have to do this together, because one thing is that these two groups get so pitted against one another, and that by doing these conversations separately, what’s happening is that one begins to take on dominance over the other,” Mohiuddin said. 

Mohiuddin, who has been involved with Muslim-Jewish relations for about 15 years, touched on how people tend to look inward and protect themselves when dealing with trauma, and that it’s natural for people to ask for only one side to be presented. 

“I was in the newsroom when 9/11 happened. I remember everything that happened afterward and how much of it was just such an isolation of, ‘Oh, these are Muslims. This was happening to them,’ and I just felt so alone and I didn’t have anybody to share it with or have an understanding,” she said. “And so this time, we were like, ‘No, there are groups that are going through something similar, and we have to be together on this.’”  

A simple statement, such as noting that Muslims believe in Moses, can bring attention to the fact that Judaism and Islam have similarities, Mohiuddin explained, leading to new conversations about what the two religions have in common. People may not know about periods in history when Muslims and Jews were persecuted side by side or when the two communities worked together. 

“We don’t shy away from any of it, we just talk about it, and we want people to talk about it,” Mohiuddin said. “We’re fine with answering and saying, ‘You know, I don’t know that answer and I’ll come back to you.’ I think that’s a really important thing, that we’re not going to have every single answer, but we’re here to help.” 

At some universities, Isma/Shema delivers presentations to incoming freshmen, which Mohiuddin explained is crucial for students to “know that their university is dedicated to these conversations that we’re having.” 

Not everyone is in a space to hear another side, such as someone who has a family connection on either the Israeli or Palestinian side. 

“If a person’s not ready to absorb certain kinds of information, or if for various psychological reasons, they’re really committed to sticking to one side and promoting it, and people have all kinds of really good reasons why they might be in that situation,” Ungar-Sargon said.

Some people, though, are ready to listen to a wider range of perspectives. 

While Ungar-Sargon delivered a presentation on a college campus about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a young woman stood up, left the room, and returned to her seat a few minutes later, triggered by the history and the violence discussed in the presentation.

When the young woman came to speak with Ungar-Sargon after the presentation and explained why she initially left, Ungar-Sargon told her, “‘I think that’s great that you did that, that’s the right move.’ And she said, ‘I need help in not thinking of Israeli people as monsters.’ And I was just totally blown away by this.”

Ungar-Sargon corresponded with her afterward through email and shared recommendations of Israeli media content to explore as an access point to “avoid slipping into the trap of dehumanizing all Israelis.” He emphasized that in this case, history and academic works would not be the best approach to help, and instead shared his favorite Israeli TV shows, music and culture to look into, and they also discussed some current news.   

“This was before the ceasefire and the return of the hostages, so this was during some of the worst violence in Gaza,” Ungar-Sargon said. “She’s at a very high level [of recognition] and she’s realizing that she has this problem that she’s slipping into dehumanizing thinking about Israelis. I was honored that she felt comfortable enough to come up to me and share that, even though it was clearly a hard thing to do.”  

An experience such as this, Ungar-Sargon said, is why he does this work. 

“I can’t think of a better outcome,” he said.  

Morales highlighted that, unlike other universities that needed to reactively respond to on-campus tensions centered on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Chico State was already providing education about hate speech and the First Amendment. 

Before Fall 2023, the Diversity Certificate Program had a more expansive focus on freedom of speech and safety. 

“It had to do with anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Asian, all these different forms of hate speech and how they impacted different communities,” Morales said. “But then, a lot of questions started to arise about the crisis in the Middle East, and there were different things happening on campus, so then [we] kind of focused more on that, because it was something that we wanted the campus to learn about.”

Wanting to help students learn to balance the rights afforded by the First Amendment and the responsibility to their community led to the current focus of the DCP, explained Morales. Last spring, the DCP sessions facilitated by Isma/Shema included the topics, “Understanding Antisemitism and Islamophobia,” “The Israel-Palestine Conflict,” “Conflict Resolution and Crisis Communication,” and “The Outrage Economy: Digital Manipulation and Bias.”

“The purpose is not to solve what is going on in the Middle East, but to at least provide a space where people can practice and learn how to talk about difficult things in a respectful manner and to try to grow as a community, to develop empathy,” Morales said.

The last workshop—on campus and on Zoom—is on April 24 at 2 p.m. RSVPs can be made at this link.  

Raquel Frohlich can be reached at [email protected]