Breaking for faith and service

Letters from spring break: A four-part series on how students spent their spring break

Never could I have possibly imagined a trip that would end with Jews and Muslims sharing their meals in the kosher cafeteria. Or with Muslims asking me if I am coming to Shabbat dinner on Friday night. Or with Jewish students sitting around a bonfire shouting "Takbir," an exclamation Muslims use to proclaim the greatness of Allah.

Last October Sam Krentzman, the special projects coordinator at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life, asked me to help coordinate a Jewish-Muslim Alternative Spring Break trip to New Orleans. The goal of the trip was to bring 15 Jews and 15 Muslims together to help rebuild New Orleans.

In the four weeks leading up to the trip, we had four learning sessions with Rabbi Yehuda Sarna of the Bronfman Center and Muslim Chaplain Khalid Latif of the Islamic Center, who both accompanied us to New Orleans. We explored Jewish and Muslim identity and traditions, challenges, and opportunities for alliance along with our own personal ideas and goals for the trip.

We barely knew each other and many of the students held their ground, waiting to be attacked or criticized based on any religious or ethnic position they held. But the second we landed in New Orleans, we all let our guard down.

The infectious passion for life that we all shared emanated from the group as we began a journey we are all extremely committed to continuing. We started building our community, first by koshering the kitchen of the campsite where we stayed. Jews and Muslims together poured hot water over all the surfaces of the kitchen to make sure any non-kosher tastes that had entered the cooking space previously were no longer present.

We spent the daytime hours gutting homes in Chalmette, La., doing tasks that included pulling out drywall, ripping apart bathrooms, knocking down fences, pulling out nails and flooring and, in some cases, putting up drywall and ceilings in a home that was being rebuilt.

When it came time for Jumaa, the Friday afternoon Muslim prayer, the Jews sat behind the Muslims, listening to Brother Khalid give his sermon. The Muslim students spent Friday evening at a fundraiser for the Islamic Center in Monroe, La., driving six hours each way in order to garner support for a cause to which they are incredible devoted: securing a permanent Islamic Center at NYU.

Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, which we spent relaxing, learning and eating. When Saturday night came around - our last chance to go out - we didn't care about seeing the nightlife of New Orleans on St. Patrick's Day. We just wanted to be together.

It has been less than 48 hours since we returned from New Orleans, and my mind continues to revert back to the past week. We don't want it to go away. On the first day back at school, more than 20 of our group of 30 Jews and Muslims met for dinner in the Kosher Cafeteria in Weinstein residence hall.

I have come realize that our approach to conflict resolution and to bridging the Muslim-Jewish worlds at NYU is not superficial, but rather genuine and possible. I only can hope that our commonalties will continue to outweigh our differences as we build on this trip and share our newly formed friendships with members of our communities.

There was a true openness to the views of others that I have never felt before in a group setting. Everyone was sincerely interested in getting to know people at their deepest core. We instantly connected and we will continue to respect each other. There is nothing in the world like knowing people in their most genuine state.

The commitment is so strong that Jewish students have allied with the Muslim community in their efforts to secure Brother Khalid a paid position at NYU, and also to pressure NYU to find a permanent prayer space for the Muslim community.

Brother Khalid has spent the past two years volunteering his time on behalf of the Muslim students at NYU. The Catholic Center, from which the Muslim community has borrowed space in the basement for the past several years, has been sold. The Islamic Center will no longer have a meeting place.

I know I speak for the Jewish students on the trip when I say that we as Jews have an obligation to help our Muslim friends in this process of fund-raising and rallying campus-wide support for the Islamic Center. As one of the students on the trip, Dee Cohen, said, "We, as students, have the power to change the world one person at a time. We just have to stick together and believe in each other."

If - in just one week - the students on this trip managed to see each other as individuals living beyond the categories of religion or faith under which we may identify ourselves, I know we can look beyond any of our other differences in order to recognize the incredible amount of passion we share for community and for each other's peace and justice.