Training 80 Youth Encounter Leaders

After a brief round of introductions, several participants stressed the necessity and importance of the meeting, and the shared obligation to build fraternity between the communities – that each one help will help his neighbor, and asked God to bless the meeting.

After that, we turned to the subject of the meeting: the answer. Sheikh Nasser opened his book on our father Abraham who helped the people and slowly taught them about God, until he brought them back to him. He stressed that it’s the duty of person to work hard – by praying and helping people.

The conversation turned to emphasize the similarities between Judaism and Islam and the positive relationship that should be between them.

Ma’zouz stressed that one of the foundations of Islam is also to believe in the Bible, and if we examine closely, we can see that the Qura’an talks about the people of Israel in a positive way, God chose them among all people. He claimed that if the Arabs learn the Qura’an properly and the Jews learn the Torah properly – it would be easy to make peace.

Abu Mahmoud said that, according to Qura’an – the role of the people of Israel is to teach the people to do good and avoid evil. The Muslim is who surrenders to God – it doesn’t matter from which religion he is. The meeting on a religious level allows us to connect more strongly than if it were on a political level. We all are against violence and pray to have real peace here.

Rabbi Dov: Jews and Muslims together should make the world better. There is a problem with the Jews that not all of them received good religious education.

 ‎Rabbi Ben: the Qura’an talks positively about “sons of Israel” but negatively on “Jews”. But at that time, there were many Jewish groups and this one is not related to the Jews of today. The “Jews” are the honest and the Judaism of today is the continuation of the “rabbis”, who were chosen by the Caliph Omar as the main Jewish connecting group and he appointed Bostanai the son of Haninai as the head of the Diaspora. It is important that Muslims understand that the Jews of today are the continuation of the sons of Israel. On the other hand – the Jews need to know about the people of Kini who were influenced by the sons of Noah and kept their laws. Onclos translates the name Kini – “Shalmai” (500 years before the prophet Mohammad!)

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