SYNAGOGUE BUILDING BRIDGES
Hosting Muslim Awareness Week event
There will be tabbouleh and fatayer, a savoury Arabic pastry filled with cheese or spinach, among the 10 or so dishes at a Shabbat dinner at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom on Friday night; they’ll be set out alongside salade cuite, a signature dish of the Moroccan Jewish community made with tomatoes, bell peppers and garlic, and an Ashkenazi cauliflower-mushroom kugel topped with crispy shallots.
As Muslim Awareness Week gets underway Friday and the second anniversary of the mosque shooting in Quebec City that killed six worshippers and injured 19 is marked Jan. 29, the Westmount synagogue is holding a Muslim Awareness Shabbat. It will begin with a vegetarian dinner made up of dishes from Arab and Jewish communities, to be prepared by members of both communities and served family style. The Shabbat service following dinner will feature two speakers from Montreal’s Muslim community.
“The whole idea of Muslim Awareness Week is to go out and build bridges,” said Ehab Lotayef, chairman of the week’s co-ordinating committee. The public is invited to attend conferences, presentations, open houses, vigils and movie screenings planned by dozens of organizations across the province to learn about the contributions, aspirations and concerns of Muslim Quebecers. It’s the first of what he hopes will become an annual event.
“As members of this very diverse society, we have to play our part, to go outside our comfort zone and interact,” Lotayef, who is one of the two speakers at the Shabbat service, told the Montreal Gazette in an interview. “And nothing is easy at the beginning, of course.”
The Muslim Awareness Shabbat “gives us the chance to go to people in their own comfort zone and present ourselves there,” said the Cairo-born engineer, poet, writer and community activist who came to Canada in 1989. “That way, some barriers will surely be broken.”
A longtime participant in Arab-Jewish dialogue groups, Lotayef is on the board of governors of McGill University — he is IT and technical services manager in the university’s engineering faculty — as well as the Montreal City Mission and Fair Vote Canada.
The other speaker during the sermon portion of the Shabbat service is Palestinian-born Amani Shakhtour, a Concordia University student majoring in community, society and public affairs, and minoring in global migration. She has a CEGEP diploma in languages and has mastered Spanish and basic Hebrew in addition to English and French.
“So much of what we do in the community is to help put people together and bring people together,” said Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom Senior Rabbi Lisa Grushcow.
The idea for the special Shabbat came about when congregation member Brian Bronfman, whose family foundation is involved in bridge-building and peace work, introduced her to Lotayef and the idea of Muslim Awareness Week.
“It goes back to the attack,” Grushcow said, referring to the 2017 mass shooting at the Centre culturel islamique de Québec, “and wanting people to meet their Muslim neighbours to lessen stereotypes and fears.
“We figured the best way to participate is to have guests to speak about their Muslim experience.”
The temple has among its members “regulars” at its Shabbat services. “One of the great things about having them on Friday night is that it is a connective piece,” Grushcow said.
The Shabbat dinner is being planned and catered by two women-led food initiatives, one Syrian and one Jewish. The Syrian Kitchen was started by a member of one of the two refugee families sponsored by the congregation — Ghfran Almahamed arrived in Montreal with her husband and their four children in early 2017. The Wandering Chew organizes events to celebrate the culture and history of Montreal’s lesser-known Jewish communities.
Spaces at the dinner are limited and reservations are required, but the Shabbat service is open to all — as is an invitation to mingle, talk and enjoy dessert following the service.
Observed Grushcow: “I think it is a wonderful coming together of people and ideas — and food, of course.”
Desserts will include rugelach, AT A GLANCE
Learn more about the events of Muslim Awareness Week at ssm-maw.com. A handful of places remain for the Muslim Awareness Shabbat dinner on Friday; reservations a must: Contact Sari 514-937-3575, ext. 214. The Shabbat service, which begins at 7:45 p.m., is open to all. Dessert, also open to all, will follow. Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom is at 4100 Sherbrooke St. W. in Westmount.
small Ashkenazi pastries featuring cream-cheese dough rolled around chocolate or jam, and basbousa, a traditional Middle Eastern sweet cake made from cooked semolina or farina soaked in simple syrup.
When Gillian Sonin and Kat Romanow of the Wandering Chew and Almahamed and her daughter, Saja, met in the synagogue’s boardroom one late afternoon last week to plan the dinner menu and they got to talking about dishes like stuffed vegetables and shakshuka, eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce, it quickly became clear that there were common elements in the foods of both communities.
“Jews and Muslims for centuries lived side by side in Muslim countries — like Syria, like Iraq, like Morocco,” said Romanow, a Jewish food historian and temple member. “They had good relationships; they were neighbours and friends. There were times when they ate and cooked together.”
When talk turned to dessert and Almahamed mentioned basbousa as a possibility, Romanow grew animated.
She had featured the sweet cake in a workshop on Syrian-Jewish cooking and was delighted to hear it mentioned.
“Seeing that come to life, realizing that there is so much overlap between Jewish and Muslim cooking, was amazing; to have read about it is one thing, but then to have it come to life when Ghfran brought it up was a really special moment. It really brought home to me all the similarities,” Romanow said afterward.
“When there is so much talk of everyone being divided, to be able to come together in a way that Jews and Arabs have come together in the past is very special,” she said. “And there is no better way to extend a welcome to somebody than by sharing a meal.” sschwartz@postmedia.com