How an Interfaith Iftar Turned Into Group Therapy

As I anxiously walked down the streets of Tel Aviv, I kept telling myself to put one foot in front of the other.

I was excited to have been invited to the largest interfaith iftar of the year while visiting the Holy Land in late March, but I was also feeling anxious. The iftar was based in the West Bank (Judea & Samaria) and I knew tensions were rising. Yet, I also knew I wanted to go because it would be a great opportunity to see one of the largest efforts towards peace and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians on the ground. So, as a social worker, I put my clinical skills into practice by taking deep breaths and telling myself to put one foot in front of the other as I got closer to the bus station.

By the time I arrived at the station, I was immediately welcomed by the people there and became more at ease. I saw a friendly and diverse cohort consisting of Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, and internationals from all over the globe preparing to go to the iftar. By just receiving a glimpse of how big, diverse, and welcoming the people were going to be, I felt more comfortable and eager to get on the bus.

By the time we arrived at the iftar in the Deir Hajla area, we saw hundreds of people – totaling nearly one thousand, in fact – gathering and beginning to sit at their tables as the sun started to set by the Greek Orthodox monastery. 

As expected, it was a diverse group of Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals and Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Samaritans. As each community had their representative religious leader go up to the stage to speak about the role religion can play in peacebuilding, people were also having a chance to mingle at their tables and get to know each other.

My group consisted of myself (an Iranian-American Jew), two American Jews (one of whom was in the process of making Aliyah), an Israeli-German Jew who recently made Aliyah, an Israeli-Yemenite Jew who was fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, an Israeli-Arab sheikh from Beersheba who was wearing a thawb and could pass as African-American, and two female Israeli-Arab college students who identified themselves as “Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.”

We talked about how we all had multiple identities and shared the struggle they come with. Did we associate with one of our identities over the others? Did we identify with all of them equally? Or did we identify with them in a particular order? 

I often ask myself, am I an Iranian first? Am I an American first? Am I a Jew first? Or, am I all three at the same time? It is something I have struggled with since high school, but it was validating to hear a diverse group of people at my table who – although had different identities as I did – were experiencing a similar identity crisis as I was – and it was validating for them too.

For instance, the two Israeli-Arab college students sitting to my left talked about how they have been asking themselves what their identity is their whole lives. On the one hand, they are Arabs who identify themselves as Palestinians. But, on the other hand, they have Israeli citizenship. They said that, as of now, they identify themselves as, “Palestinians with Israeli citizenship”, but said their identity could change in the future and that the discussion helped them.

The conversation gradually transitioned to our communities’ different experiences and memories of the 1948 War, which my community refers to as Israel’s War of Independence, but their community refers to as the Nakba (the Catastrophe).

One of the Palestinian students told me about how her grandparents fled from the village of Al-Jammasin al-Gharbi during the 1948 War and then had to rebuild their lives in a village called Jaljulia, which is where she and her friend grew up. The other Palestinian student told me about how her grandparents on her mother’s side fled from villages near Jaffa and her grandparents on her father’s side fled from the village of Zakur during the 1948 War.

After listening to and thanking them for sharing their grandparents’ stories, I felt it was only right to share my grandparents’ story as well. I told them about how my family background was from Iran, but my grandparents had to run from their homes as Jews leading up to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 where they would flee to Israel next. I further elaborated on how I grew up identifying myself as a Zionist and as pro-Israel because, the way I saw it, Israel rescued my grandparents when they had to run from their homes in Iran.

Immediately when I finished that sentence, before I could say anything else, one of the Palestinian students leaned in and said, “And it absolutely did!” She went on to say how, although she grew up knowing her grandparents’ story in her local village – and still holds it to this day – she began to hear other people’s stories that were like mine as she went out of her village and understood why Zionism and Israel were important to many Jews.

I reciprocated by talking about how, although I grew up with my family’s stories about why Zionism and Israel were important to us – and they still are important to me – I have also come to learn about many Palestinian stories who were like theirs and acknowledged that they have a story as well.

As we drove back to Tel Aviv, I stared outside the window seeing the crisp and dark night while reflecting on the experience I just had. I remembered how anxious I was walking to the bus station just a few hours ago, and now I was on my way back feeling so happy after receiving exactly what I wanted, but not in the way I expected. I received insight into reconciliation efforts, not through a structured political discussion on current events, but through an informal group therapy session where we validated each other’s stories and identities.