The Melting Pot in action: Civil interfaith relations in New York
A CD at one of the banks in my neighborhood where I keep my funds rolled over the other day. I realized the date too late, which meant that my CD would remain at the same lower-than-preferred interest rate, which was lower than the rate that was available had I made the upgrade in time.
If I made belatedly the switch, I’d have to incur a substantial penalty, my banker told me. Not worthwhile, I thought.
Then my banker pulled a piece of paper out of her desk, where I was sitting across from her. She started filling in the bank form. “I can waive the penalty,” she said with a smile.
Doing that was an option available to bankers at that branch.
I would have the CD at a higher interest rate, sans penalty.
Her quiet act of kindness was noteworthy. And, in our country’s current atmosphere of intolerance among many people with disparate religious roots, it was remarkable – I am an Orthodox Jew, a suede kipa always on my head. My banker, in her 30s, is a Muslim, her hair always covered by a fashionable hijab.
A native of the Middle East, she always greets me in Arabic, honoring the little bit of the language that I have taught myself for two dozen visits to Israel and two to Jordan.
Our brief exchanges in her native language, a linguistic sign of respect for our different backgrounds in the Abrahamic faiths, while strange to outsiders, seems very natural to us – especially in Queens, a borough of New York City that always ranks among the most-ethnically diverse counties in the country.
She and I never discuss politics; no reason to – we’d probably disagree about the issue of Israel and Palestine. But we have been able to maintain a very amiable working relationship over several years. I don’t resent her religion, nor she mine.
It’s a micro example that contradicts a macro trend; it’s what can happen when people of different faiths make a good-faith effort to get along, when they see beyond the religious labels that may separate, when they don’t accept the animus that often breeds tension among individuals from diverse backgrounds – especially Jews and Muslims, who often find themselves at odds, frequently violently, in many communities around the world.
Not where I live. In my neighborhood, we bank together, shop together, ride the bus together.
In other words, proximity in the Big Apple forces civility.
In New York City, in several neighborhoods, Jews and Muslims often live, and work, near each other – sometimes side by side. A few blocks from my apartment building is a kosher bagel store; next door is a small halal grocery. When I lived in a heavily Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhood several years and was practicing my Arabic before heading to Jordan, I practiced my nascent grasp of the language with the Yemen-born owner of a nearby food store. During the height of the Intifada uprising in Israel a few decades ago, for an assignment for the weekly Jewish newspaper for which I worked, I spoke with the owners of kosher and halal stores in another Brooklyn neighborhood that were located next to each other; both said they found nothing special about the peaceful physical arrangement.
They got along, each said – no problem.
Neither saw the novelty in their situation.
If, in some situations, familiarity breeds contempt, in New York neighborhoods where members of two faiths – that elsewhere unfortunately result in treatment of each other with hostility – live on the same street, the forced closeness breeds acceptance. And respect for each other’s faith.
During the rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on southern Israel, and the Israeli Army’s subsequent war in Gaza, there have been few reports of bias-based attacks committed by the residents of each other’s part of New York City where Jews and Muslims are neighbors. When these incidents do take place, they’re usually committed by outsiders.
The moral: where people live together, they live peacefully.
Joint programs that involve members of the major monotheistic religions, as well as Bahai’s, Jains and Buddhists, include participating in such activities as serving Iftar dinners, studying scriptural texts, playing in youth basketball games, marching in solidarity rallies, and volunteering in service projects
Several years ago I was a passenger in a car in another neighborhood, where many Orthodox Jews live. The car’s driver and I saw an Orthodox man walk into a corner bank, followed by a woman wearing a hijab.
The interfaith scene was striking.
The driver and I started talking about the Melting Pot nature of New York City. The driver, curious, asked his SmartPhone, “What is the most ethnically diverse county in the United States?”
The driver read the answer, then asked, to no one in particular, “Where in the h*** is Fort Bend County?”
I knew the answer. Fort Bend County, just southwest of Houston, is the home of Sugar Land, a thriving bedroom community – it’s where my sister has lived for more than three decades, and where my mother, who died two years ago, lived for some 20 years.
Sugar Land prides itself on its diversity – its population includes whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and people from other homelands – more than a third of the city’s residents are foreign-born.
Religious institutions there include churches, mosques, a nearby synagogue, a Buddhist center, and a sprawling Hindu temple.
And the city’s businesses reflect this demographic reality. On one half-mile stretch of a state highway near my sister’s and late mother’s homes, are a Chinese restaurant and supermarket, a hair dresser’s shop owned by a Vietnamese refugee couple, a Vietnamese restaurant, an Indian restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, the Singapore Café …
The list goes on.
Several times in recent years, Sugar Land has been named a “Community of Respect” by the Anti-Defamation League; it was the first city to receive that designation from the ADL.
The ADL honor cites a community that actively works to “create an atmosphere that rejects prejudice and fosters respect for diversity.”
Sugar Land is home to an interfaith food pantry; the city sponsors an interfaith council, and publishes a newsletter that includes a “Know Your Neighbor” column, and feature stories on multicultural holidays; the city manager has a multicultural advisory team and an employee multicultural task force.
Neither Queens nor Sugar Land, to be sure, are Nirvana.
In Texas, Republican legislators passed a resolution that attacked the large Iftar celebration at Sugar Land’s popular Town Square, anti-Semitic White Supremacy flyers were distributed in neighboring Missouri City, supporters of the Palestinian cause used Sugar Land’s City Council public comment sessions to advocate in favor of a controversial, symbolic ceasefire resolution during the war in Gaza, and Jewish institutions in Sugar Land increased their security measures.
Closer to home, a synagogue a few blocks away in Queens was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti, and a rabbi was attacked. And a turban-wearing Sikh man, mistaken for a Muslin, was violently attacked.
But these instances of hate acts were greatly outnumbered by examples of cooperation.
Back to my neighborhood …
I recently went to my local CVS for my annual Covid booster shot. One pharmacist directed me to a chair in the pharmacy’s corner behind a temporary partition.
She walked over a minute later, took out a syringe and a vial of the Covid vaccine, swabbed my upper left arm with some alcohol, and stuck the needle, painlessly, in my arm. Then she applied a small red bandage to the injection site. It was over in a few seconds.
“Thank you,” I said. “I didn’t feel a thing,”
“You’re welcome.”
Walking out of the store, I first realized that the pharmacist, 30ish, was wearing a hijab.
She was a Muslim.
Her religion had not been important enough for me to notice while she made the injection. Or for either of us to comment on.
More than dialogue groups or religious holiday celebrations sponsored by prestigious organizations, that was a tacit sign that the interfaith picture in the United States has many bright spots.