Writing by Kurt Streeter

For years, Rabbi Moskowitz and Imam Qazwini had been building a friendship. They shared meals and talked about bridging divides between their communities. When a white supremacist murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, Imam Qazwini came to Temple Shir Shalom to stand with the grieving community.

Then came Oct. 7. The trauma was instant and absolute. Their connection went silent.

Both men professed over the weekend their belief that their friendship could eventually return. The rabbi spoke of a necessary healing that still needed to happen before they could engage again. The imam agreed, noting that the cleavage in their connection was a microcosm of a larger geopolitical stalemate.

In the Detroit area, Jews and Arab Americans live side by side, work together and send their children to the same schools. There has always been tension alongside remarkable coexistence. Now, that same closeness creates a different kind of tension, the strain of neighbors who carry opposing griefs, who read the same headlines and draw opposite, often painful conclusions.

Monday evening, as the sun set, more than 100 congregants gathered on the lawn of Temple Shir Shalom for a ceremony. The chairs there had stood throughout this ordeal, through rain and snow, though negotiations that failed and negotiations that succeeded.

Rabbi Moskowitz called forward 24 children. Ms. Hewitson helped direct them. The children each took one chair — 20 for the living hostages who had returned home that day, four for the bodies that had been recovered.

Twenty-four chairs came down. Twenty-four remained on the lawn, representing hostages whose bodies were still in Gaza, their families still waiting for closure.

Prayers for peace continue at the synagogue and the mosque. Separated by miles and months of silence, two men who were once friends wait for the day when connection becomes possible again.

For now, the cease-fire holds.

Read the full story here