Moroccan Jews & Muslims: a Supportive Relationship and Complex History

The Fellowship  |  July 17, 2017

Early this summer, The Fellowship‘s Yael Eckstein visited Morocco, delivering food to needy Muslims and Jewish communities living there. She felt inspired by this new Fellowship project, which aims to build bridges of friendship in the Moroccan community – NBC News tells us more.

To an outsider, nothing seemed normal about this night, as Muslims were welcomed by the Jewish community to celebrate Ramadan at their synagogue, the members of the two faiths meeting in stark contrast when set against the religious conflicts that plague the region…

… volunteers from Mimouna partnered with the Jewish community to distribute 2,500 Ramadan meal packages to needy Muslims throughout the country. The packages, filled with enough food to last a week, were donated by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. The IFCJ, funded mainly by American Christians, began in 1983 with a focus on assisting the Jews of the former Soviet Union. It now conducts interfaith work around the world, but Morocco is the only Arab country in which it is doing so.

“The fact that the [Moroccan] king has been so tolerant in reaching out to the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president and founder of the IFCJ, “and the fact that there are Muslim youth taking part in these interfaith efforts, encourages us to help.”