Muslim-Jewish dialogue group encourages empathy

Three days after Oct. 7, 2023, Ari Zaretsky received an email message that brought him to tears. The message expressed deep condolences for the massacre of Israeli civilians at the hands of Hamas, and a recognition of the pain and grief that Zaretsky and his family must be enduring.

The email was sent from Wesam Abuzaiter, who, like Zaretsky, worked at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. Abuzaiter, a pharmacist, is a Canadian-Palestinian Muslim originally from Gaza. Zaretsky, a psychiatrist, is a Canadian Jew and Zionist.

Together, they are the founders of the Sunnybrook dialogue group.

Abuzaiter and Zaretsky had crossed paths in the hospital a few years before —when he invited her to share her personal journey as an international graduate during an educational session with her colleagues. During that presentation, Zaretsky also shared that he was a child of Holocaust survivors.

“His story,” Abuzaiter recalls, “reminded me of the pain I saw in my own grandmother’s eyes when she spoke of being expelled from her homeland during the Nakba. I deeply admired his courage to acknowledge and speak about such a heavy and painful legacy — something that, in my own experience, is often too difficult to put into words. His openness and honesty left a lasting impression on me.”

That lasting impression was the reason Abuzaiter contacted Zaretsky on Oct. 10.

“I reached out to Ari because I imagined myself in his place, and I’ve been there many times,” Abuzaiter explains. “Witnessing innocent people being killed, without even understanding why, is devastating. It’s even more painful when it echoes stories you’ve already heard from your parents. I wanted to do something for him—something I’ve always wished more people would do for one another: to simply acknowledge the pain. What I wanted to say to him was: I see you, I feel your pain, and I know how deeply it hurts. I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

Zaretsky immediately thanked Abuzaiter for her message and for what he describes as her “act of radical moral imagination,” and suggested they meet for coffee. During that meeting Zaretsky learned that Abuzaiter had already lost dozens of extended family members in the war that the Israeli government launched in Gaza following the Hamas attack. During that meeting they also both realized that although they came from vastly different backgrounds, they shared common ground on many critical values, including their commitment to non-violence, their opposition to extremism and their belief that no one’s existence should be threatened for the sake of land or ideology.

“We began a dialogue and came to recognize the humanity of the other person and the history of intergenerational trauma that each of us has inherited, and that deeply shaped our core beliefs and our world view,” Zaretsky explains. “We also both witnessed the impact that Oct. 7 and the ensuing events had on incivility at the university and in hospitals across Toronto.”

It was their shared recognition of that incivility, the polarization, mistrust and undermining of collegiality that was dividing health care professionals locally and across Canada into opposing religious and ideological camps (including here in Winnipeg).Thus spurring the two new and unlikely friends to create a dialogue group for their colleagues.

“Over time, we watched the extremism of statements and hate expressed by faculty, staff and students, and felt we needed an antidote,” Zaretsky says.

With the full support of Sunnybrook’s senior leadership team, Abuzaiter and Zaretsky piloted their “antidote” in the fall of 2024, repeating it the following spring. In both instances they invited ten Muslim and Jewish staff, along with faculty to participate in one-on-one, structured, dyadic, private encounters in which they responded to a series of guided questions—shared in advance — about their identities, ancestors, Israel, Palestine, pain and hope.

Each encounter was designed to promote psychological safety, and encourage listening, empathizing, understanding, trust and finding the humanity in one another. Following those individual encounters, Abuzaiter and Zaretsky facilitated group discussions.

“It was challenging to bring participants on board,” Abuzaiter admits. “Many were comfortable with the status quo—not because they didn’t care or didn’t want to engage, but because they simply didn’t know how to navigate such sensitive conversations. There was a deep fear of being misunderstood or saying the wrong thing, and that hesitation held many back.”

Once they participated, however, they reported feeling heard, safe, supported and grateful for the opportunity to connect so honestly with their colleagues.

Now, with an end to the war seeming as distant as it did when Abuzaiter and Zaretsky first connected, they are scaling up their initiative with the hope that it becomes a formal faculty activity. They also are eager to have it replicated at other universities and health care institutions.

“This initiative matters deeply because the conflict we’ve all witnessed has brought immense pain, loss and division,” Abuzaiter says. “The bloodshed has been overwhelming, and both Jewish, Arab and Muslim communities have been profoundly affected.”

“Despite hardship, we believe in the inherent goodness that exists in humanity,” she continues. “We also feel that it is a shared responsibility, especially for intellectuals and civil society, to seek ways of resisting injustice and violence —without surrendering the dream of a future built on understanding and peace.”

swchisvin@gmail.com

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