People have to learn to coexist, as well as exist. This struck me in 1988 when I visited good friends in Israel during Passover. None of them had Arab friends. A year later, I started the Abraham Fund, a nonprofit organization that promotes coexistence between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens. It allows people to get in touch with the higher possibilities of living as human beings.

In the Middle East, 5 million Jews live amid 100 million Arabs. The Arabs residing inside Israel, however, are in the minority, comprising about 20 percent of the population. Yet, when I started, no influential Jewish organizations were devoted to coexistence issues. The leaders in Israel trumpeted this as a critical concern, but no one knew how to approach it. Coexistence was off the radar screen.

Teaching people how to live with differences is the challenge of our time. Take, for example, Northern Ireland, where the conflict between Catholics and Protestants continues. For that society to work, they must develop a methodology—institutions, schools, marketplaces—where all people feel comfortable and safe. If societies cannot accomplish this, they end up like Sri Lanka, which suffered through a 19-year civil war. Our coexistence work in Israel addresses the same problem that plagues other parts of the world. The antidote is constant education. We start with 5-year-olds who come with prejudices and fear, and we train them through shared activities. Simply by playing with someone who is different from you, you learn.

To launch the Abraham Fund, we first examined all the Jewish institutions in Israel. We surveyed social service agencies such as hospitals, community centers, rape crisis centers and schools. We discovered that there were some 280 institutions with a total budget of several billion dollars dealing with specific activities—either Jewish institutions dealing with Arabs or Arab institutions dealing with Jews. There was great interest in coexistence work, but it was closeted. We decided to become experts in the area of Jewish/Arab funding.

I have been in a room with 40 Jewish police officers and 10 Arab sheiks, and they talk about how relationships are improving. They are all smiling, and that is very gratifying.

Initially, the Abraham Fund specialized in supporting grassroots coexistence organizations focused on educating Jews and Arabs together. We wanted to fund activities in which Jews and Arabs could meet and understand each other and develop common interests.

Over a period of time, we began to develop our own programs. All totaled, I have contributed $8 million to $10 million to the fund over 15 years. Now the fund administers half a dozen initiatives that reach approximately 50,000 children. Last year, we started a project that encourages Jewish schools to teach spoken Arabic. Israeli schools already teach classical Arabic, but that dialect is markedly different than street Arabic. If Jewish kids learn the street version, they can talk to their Arab friends. We started a language program in Haifa that includes 12 schools, and there the Jewish kids learn spoken Arabic.Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have also expressed interest in the program.

In 2001 we began a training program to teach the Israeli police about Arabs, their culture and their needs. The project began in Galilee and is now administered across Israel. Most of the police officers are Jewish, and come out of the army, where they have been fighting Arabs. They have not met Arabs in their everyday activities. Now I have been in a room with 40 Jewish police officers and 10 Arab sheiks, and they talk about how relationships are improving. They are all smiling, and that is very gratifying.

Two Worlds
Arabs and Jews live in separate cultures. Kids go to separate schools. Adults live in separate communities. They meet only in the marketplace, perhaps. In the past, Jews would shop in Arab villages on the Sabbath because Jewish stores were closed. In the past two years, however, tensions have escalated, and Jews do not visit Arab villages anymore. The amount of tourist traffic has declined because people are more frightened. Cooperation between adults in Israel has been difficult to attain. But the programs we are doing for kids brings them together. Whether it is at the summer camps or the youth circus in Jerusalem, we find that they are invariably curious about each other.

I was in Haifa one day immediately after a bomb went off. The next day, a group of Jewish and Arab fourth graders from separate schools were supposed to meet. After the explosion, authorities hesitated to go forward with the meeting, even though the kids were looking forward to it because they knew each other from the previous school year. The meeting did take place, and after they met, the kids were asked to describe the best thing about their reunion. One little girl replied that the best thing was simply that the other schoolchildren showed up. That brought a tear to my eye. When we implement these coexistence programs, kids tend to become more broad-minded as they grow older. 

ALAN SLIFKA'S goal is to help Israel’s Jews and Arabs learn to live with one another. His greatest successes are with children.

I grew up in Manhattan. In the fourth grade, we learned lessons in ethics, inspired by the morning newspaper, a history lesson or a conflict in the classroom. We learned that ethical behavior was based upon living with justice, equality and mutual respect. While it is easy to separate, to live apart, the challenge is to develop the strength and the courage to maintain that sense of humanity.

Enabling two different groups of people to live in the same place and get along is not far afield from encountering a husband and wife who are fated to live together. They are either going to live together well or live together badly. If they go to couples counseling, they can learn to live together better. If they don’t and try to figure it out themselves, they may end up with a relationship that does not work. Coexistence work is akin to performing couples counseling. We get people to talk about the issues, and to work through shared problems.

We probably will not achieve coexistence in my lifetime, but, ultimately, we will. Fifty years ago, we did not have environmental education, and now people are very aware of it. Coexistence education is the same. With training and practice, people will learn not to demonize each other, and that will be a golden day.