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- NY synagogue opens its doors to Muslim worshipers after fire blocks neighboring mosque
NY synagogue opens its doors to Muslim worshipers after fire blocks neighboring mosque
Spontaneous action fights stereotypes pitting Jews against Muslims


Muslims of the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan congregation in New York City were left without a home for Friday prayers last month, after a fire destroyed a restaurant in the same building, and police restricted access during investigations.
As the faithful gathered in uncertainty outside the building, a quick thinking rabbi, Stephanie Kolin, offered the facilities of the nearby Central Synagogue. Soon, hundreds of people were walking down the two blocs that separate the two institutions.
‘People just started streaming down 55th street into our pavilion and we scrambled really quickly to let everyone know to clear out the space. You can see the videos of chairs being cleared up really quickly,’ Central's senior cantor Daniel Mutlu said.
The imam, who led prayers, called it “one of the most blessed moments of my life in New York,” according to Jewish magazine The Forward. The feeling was echoed by members of the Jewish community.
‘I'll never forget what it was. The whole moment from being here standing outside with everybody, to going there to the holiness of that service,’ Monica Morton, a Central Synagogue congregation member, says.
‘Witnessing that many Muslims praying in a synagogue was… I don't have the words to fully describe how beautiful it was,’ says Rabbi Andy Kahn, the rabbi at New York’s Temple Emanuel.
Central Synagogue hosts a reform congregation founded in 1846, and has a reputation for fostering liberal Jewish thought. Its senior rabbi is Angela Warnick Buchdahl, an influential religious figure who was the first Asian-American woman to be ordained as a rabbi.
Muslims and Jews might be perceived to have a history of conflict, but this was another example that the two minorities often find common ground. Last month, synagogues in New Zealand closed their doors in solidarity with the Muslim community after the terrorist attack that killed 50 in Christchurch.
The imam invited Rabbi Kolin to addressed his congregation at the end of the service, when, according to The Forward, she argued the attack on the mosques in New Zealand and on the synagogue in Pittsburgh are derived from the same obscurantist violence.
“These attacks on our communities are one and the same,” she said, to applause.
Services resumed at the Islamic center last week, but the legacy of the moment remains.
‘I think, for the greater world and the greater climate, this is an instruction for us to look at the humanity of people, to look at the good of humanity and to understand that we shouldn't give into the temptation, the urge, to classify someone else as the other,’ Multu argues.