Every Angeleno tired of platitudes about unity and togetherness should have been there. On Tuesday, June 6, in a Buddhist Friendship Center, students of Rabbi Michael Ozair and Sufi spiritual leader Sheikh Abdoulaye Dieye joined together at an event intended to begin the process, as the event was billed, of “Building Bridges of Spiritual Unity.”
This group of about 75 people did more than talk about what Muslims and Jews have in common. They did more even than listen to one another. They danced together.
Sheikh Dieye, who could not attend due to political obligations in Senegal, where he is a member of Parliament, sent a videotaped greeting along with his students, who came from Senegal and Santa Barbara, Nigeria and Fresno to be there. Fara Gaye, who has studied the mystical branch of Islam known as Sufism with the Sheikh for 25 years, spoke eloquently to the group about the common heritage of Jews and Moslems as “the family of Abraham.” He was followed by Rabbi Ozair, a former student of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, whom he quoted when he told the gathering, “If you can’t see God in all, you can’t see God at all.
But in the end, the evening wasn’t about speeches. When Dieye’s students stood on the stage to chant a Sufi melody, the Jews in the audience chanted with them. And when the Moshav Band, whose members grew up with Carlebach and Ozair, took to the stage with their soulful sound, the room stood up.The bridge building began in earnest when the Jewish and Muslim students of religious leaders, along with members of the secular community, held hands in a circle stretching around the auditorium, sang songs in praise of God and each other, and danced.
