Photo from Instagram A Sephardic Jew and Egyptian Coptic Christian, both of whom are female, are launching a Middle East talk show.
The hosts are going to be Adela Cojab, who is currently studying at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, and Mariam Wahba, Associate Director of Advocacy at the Middle East Christian engagement organization The Philos Project, in the “American-ish Show: Daughters of the Diaspora.” Cojab, whose complaint against her alma mater, New York University, resulted in a groundbreaking settlement, told the Journal in a phone interview that she and Wahba connected through mutual friends and met for lunch. “The more we talked the more we realized we had so much in common and how little we knew about the other,” Cojab said. “I really knew nothing about Coptic Egyptians, I really didn’t know much about Christians in the Middle East in general. She knew about Jews from the Middle East … it was like a new world. We realized our cultures are so similar, our experiences are very similar, our communities are very similar. The conversation lasted hours and hours and hours, and we just felt like we had good stories, good conversations that other people should hear.” Cojab is of Syrian and Lebanese descent.
The show, which will be broadcasted on Instagram TV and found on YouTube and Spotify, will be 25 minutes long and they have already recorded three episodes. The focus will be on Middle East policy and will feature various experts as guests to discuss the matter but will also address faith, love, identity and culture. “We don’t want it to have just a specific religion focus or focus on being female or focus on being an immigrant,” Cojab said. “We do realize that we share is having this broad international view of things and we both have contacts that are experts on this that inform our worldviews, so it’s also about being able to share that with the audience and making it digestible.”
She added that the primary demographic they’re aiming to reach is those between ages 16-30. “We want young people to hear this from us,” Cojab said, pointing out that most people get their news from infographics that don’t provide much research and information. “We’re not going to be a news source, but we are going to be talking about contemporary issues, touching on what’s going on in Turkey, what’s going on in Iran … we also get to learn from each other. I’ve never heard the point of view from a Christian in the Middle East about these issues.”
Outside of the Middle East, the show will discuss standards of body image and marriage as well as mental health and security. “We both come from countries that are not safe, and the comfort of being in the U.S. and not having to deal with the security issues and safety issues and how it’s just second-nature for an American to just walk on the streets and let their kids walk on the streets or let their kids walk on the streets is something that they take for granted,” Cojab said. “In a way, we value things about America and we can talk about America in a way that Americans can’t because they’re so blind to it.”
She added: “If I can have everyone just hear one thing that I have to say, it’s that it’s time to get out of the Jewish echo chamber and talking to people like us because we think that we’re alone and that we’re on our own on a lot of these issues, but the more we talk to people that have other experiences, the more we realize we’re not all that different.”
The first episode will be launched on February 20.
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