(JTA) — The American Jewish Committee launched a video series to introduce Arabic-speakers to Judaism.
Titled “An al-Yahud” (“About the Jews”), the series will feature videos on Jewish life, Jewish history and current affairs, according to an AJC statement. The first video, released on Thursday, is an animated short about Jewish history. A second video will be released in February.
The AJC has also started Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels to foster conversation about the videos.
The series “will enable us to expand the conversation by telling the Jewish story to the Arab world from a Jewish perspective, which many viewers may never have heard before,” AJC CEO David Harris said in a statement. “By harnessing the power of social media, we will seek to directly engage hundreds of millions of Arabic-speakers in the Middle East, in North Africa, and across the globe, laying the foundation, we hope, for deeper ties between Jews and Arabs in the future.”
The release comes less than a week after the AJC organized a visit to Auschwitz by a delegation of Muslim leaders.
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