Three events that fostered interfaith bonding 
‘Jewish Jihadi’ statement calls for reconciliation between Jews and Muslims
New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority is seeing some new revenue from ads that promote peace and understanding. Sojourners, Rabbis for Human Rights and other organizations are placing counter-messages to the “Defeat Jihad” ad from Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative. And a Brooklynite who founded The Dialogue Project is credited with having pioneered this effort.
During the week of Yom Kippur, Judaism’s most solemn day of fasting, repentance and renewal, news broke about the vandalism of the controversial posters that the American Freedom Defense Initiative placed in the New York subway system, and about the MTA’s decision to clearly identify such posters as paid advertisements. As part of her own Yom Kippur reflection, Dialogue Project founder Marcia Kannry wrote, “I am a Jewish JIHADI,” emphasizing the need for respecting one’s neighbor even when wider society may revile that neighbor. She also referred back to an original definition of jihad as an inner personal struggle against evil, rather than to a widely-held connotation of that word as “holy war.”