Parallel lives, together: How some Jewish and Palestinian Americans are navigating tensions

PATERSON, N.J. — A week into the war between Israel and Hamas, Raed Odeh said his barber shop, Palestine Hair Salon, received a menacing phone call from an unknown number.

“‘We’re going to come burn you. We’re going to burn your family,’” Odeh, a married father of five, said the caller threatened.

His business — on a thriving strip in Paterson, New Jersey, renamed Palestine Way and bursting with halal meat markets and shawarma shops — has been a magnet for harassing voicemails. But the message unnerved Odeh so much, he said, that “right away I called the cops.”

A deepening tension nationwide — stoked by reports of online threats to Jewish students at Cornell University and the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in what Illinois police say was a hate crime — is reverberating in the wake of a conflict that has claimed hundreds of lives in Israel and Gaza and produced an escalating humanitarian crisis.

But in places like Passaic County, which boasts a significant concentration of Palestinian Americans and has long been a hub in New Jersey for the more Conservative and Orthodox followers of Judaism, the bewildering events in the Middle East are being acutely monitored — and exposing the delicate divisions among neighbors that resurfaced this past summer, prior to the war.

While residents stand firm that violence and bias are not welcome here, charged language on social media and the bloodshed overseas are exposing stark differences but also mutual concerns among Palestinian Americans and Jewish Americans in Passaic County who are navigating their circles with both pride and caution.

Odeh, 50, said his regular clientele is from the Arab community, but he has Jewish customers as well. Will they return?

“We have lived together for thousands of years, and we can live together here,” Odeh said as he skillfully shaved a customer’s face. “This is the way it should be.”

But the interplay between groups comes at a pivotal moment.

Stepping up security

Since Hamas militants waged a deadly surprise attack in Israel on Oct. 7, a ripple effect can be felt across the Palestinian and Jewish diasporas. Jewish synagogues and schools in the Passaic County cities of Clifton and Passaic have stepped up security measures.

The same at area mosques and the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton.

At Congregation Ahavas Israel, an Orthodox synagogue in Passaic, Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman explained to members recently that feeling lonely and adrift is to be expected, much like how Noah persisted in the Old Testament after a great flood.

“There’s definitely a feeling of concern, of insecurity, I would even say fear,” Eisenman said, whose devout congregation represents the region’s growing Orthodox Jewish community, a denomination of Judaism that represents fewer than 10% of all American Jews. Most American Jews identify under the Reform branch of Judaism, considered more liberal, or report no religious affiliation at all, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey.

While a reliable number for Palestinian Americans and the larger Arab American population in this region of New Jersey is hard to come by (as the census does not include a Middle Eastern or North African category, although respondents can write-in their ethnic backgrounds), the Palestinian American Community Center estimates that some 20,000 people of Palestinian heritage live in the Paterson area.

Eisenman, who stands out as a rabbi in a black-brimmed fedora, occasionally makes pit stops along Palestine Way to shop at a popular Syrian bakery that carries kosher Israeli products. While he hasn’t stopped by in recent weeks, he sees no reason to think he can’t go back.

“There are people in the community who would question my judgment in doing so,” he said.

“I’ve never had an incident,” he added.

But in one commercial district in Passaic, home to kosher eateries and Orthodox-operated businesses, members of the local Jewish community acknowledged a “silent tension” in Passaic County.

Never before had Shoshana Trepper, 25, thought about her safety, but as she and her friends follow what’s happening in Israel and Gaza, she said she makes the point to check that her doors are always locked at home. Her friends tell her they’re asking their husbands to stay home at night and do their religious studies online, rather than walking to local facilities.

“There’s a lot of propaganda against Israel,” said Trepper, who works with children, adding that she feels most comfortable within her Orthodox community.

While she said she has not been subject to antisemitism, there remains extreme caution among her peers.

“You don’t know who’s on what side,” she said.

Opposing views

Clifton is ranked among the most diverse small cities in the country, according to WalletHub, a personal finance site, with Spanish, Arabic, Polish and Indian dialects widely spoken. In 2015, a hijab-wearing Muslim student was voted “best dressed” by her Clifton High School senior class.

And yet, geopolitical dynamics have threatened to undermine the tolerance.

Two Palestinian American members of the Board of Education endured backlash at a 2021 board meeting when they voiced concern for Palestinian rights, prompting criticism from Jewish groups, including national organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and StandWithUS, for “antisemitic rhetoric.” A complaint filed with the state’s School Ethics Commission concerned about a negative impact “on the educational welfare of the District’s Jewish students” was later dismissed, and a state appeals court last month affirmed the dismissal.

Last year, a woman was arrested and charged with bias crimes after prosecutors say she harassed two young Muslim sisters wearing hijabs at a Clifton nail salon and “told them to go back to their country.”

This year, tensions amplified. A Clifton man was arrested in February for attempting to firebomb a synagogue in neighboring Bloomfield, according to federal prosecutors. In June, seven swastikas were found spray-painted in a Clifton park between two Jewish schools.

That incident led the City Council to consider adopting a formal definition of antisemitism as conceived by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Though the interpretation does not specifically mention Israel or Zionism, some civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, say it has been used to wrongly equate those who are critical of Israel or the Zionist movement with being prejudiced against Jewish people.

Hundreds of people packed a council meeting in July, mostly to object.

“We as a community are absolutely not for antisemitism,” a Palestinian American imam told the council. “But we don’t want this definition of antisemitism to stop us from speaking out against what we clearly see as oppression.”

The council did not advance the resolution. Even now, months later, the meeting rankles some members of the Jewish community who had hoped the city would choose to take a formal stance against antisemitism. One 36-year-old Jewish resident who describes herself as “fairly secular” said that while she didn’t feel physically unsafe at the meeting, the presence of those appearing in opposition to what the state of Israel represents — a “safe haven” — was distressing. “I didn’t want to know this about my neighbors,” she said.

Avraham Eisenman, a Clifton resident and the son of Rabbi Eisenman, spoke forcefully at that council meeting. “Hate has no business in Clifton — whether it’s against Jews,” he said, “whether it’s against Palestinians.”

But the war is taking its toll. The younger Eisenman, 32, now checks news updates and WhatsApp group conversations as he pulls long shifts as a nurse practitioner and raises three children with his wife. He is thinking of the safety of his older brother, a staff sergeant in the Israel Defense Forces.

He believes both Jewish and Palestinian Americans also share commonalities: an intense desire to protect their families — and to prevent more lives from being lost.

“We all have that same fear,” Eisenman said.

‘I am human’

Younger Palestinian Americans said it is their responsibility to educate their non-Muslim friends about the historical and regional context that has led to the current fighting.

Mariam Bsharat, a 24-year-old Clifton resident who has worn a hijab since she was 13, has Jewish friends, but says they are not devoted Zionists and share criticisms of the Israeli government and its policies toward Palestinians.

“Zionism believes we are lesser beings. If I have a friend who’s pro-Zionist, what do they think of me?” she asked.

On a recent morning, she opened her phone at a Starbucks and pondered a draft of a post she wanted to make publicly on social media. She hesitated. People in recent days who have spoken up for Palestinian causes and directed blame at Israel have been made to feel uncomfortable in school or at work or have lost job offers.

On a Sunday in October, she chaperoned her nephew at a demonstration on Paterson’s Palestine Way, where thousands gathered. On the rooftop of a wedding planning boutique, young men clutched large red, white, black and green Palestinian flags that fluttered in the breeze.

Bsharat’s sister, Basma Bsharat, the education director at the Palestinian American Community Center, was among the speakers, calling on Washington lawmakers representing New Jersey to support a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Jeers broke out at the mention of prominent Democratic politicians who the speakers said would not be welcome in their community to stump for votes because of their perceived silence.

“Many ask us why we’re holding this rally here in Paterson,” Basma Bsharat told attendees. “This is our community, and we must hold space for each other and the Palestinians overseas altogether.”

The crowd erupted in a wave of chants.

Mariam Bsharat, an account manager at a major snack company, could not stay quiet anymore either. She logged into LinkedIn and tapped out a message: “Every time I make an attempt at writing this out, the stats get worse.”

She continued, “I feel silenced, overseen, and overlooked because my identity as a Palestinian is ‘controversial’ and ‘political.’ My identity as a human being should not be controversial because I am Palestinian.”

“I am human.”

She was satisfied. Uncertain of the reaction but unwavering in her words, she hit “post.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com