The two women sat knee to knee.

Aziza Hasan, a devout Muslim, looked out at the group gathered around her, spoke of the loved ones who had died in Israel and Gaza and began reciting the first chapter of the Quran.

“In the name of God, the most compassionate, most merciful…”

“Show us the straight way,” she continued, “the way of those whose portion is not wrath and who go not astray.”

Then, the woman beside her, Andrea Hodos, a devout Jew, followed with a Hebrew song acknowledging the angels.

“On my right side is Gabriel, God’s strength,” she told the crowd, translating the song.

“Behind me, God’s healer, Raphael. Above my head is God’s divine presence.”

On this late afternoon of October 15, the war between Israel and Hamas was well underway as Hasan and Hodos sat on parched grass at a bustling park six miles west of downtown Los Angeles. A circle of Jews and Muslims surrounded them.

Everyone on hand was part of NewGround, a nonprofit fellowship programme that has helped more than 500 Los Angeles Muslims and Jews learn to listen, disagree, empathise with one another — and become friends.

Hasan, whose family roots run through Palestine, runs NewGround. Hodos, once a resident of Israel, has been her associate director since 2020.

The two women can recall details of the long, brutal history of clashes and wars pitting Israel against its neighbours to the north, east and south — and how those clashes sent fearful shock waves through Los Angeles, a city with one of the nation’s largest populations of Muslims and Jews.

“But it’s never been this bad,” they said, practically in unison, during a recent interview at a Los Angeles cafe.

Never have they worried like this about death and destruction in West Asia sparking antisemitic or Islamophobic violence in the US.

Never have they fretted like this about their work and their words being misinterpreted and misunderstood.

Never had they held this much dread, or found this kind of hopeful, grounding solace in the interfaith bonds their labour has created.

Hasan and Hodos are more than co-workers. Their close friendship signals that the ties that bind adherents of Judaism and Islam can remain strong, even as the war pitting people of their faiths against each other rages.

“Aziza is like a sister to me,” said Hodos, 57. “She is family.” “We’re so connected,” said Hasan, 43, “that sometimes Andrea can complete my thought or start a sentence and finish it for me.”

Both women have deep roots in Israel and Palestine. She leans on Hodos for strength.

Their lives are intertwined, and their families are close. They provide one another with shoulders to cry on.

For a long while, members of NewGround gathered in five or six small clusters, people of both faiths mixing as slivers of anguished conversation filled the air.

New York Times News Service