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It is six months since October 7th, and our hearts are still breaking. How can the recognition of our joint humanity help move the world forward to a resolution of the tragedy taking place in Gaza and Israel?

Please join us for a webinar with leading thinkers and activists on the crisis in the Middle East. This event has been developed through a collaboration between the Islamic Council of New England and the Jewish Muslim Solidarity Committee of the Boston Workers Circle.

Participants:
Opening Reflection
Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, PhD, Professor of Rabbinic Literature, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies.

Moderator:
Eman Khadra Ansari, M.D., Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; PICU committee, Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund

Panelists:
Susan M. Akram, Clinical Professor & Director, International Human Rights Clinic, Boston University School of Law
Leila Farsakh, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston
Gregory Khalil, Co-founder & President, Telos; Adjunct Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Jon A. Levisohn, Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Assoc. Professor of Jewish Educational Thought, Brandeis University
Nadav Weiman, Deputy Director, Breaking the Silence
Speaker Bios

Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, PhD 

Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, PhD is Professor of Rabbinic Literature and a former chair of the Rabbinics Department in the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. Cohen’s research is on the border of scholarship and activism. His latest book, Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism, emerges from rabbinic literature and contemporary philosophy to engage concerns of the city: restorative justice, labor, houseleness. 

Dr. Cohen is a co-convener of the Black Jewish JusticeAlliance (BJJA) and a member of Clergy for Black Lives. With Clergy for Black Lives, he co-organized one of the largest memorial demonstrations in Downtown Los Angeles after the murder of George Floyd. Dr. Cohen is a commissioner of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, and an advisor to the Los Angeles County District Attorney as a member of the DA’s Interfaith Advisory Board. Dr. Cohen is the president of the Society of Jewish Ethics, and past co-chair of the board of CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice).

Eman Khadra Ansari, M.D. Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Eman Ansari is a Palestinian-American pediatric pulmonary and critical care physician, a practicing pediatric emergency physician at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She is the head of the PICU committee at PCRF and has been active in the space of health and humanitarian aid to Palestine. She’s a mother of four and lives with her husband and children in Newton, MA.

Susan M. Akram Clinical Professor and Director, International Human Rights Clinic, Boston University School of Law

Professor Susan Akram is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA), Georgetown University School of Law (JD), Oxford University (MsT), and the Institut International des Droits del’Homme (Diplome). She directs BU Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, in which she supervises students engaged in international advocacy in domestic, international, regional, and UN fora. She teaches or has taught courses in International Human Rights, Refugee and Migration law, US Immigration law and Palestinian Refugees under International Law. She has taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, at Al-Quds and Birzeit Universities in Palestine, the Oxford University Refugee Studies Center and the University of Murcia in Spain. She is a double Fulbright Senior Scholar award recipient, to Palestine (1999-2000) and Spain (2021-22). Her research and publications focus on immigration, asylum, refugee, forced migration and human and civil rights issues, with an interest in the Middle East, the Arab, and Muslim world.

Leila Farsakh, Ph.D. Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston

New Book: Rethinking Statehood in Palestine

Latest Article: “The Refugee Problem”

Webpage: SelectedWorks – Leila Farsakh

Leila Farsakh is Professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the editor of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition (University of California Press, 2021), and author of Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation, (London: Routledge, second edition, 2012).  She has also published widely on the political economy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and alternative to partition in Israel/Palestine in a wide range of academic journals and non-academic venues.  In 2001, she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission, in Cambridge-Massachusetts.

Gregory Khalil, Co-Founder & President, Telos and Adjunct Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Gregory Khalil is the co-founder and President of Telos, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit that equips American leaders and their communities to better engage seemingly intractable conflict. Much of Telos’ work has centered on the role of faith leaders and culture shapers in America’s relationship to Israel/Palestine and the broader Middle East. Before founding Telos, Greg was a legal and communications adviser to Palestinian leaders on peace negotiations with Israel. Since 2019, Greg has also co-taught a course called “Covering Religion” at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. 

Jon A. Levisohn, Ph.D. Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Associate Professor of Jewish Educational Thought, Brandeis University

Jon A. Levisohn is a philosopher of education, who focuses primarily on Jewish education. He is on the faculty at Brandeis University, where he chairs his department (which encompasses both Jewish and Islamic studies) and directs a research center that focuses on Jewish education. Among his books and articles, he is the editor of the forthcoming book, The Aims of Religious Education: Catholic, Islamic and Jewish Perspective. For about a decade, he has been active in Encounter, which is dedicated to bringing American and Israeli Jews to meet with Palestinians in the West Bank, and to understand more deeply the Israeli-Palestinian reality. 

Nadav Weiman, Deputy Director, Breaking the Silence

Nadav Weiman was born and raised in Tel Aviv. During his army service, he served in a sniper’s team in the special forces of the Nahal brigade, where he attained the rank of staff sergeant. He studied Democratic Education. He worked as a high school history and literature teacher and was the legal guardian and counselor for a home for underprivileged teens in Tel Aviv. Nadav first joined Breaking the Silence as a Testifier-Activist in 2012. In 2019 Nadav became Breaking the Silence’s Deputy Director, 

Breaking the Silence (BtS) is an organization of former Israeli soldiers, which collects and utilizes testimonies from soldiers who have served in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2000. Through testimonies, lectures, and direct-encounter tours, BtS strives to increase opposition to increase opposition to the occupation among audiences in Israel and around the world.