Jewish and Muslim photographers build bonds while touring Mass.

“It is always about people,” Yaakov Yonish says.

Yonish, the founder of Marching Together to a Shared Future, an organization based in Israel’s Afula-Gilboa region, is a very young and lively 76 years old. The organization he founded, and remains involved with daily, currently runs 27 programs in which Jews and Muslim Israelis   regularly participate in activities together.

In early May, “The Yonish,” as he is fondly called, along with four photographers – three Jewish and one a Muslim – visited three communities in Massachusetts. The initiative was sponsored by the Southern New England Consortium (SNEC), a partnership of 11 Jewish federations with ties to social service organizations in Afula-Gilboa.

Sagi Moran, Shahar Tamir, Alaa Zoabi and Liron Argaman are among almost 50 photographers who meet monthly to take weekend photography trips in Israel. Some are professional photographers, some hobbyists. Alaa Zoabi, for example, is a software developer at Amdocs, an Israeli high tech company. She joined the group after her mother, who participates in a similar program where women from different backgrounds cook together, suggested she might like it.

The group began their week – as guests of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires – in Lenox, Massachusetts, where they had several exhibits of their work and shot photos with local photographers. In Worcester, the Israelis led a photography workshop at the Jewish Community Center and participated in other programs.

In New Bedford, after riding the oldest working elevator in the United States, at City Hall, they  met Mayor Jon Mitchell and Peter Pereira, an award-winning photographer for The Standard-Times. Pereira’s photo of Tamir and Zoabi appeared on the newspaper’s front page the next day. 

On May 11, the group spent the day taking pictures and touring in New Bedford, which included a visit to the area’s only mosque. Learning from the example of Marching Together to a Shared Future in Israel, the Jewish and Muslim communities in New Bedford have established a new bond. Members of the Muslim community have attended programs at the Jewish Federation and Tifereth Israel Congregation while the Jewish community was welcomed at an open house at the mosque in April.   

The photographers said it was a pleasure and an honor to be part of this group. They couldn’t wait to get back to Israel and share with their friends, family and Marching Together colleagues how warmly they were welcomed, the sights they saw in Massachusetts and the relationships and connections they built. 

AMIR COHEN is executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Bedford.