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Missed opportunities have checkered the recent course of Jewish-Muslim relations, Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC), said March 21 at Temple Rodeph Torah in Marlboro.

National and local Jewish and Christian leaders failed to sufficiently publicize the 2002 Alexandria Declaration and 2007's "Common Word Between Us and You," documents from Muslim leaders calling for peace, Saperstein said. Additionally, he noted, after the Fiqh Council of North America's "Fatwa Against Violence" in 2007, National Press Club members failed to ask a single question on what the declaration means about the Muslim community during a session with Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarick.

During the same weekend that 35 Rodeph Torah members engaged in dialogue with members of the Islamic mosque in Holmdel, Saperstein, who topped Newsweek magazine's 2009 list of the 50 most influential American rabbis, explained that more programs like that are needed nationwide to improve Jewish-Muslim relations "at a moment when we have to get these things right," because the state of Israel's survival depends on it. Extremism has been overshadowing moderate voices in debates on the subject, and the opposite needs to be true, he said.

"We've got to figure out a way to lift [moderate voices] up and put those together as much as we can," Saperstein said.

"[Our approach] has to be willing to see groups as they really are and to stand up to extremism at the same time," he said.

The RAC, which serves as the Washington, D.C. office of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) umbrella, "has been the hub of Jewish social justice and legislative activity in the nation's capital for more than 40 years," according to its Web site. Saperstein, also an attorney, has served as its director for over 30 years.

Saperstein gave the audience a crash course in the history of Jewish-Muslim relations, saying that was an important part of his presentation because "There was a time, 1,000 years ago, when 90 percent of the Jews in the world lived under Muslim rulers." The influence of Islamic political structures led to the Babylonian Talmud's emergence as a foundation for Jewish life, Jewish messianic movements, and the thriving of Jewish philosophy and poetry, Saperstein said.

"The fate of the Jewish people has been bound up with this great religion," he said.

In 622 C.E., Mohammed realized his claims weren't succeeding, so he moved from Mecca to Yathrib (later called Medina), which had a substantial Jewish population of farmers, merchants, poets, scholars, and warriors. As a result, many biblical narratives are incorporated into the Quran, Saperstein said, with concepts like the belief in one God and the obligations of charity, Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Documents discovered in the Cairo Geniza by Solomon Schechter indicate that Jews and Muslims lived side by side and even had houses in partnership, while Muslims bought meat from Jewish butchers to conform with Halal dietary standards, Saperstein said. When Jews fled Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, he said, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jewish refugees, leading to the formation of 20 different synagogue of Iberian origin in Istanbul. "There are impressive records of mutual aid [between Jews and Muslims]," Saperstein said.

All that changed with the emergence of Zionism, which led to violent rhetoric in the Muslim community that mimicked the pseudo-scientific racialism of the late 1800s, the same source of Nazi ideology, Saperstein said. After 9/11, images of Muslims that paint them as exclusively terrorists further anger their community, he said. Improving Jewish-Muslim relations needs to start with understanding that "we have an extraordinary history together, we ought to learn about it, and learn from it," Saperstein said. Local and national leaders committed to improving relations are "indispensable but not sufficient," he said, because their efforts need to be supplemented by grassroots programming like that between Rodeph Torah and the Holmdel mosque.

Dialogue and cooperative programs are often organized through religious institutions, but because Muslims don't have structured denominations and the same notion of clergy as the Jewish community, Jewish leaders often don't know which Muslim leaders to connect with, and sometimes connect with those who position themselves as moderate elements and turn out to be extremists -- making Jews even more nervous about the Muslim community, Saperstein said. Therefore, Jews need to find reliable Muslim community members to connect with, like business leaders.

Saperstein's other suggestions for improving Jewish-Muslim relations included striking a balance between shying away from discussing the harm of religious extremism but not "skirting the issue," developing more social and personal relationships with each other, and avoiding stereotyping.

"Doing things together is key," he said. "That's what builds trust."

Moderate views used to dominate discourse on relations between religions, but a current problem is the perception that religious fundamentalism equals "authenticity," Saperstein said, with outside observers believing that Hassidim are the most pure Jews and evangelicals are the most pure Christians -- leading observers to agree with their extremist views on relations with Muslims.

Specifically, the Reform Jewish movement is not only the fastest growing, but also the only theologically liberal denomination in America over the past 50 years, Saperstein said, but "we haven't lived up to our potential." Orthodox Jews represent 10 percent of the Jewish population but often define what the whole community's views are on issues like relations with Muslims, he said.

"We should have the confidence of the truthfulness and the strength of our position," Saperstein said of Reform Jews, adding that the Reform message plays to a 21st-century audience.

Asked to compare the Obama and Bush administrations' approaches to relations with the Muslim world, Saperstein said the Obama administration is "light years ahead" of any in recent U.S. history due to Obama's speeches in Cairo and Istanbul that were clear efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. However, Saperstein acknowledged it was "impossible" to directly compare the Obama and Bush administrations on Muslim relations because "the last administration had 9/11."

Rabbi Donald Weber, leader of Rodeph Torah, said he hopes the synagogue uses its discussion with the Holmdel mosque "as a starting point for an ongoing dialogue." At the program, one Muslim woman from Holmdel spoke of her community's struggle to get alternate side of the street parking rules suspended on Muslim holidays in her former home of New York City -- until Jewish legislators helped, Weber said.

Weber said he was very proud that Rodeph Torah was one of the first congregations to send students to the RAC's L'Taken Seminars for high school students, which are four-day lobbying trips to Washington.

"David has been the voice of our [Reform] movement, he has been the prod of our movement," Weber said.