Their Jewish-Muslim friendship was destroyed after Oct. 7—until they found a way to reconcile

While host Ellin Bessner is on vacation, we're bringing you some highlights from other podcasts produced by The CJN. Today: The second episode of our interfaith miniseries, In Good Faith.

Over the last two years, a flood of gruesome images have emerged in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and ensuing war in Gaza. In Canada, thousands of kilometres away, Jews and Muslims have watched this horror online—and, in many cases, found their social lives overturned by them. Friends, acquaintances and colleagues have made comments online, often over-simplified, that they’d never say out loud.

What happens when politics become personal? When geopolitics half a world away breaks apart relationships between parents and children, romantic partners and close friends?

That’s what happened to Ronit Yarosky and Ehab Lotayef. They met in the early 2000s, during the Second Intifada, at a dialogue group for Jewish and Arab residents in Montreal. Both of them have deep connections to the region. They became close friends, celebrating festivals together and dining in each others’ homes, marching side-by-side in activist circles—until October 2023.

Hear how they fell apart, and found their way back together, on the second episode of In Good Faith.