Jewish and Arab students are living together in the Middle East Coexistence House at Rutgers University this year, the Bergen Record reports. Columnist Lawrence Aaron focuses on Sara Elnakib and Danielle Josephs, the daughter of an imam and a Jewish graduate of Teaneck High School, respectively.

In her first year at Douglass College at Rutgers, Danielle was horrified by a volatile atmosphere between 5,000 Jewish students on one side and an equally vocal Muslim group of 3,500 students on the other.
“It got pretty ugly. You’d encounter daily protests and shouting matches,” she said. Particularly upsetting were the Arab students’ reenactment of tense encounters that occur every day in Israel when Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are subjected to surveillance. “Students were being frisked at mock Israeli checkpoints. There was a lot of deep-seated animosity,” she said.
Out of that grew Coexistence House, Danielle’s brainchild, to foster dialogue as an alternative to the chaotic confrontations.
Sara, whose community is home to many Palestinians, encountered a mixture of opposition and encouragement about living in Coexistence House.
“My dad said, ‘It’s your choice, but why?’ And I said ‘I want to learn more about Jews.’ And my mom said, ‘What’s the point? Just go get a book,’ ” Sara said. She defines her position as a much needed voice expressing a moderate Muslim point of view.
“If nothing else happens for me in this house, I can see that I’ve become more self-controlled and can speak without getting too passionate about it. From Danielle I have an insider’s viewpoint about what’s going on on that side because her father still lives [in Israel]. Even if we don’t agree on every aspect of an issue, we still can live together.” Sara has invited her dorm mates to her summer wedding in Egypt.