Rawda and Liora are high school students at Teaneck High School and best friends.   They met and bonded during the school’s speech and debate club.  Rawda, the daughter of an imam, is Muslim, and Liora, the daughter of a rabbi active in human rights issues, is Jewish.  The two girls could have allowed the recent Israel-Gaza conflict to divide them, instead, they found a common bond of wanting to educate their peers.  The duo organized a community event on October 18, 2023 entitled, “Through a Deeper Lens,” which was a free gathering of roughly 50 people under age 25.  The two-hour event featured a Rutgers University professor, who teaches courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a mental health counselor, who was on-site to assist people feeling emotional or overwhelmed by the conversation.

The unexpected success of the first event led Rawda and Liora to organize another gathering the next month, “A Lens for All” which was organized for people of all ages.

Rawda and Liora continue to organize events and dialogues for people in the area.  They say they organized these gatherings to foster conversation and education about the long history of the Middle East conflict. They wanted attendees “to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, to really understand the other perspective, and why someone believes what they do. The whole point is to really understand the other perspective, to listen, to empathize, and to form deeper connections through in-person dialogue.”