Look at how university campuses are represented in today's media landscape, and you'll often see the word radical. Since Oct. 7, this concept of campus radicalization—and censorship—is often pegged to Israel and Palestine, and the fear that students are being fed slanted narratives from their freshman year.

But that fear misunderstands what’s actually happening on many campuses. What makes university life so formative is more than just exposure to new ideas; it’s learning how to sit with disagreement. Students are meeting peers from different histories, faiths, and political realities—and when they engage with one another, they're sharpening their minds and clarifying their beliefs.

That’s the premise behind Bridging the Gap, a student-led effort bringing Jewish and Muslim students into sustained, face-to-face conversation. In this episode of In Good Faith, we hear from two of the organization's student leaders, Rasoul Kailani and Ellie Shram, about what they’re learning by debating instead of cancelling, and why the next generation may be developing stronger convictions—precisely because they’re being challenged.

Credits

• Hosts: Yafa Sakkejha and Avi Finegold

• Producers: Michael Fraiman and Zachary Judah Kauffman

• Editor: Zachary Judah Kauffman

This podcast is sponsored by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, with support from the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation.

Mainstream Jews, who support Israel and consider themselves Zionists, feel like they are under attack. When they see people wearing keffiyehs and storefronts stamped with Palestinian flags, they hear an implicit attack: "You are not welcome here."

But for Palestinians, watermelons and keffiyehs aren't anti-Jewish icons at all: they're symbols of national pride.

How can everyday Canadian Jews and Muslims even start a conversation when words and symbols have such different meanings to different people? Telling people they're overreacting isn't an effective tool, nor is public shame, arguing over historical facts or posting online memes.

What might work: navigating difficult conversations. On today's episode of In Good Faith, The CJN's interfaith podcast miniseries, we speak with two people who are working toward exactly that.

Niki Landau and Bashar Alshawwa both came to conflict resolution through trauma. Landau lost a close friend, Marnie Kimmelman, to a terrorist pipe bomb on a Tel Aviv beach at age 17; Alshawwa was shot by an Israeli army sniper during a protest in 2014. Now they're touring Canada, bringing Jews and Muslims together for lengthy closed-door dialogue sessions, with a singular goal: create a toolkit to guide Canadians through conversations they desperately don't want to have.

Credits

• Hosts: Yafa Sakkejha and Avi Finegold

• **Producers: ** Michael Fraiman and Zachary Judah Kauffman

• Editor: Zachary Judah Kauffman

This podcast is sponsored by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, with support from the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation.

In The Devil’s Arithmetic, a historical fiction novel of a young Jewish woman during the Second World War, Jewish author Jane Yolen famously wrote, “If we do not laugh, we will cry.” The quote ends: “What you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you.”

Everyone knows that war, death and destruction are no laughing matter. But humour can help in fundamental ways. It can bring people together, helping them bypass the barriers that prevent them from understanding different perspectives. For Jews and Muslims over the past two years, humour has done even more: it has become an essential buffer against despair and a way of reclaiming agency in a world tragically beyond our control.

In that spirit, In Good Faith, The CJN’s interfaith podcast miniseries, brought two Jewish comics—Dan Rosen and Adrienne Fish—together with Arab stand-ups Nour Hadidi and AJ Bate for a night of live comedy at Youngplace in downtown Toronto on Oct. 22, 2025. After their stand-up sets, each joined hosts Avi Finegold and Yafa Sakkejha for a panel discussion about what it’s like spotlighting their identities onstage and why they feel comedy is important during difficult times.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introductions

• 03:47 - Dan Rosen

• 09:20 - AJ Bate

• 18:34 - Adrienne Fish

• 27:06 - Nour Hadidi

• 32:52 - Panel Discussion

Credits

• Hosts: Yafa Sakkejha and Avi Finegold
• Producers: Michael Fraiman and Zachary Judah Kauffman
• Editor: Zachary Judah Kauffman

This podcast is sponsored by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, with support from the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation.