Sixty years after the Vatican transformed Christian-Jewish relations, Judaism and Islam need their own moment of reconciliation — one that could reshape the Middle East.
On October 28, the world marked 60 years since the Second Vatican Council issued Nostra Aetate, the declaration that revolutionized relations between Christians and Jews. It opened the door to reconciliation after centuries of estrangement, showing how faith, once a source of division, could become a source of healing.
Now, the time has come for a Jewish-Muslim Nostra Aetate.
In the Middle East, religion has often been seen as a driver of conflict – and with good reason. But the same forces that have sanctified division can also sanctify peace. Identity lies at the heart of the matter: Will our deepest religious loyalties continue to set us against one another, or can they become the foundation for a shared future?
Religion must break down our walls
US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, in its 18th point, recognized the need for “an interfaith dialogue process… to try and change mindsets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis.” The insight is correct: If religion helped build the walls, it must also help take them down.
At first glance, the potential for Jewish-Muslim understanding should be obvious. Judaism reveres Islam’s uncompromising monotheism. Maimonides wrote that Muslims “unify God with a proper unification, a unity that is unblemished.” The Quran, for its part, declares, “Our God and your God is One,” and honors the Jewish people as Ahl al-Kitāb – “People of the Book.”
However, history has buried these shared truths under the rubble of polemic and mistrust. Persecution made Jews turn inward; political rivalries led to readings of scripture that narrowed hearts instead of opening them.
In the language of interfaith relations, “tolerance” is often praised as the goal. But tolerance, at its root, means to bear something painful. What we need is not tolerance but appreciation – the ability to see the other not as a burden but as a blessing.
Medieval rabbinic thinkers sometimes viewed Islam as the fulfillment of God’s promise to Ishmael, and the Quran, in turn, envisions the Jewish people’s return to their blessed land (17:104). These are not marginal echoes but seeds of mutual recognition waiting to be revived.
The Abraham Accords - a shared heritage
Two opposing religious movements now shape the region. On one side stand Hamas and its allies, who have weaponized faith into a theology of annihilation. On the other stands the Abraham Accords, whose very name points toward a different vision. Unlike Camp David or Oslo – named for distant places – the Abraham Accords root peace in shared heritage. Abraham is not a diplomat but a patriarch, not foreign but familial. What was once a wedge can become a bridge.
That bridge must also span Jerusalem’s most sensitive terrain – the Temple Mount, or al-Haram al-Sharif. For Jews, it is the site of the ancient Temple; for Muslims, the place of the Prophet Muhammad’s ascent to heaven. It could be, as King Hussein of Jordan once proposed, a space where sovereignty belongs not to nations but to God – a site of connection, not conflict.
Religious weaponization, however, is not limited to extremists. It also appears in secular form in a certain strand of Western ideology that recasts Jewish indigeneity as colonialism, turning Israel into the villain of its own story. This narrative, cloaked in anti-colonial language, inverts history and erases Jewish identity. The double de-weaponization we need – of both religion and ideology – is essential to ending the tragic myth that Judaism and Islam are destined for conflict and that the Jewish state is a foreign intrusion.
Brothers reuniting
My organization, the Blickle Institute for Interfaith Dialogue, works with Muslim partners throughout the world to build the theological and spiritual framework for a Jewish-Muslim fraternity. Our mission is to reclaim faith as a source of unity rather than hostility to let the voice of Abraham once again speak louder than the noise of politics.
The Quran itself envisions this transformation, describing how those once divided can become brothers:
“And hold fast to the rope of God, all together, and be not divided. Remember the blessing of God upon you, when you were enemies and He joined your hearts, so that you became brothers by His blessing.” (Quran 3:103)
Sixty years after Nostra Aetate, the world needs another act of courage, this time between Jews and Muslims. May we have the faith to hold fast to that divine rope, together.
The writer, a rabbi, is the director of Ohr Torah Stone’s Blickle Institute for Interfaith Dialogue.