Veteran US Foreign Service Officer Robert Silverman to act as a bridge between two cultures with much in common, and much dividing them
NEW YORK — Beneath Robert Silverman’s Midwestern affability lies a determination and stoicism few would attribute to such an agreeable man.
These qualities were tested after Muslim-American gunman Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 at a nightclub in Orlando Sunday, in the most gruesome mass-shooting in recent US history.
“The Orlando murders reinforce the need to strengthen Muslim-Jewish inter-communal ties. This terrorist act further inflames the already hot political discourse in this country, and makes more urgent the need to reach out and find like-minded partners in the Muslim community,” said Silverman, the American Jewish Committee’s first-ever US Director of Muslim-Jewish relations.
It was this ability to stay the course while navigating a delicate political tightrope that brought Silverman to the AJC’s attention. In the past it had also served him well when, as a Foreign Service Officer, he was instrumental in quelling a Sunni insurgency in Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit.
“The AJC knows that entering the 21st century the interreligious challenge will be Muslim-Jewish relations,” he said. “If I can win over Sunni tribes in Iraq, I can win over Muslims in Philadelphia.”
These statements come from a man who spent 27 years in various postings, often in the hottest of hot spots, including Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and are neither bravado nor fear-mongering. Rather, they illustrate Silverman’s utter determination to strengthen the relationship between America’s Jews and Muslims.
Silverman now finds himself on the upper floor of a Manhattan office building waging diplomacy on the home front because “life is short and it was time for a change,”
The AJC is the first major American Jewish group to create this “ambassador to the Muslim world” role, although the organization has fought discrimination against Jews and other minorities since its inception in 1906.
From Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims to a spike in hate crimes against them as reported by the FBI, the AJC said it recognized that more, not less, outreach is needed.
“The American Muslim community is under huge stress. They’ve become political playthings. And when that happens it’s a warning to American Jews,” said the 58-year-old Silverman. “Still, we’re very open eyed. There are radical elements in the American Muslim community just like in other communities. But American Muslims are Americans.”
Silverman grew up in a small Jewish community in Des Moines, Iowa. Like many teens in the late 1970s he felt Israel’s pull. He spent his sophomore year in Kfar Blum in the Upper Galilee and his junior year in Haifa where he shared the classroom with many Israeli-Arab and Druze students.
Silverman matriculated to Princeton University upon returning stateside. He took a class taught by the noted Middle East scholar (and centenarian) Bernard Lewis. He spent a postgraduate year in Cairo further perfecting his Arabic before enrolling in law school at the University of Michigan. A summer internship in the US Embassy in Tel Aviv motivated him to join the foreign service.
Silverman’s diplomatic career led him to Azerbaijan, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Tunisia. In Washington, DC he served as Director of the Iraq Reconstruction and Economic Affairs Office.
Aside from Arabic, Silverman also speaks Hebrew, Turkish, Swedish and Azerbaijani.
Only a few weeks on the job, Silverman has yet to hang photographs in his office. Instead the pictures remain on the floor, leaning against the wall, a testament to his demanding schedule.
A few weeks ago Silverman visited Parkchester, Bronx, one of the largest condominium complexes in the US. At one time scores of Jewish families resided there, worshiping in one of eight synagogues. Today the majority of its residents are African American Muslims and Latinos. There are nearly a dozen mosques in the area.
He visited with Sheik Musa Drammeh of the Islamic Leadership School, which first opened its doors on September 11, 2001.
“As a father, as a New Yorker, as a Muslim, and as a human, it was the biggest wake up call of my life,” Drammeh said. “I decided if there should ever be another attack it will not be met with my silence. I would completely dedicate life and my family’s life to peaceful coexistence.”
Today the school is one of two Muslim schools in New York City to participate in Holocaust education classes, with two Jewish schools, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Additionally, Drammeh said he teaches students the importance of Israel.
“Every group of people deserves to have a homeland. There are 22 nations in the Arab League and 57 nations in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. To deny the single most important space that the Jewish people call home? It’s nonsense,” Drammeh said. “But, if we are going to have meaningful relationships we have to involve our children. Rabbis and imams can eat together, and there are so many heartwarming gatherings, but the truth is we adults go home to our cocoons,” Drammeh said.
A few days later Silverman ferried to Staten Island where he met with leaders at the “fantastic, gleaming marble,” Albanian Islamic Cultural Center. Inside he saw a permanent photography exhibit of Muslims who saved Jews.
Then there was the visit to Philadelphia where he spent time at the All Dulles Area Muslim society, or ADAM, in Northern Virginia. Each Friday 3,000 worshipers gather for afternoon prayers.
Yet, while all of these visits are heartwarming, Silverman said the challenge is to move from the micro to the macro, To translate shared Iftar celebrations into real policy and changes in attitudes.
“These [kinds of things] are great, but they’re not consequential on a national level. They’re catalysts,” Silverman said.
One example of translating good feeling into action was the amicus brief the AJC recently gave in the US Court of Appeal Seventh Circuit in a case regarding the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana.
According to the brief, “the State of Indiana unlawfully refused to award Refugee Act grants for services provided to Syrian refugees.” The AJC argued Indiana’s move to exclude only Syrian, and no other, refugees violates the US Constitution.
Abdullah Antepli, Chief Representative of Islamic Affairs at Duke University, met Silverman for the first time last Wednesday during the AJC Global Forum in Washington, DC. Antepli said after about 15 minutes of “getting to know you talk” the two started brainstorming on concrete ways the two communities can work together.
They drew up a list of ideas, including working together on refugee resettlement, fighting anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia on the grassroots level, and taking advantage of the fact many of the AJC’s 22 chapters are located within large Muslim populations.
Antepli said he was elated to learn of Silverman’s appointment. He looks at it as a dual diplomatic post.
“What they have done is appoint an ambassador of the Jewish people to the Muslim world, and in a sense, an ambassador of Muslims to the Jewish world,” Antepli said, an appointment that was sorely needed given the tense relations between the two communities.
Like Silverman, Antepli said more than shared meals are needed to improve relations.
“When Jews and Muslims get together they usually talk about superficial things. They talk about hummus and they talk about kosher chicken or halal chicken, but that has no affect on Muslim-Jewish relations in the real world. It doesn’t fight against the forces that are dividing Muslims and Jews,” Antepli said.
Building bridges will require the two communities “to find a way to honestly talk about the elephant, or the gorilla in the room: the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the anti-Semitism in the Muslim world.”
Of course Silverman’s job also means countering anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment within Muslim communities. After all, it is the American Jewish Committee.
American Muslim leaders should expect Silverman to frequently and unabashedly address Israel. He wants to see more objectivity in Muslim religious schools in the US and he wants to educate American Muslims, and American Jews, that not only is Israel a nation-state for Jewish people, it is the sole multicultural democracy in the Middle East.
“We are not a Jewish group adopting another group’s agenda,” he said. “This is a very pro-Israel, pro-Jewish organization.”
As reported by The Times of Israel