November 2009:

Jack Rosenfeld hasn’t seen or heard from his childhood friend Amram Meir since they arrived together at Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945. He has no idea if he is alive.

August 2010:

The two men reunite in Teaneck.

Rosenfeld and Meir recall their last days together as if they were yesterday.

What would you change about the Jewish world? Is it important to marry someone Jewish? What issues face young American Jews today? Seven college students, including myself, discussed these questions at The Jewish Standard’s first annual Teen Rap Session, held at the Glen Rock Jewish Center on Aug. 10.

While the students represented a wide range of opinions, they all said they care deeply about the issues and feel connected to the Jewish community. Still — as one participant suggested — the opinions held by college-age Jews often are unsolicited, or ignored, as the community engages in long-term planning.

PHOTO BY BOB SULLIVAN

Jews are in an uncomfortable place in the national debate over a planned Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero. — the Cordoba House at Park51.

A project of the Cordoba Initiative, created by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in 2004, the center will be “dedicated to pluralism, service, arts and culture, education and empowerment, appreciation for our city and a deep respect for our planet,” according to the organization’s website.

Our history and faith incline us to prize religious freedom and empathize with “the stranger”; our awareness of current events — and of the enduring horror of 9/11 — may make us wary of anything to do with Islam.

The Jewish Standard took the pulse of the community on this controversial issue. As you will see, responses vary — though all are impassioned. See articles following and Letters for a sampling of opinions.

Some local groups strongly support the mosque.

While their reasons range from First Amendment freedoms to trust that rank-and-file Muslims are well-intentioned, they speak with passion about the right of their fellow citizens to build houses of worship.

Rabbi Steven Sirbu, whose Teaneck synagogue has partnered with the town’s mosque, Dar-Ul-Islah, to create an ongoing Jewish-Muslim dialogue group, wrote to his congregants, “I have long believed that Muslims occupy a similar place in American society today that Jews occupied about a century ago.”

On behalf of this newspaper, Rabbi Steven Sirbu asked members of the Temple Emeth-Dar-Ul-Islah Mosque dialogue team how they felt about the Cordoba House controversy and what effect, if any, the controversy might have on relations within the two communities. Below are some of the replies.

Stephen Friedman, a board member of Temple Emeth, said that while initially (before joining the dialogue team), “I had to overcome some trepidation and irrational fear, due to the frequent media association of Islam with terrorism that had filtered into my consciousness … after a year of dialogue I count my Muslim colleagues as my friends.” This does not mean, he said, that there are not differences needing to be addressed, “but the fact that as a group we were able engage in meaningful dialogue on challenging issues like the Middle East conflict was very encouraging.”

All of Islam bears some responsibilty for 9-11 and the epidemic of terror carried out in its name and by its adherents,” wrote Rabbi Benjamin Shull of Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley in Woodcliff Lake in an e-mail to The Jewish Standard.

Asked to elaborate, he added, “I realize that there are many Muslims who practice a moderate form of their religion and who do not condone terror or violent jihad, but it is obvious to anyone who has studied the history of Islam that the violence we see today is not a mere aberration. There is endemic to Islam an aggressive and imperialistic strain that, many times in the past, has reared its head and brought much religiously fueled violence to the world.

The New York Islamic center is a distraction from the real issues facing America, said Teaneck’s Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin.

“Regardless of whether this goes up, it’s not going to create jobs, it’s not going to get us out of the recession, it’s not going to make America safer,” the mayor told The Jewish Standard earlier this week.

Hameeduddin is the only Muslim mayor in New Jersey. The Teaneck Township Council appointed him and Deputy Mayor Adam Gussen, an Orthodox Jew, in July, but the two have known each other since their days at Teaneck High School. They have not seen the mosque issue drive a wedge between them or Teaneck’s fragile unity.

“We don’t agree on everything,” Gussen said. “The goodwill we’ve put in the bank over a decades-long friendship carries us through any differences we may have.”

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the head of the Cordoba Initiative, should be praised for creating bridges between moderate Muslims and people of good will, according to Tenafly resident Alan Silberstein.

The pair’s relationship goes back decades to their days as engineering students at Columbia University in 1967. Rauf’s father was an Egyptian diplomat and the family had recently relocated from Kuwait. When the Six Day War broke out, the two students were working side by side at summer jobs in the religion department. They often ate lunch together and, rather than drive them apart, the war sparked discussion and mutual respect.