In the summer of 2003, two Orthodox Jewish high school students in New York, Sima Greenbaum and Eitan Hochster, set out to capture in photographs the most visually compelling similarities between Islam and Judaism. The idea for their project was conceived by Mr. Eli Epstein, an Orthodox Jew with many years of business experience in the Middle East, who had been struck by the profound similarities between the two faiths over the course of his many trips to predominantly Muslim countries.
Sima and Eitan’s work was made into a booklet that Mr. Epstein began to take with him on his travels, routinely receiving the same reaction from his Muslim colleagues of shock and bewilderment. Time and again, the reaction from Muslims abroad and Jews in his own community was the same. Seeing how Sima and Eitan had been transformed by participating in such a photographic exploration, Mr. Epstein imagined twenty students – ten Jewish and ten Muslim – spread out all over the world – engaging in a similar journey. He hired Ari Alexander, an American Jew, and Maria Ali-Adib a Syrian Muslim, to manage the international Internet-based summer project, which was called Children of Abraham.
Interest in the project from teenagers on six continents exceeded expectations and in July-August 2004, 61 students from 23 countries were selected to participate in what was designed as a one-time project, with the twin goals of providing a transformative experience for young Muslims and Jews to discover one another, and of publicizing the photographs taken of the two religions all over the world so that more adherents of each faith might view the other with more respect and less suspicion.
Based on the success of the summer project, Alexander and Ali-Adib decided to co-found Children of Abraham, Inc. in November, 2004 and broadened the mission beyond the photo project. Children of Abraham was created to foster dialogue between Muslim and Jewish youth via the Internet. Matching gifts were solicited from Epstein and his long-time colleague, Mr. Mohamed Ali Alabbar of Dubai in order to establish an essential organizational precedent whereby funds supporting Children of Abraham would come from a balanced combination of Jewish sources and Muslim sources. Ali-Adib left the organization in September 2005 and was replaced by Gul Rukh Rahman from Pakistan, as Co-Executive Director.
The organization has graduated over 160 students from 43 countries from its online program. Alumni have gone on to host local photo exhibitions, write editorials in their local newspapers and recruit peers for subsequent groups.
Children of Abraham has been featured in media sources in Tunisia, Morocco, Iran, the Netherlands, France, Cyprus, Indonesia and the USA.
In 2007, the organization is focused on the development of a pilot project in Morocco and the fourth version of our online Global Discovery Program, linking teenagers from Dubai, Damascus, Jakarta, Tehran, Marrakech, Riyadh, Moscow, Paris, New York, London and Montreal.