A synagogue helped Palestinians raise money for Gaza, and found common ground over falafel

Between tables piled high with falafel and hummus, the daylong fundraiser offered an uncommon scene at a time when the war in Gaza has often strained relations between Muslim and Jewish communities.

Beth El had previously backed relief efforts for Israel, including raising $175,000 for Magen David Adom after Oct. 7, while also supporting humanitarian aid in Gaza through World Central Kitchen and Israeli-Palestinian dialogue initiatives such as Roots in the West Bank.

But Tuesday’s event marked the first time the congregation had participated in a Palestinian-led fundraiser for Gaza, a rarity for American synagogue communities and a move that Greyber said he’d had to defend to critics.

At the time, Greyber said he and other local Jewish leaders were “incredibly moved and incredibly impressed” by the work of Hasan, whose nonprofit, The Gaza Children Village, provides food, medical care, education, and trauma support to children in Gaza.

Through his nonprofit, Hasan, a Palestinian-American, has also created schools in the besieged enclave, where he offers a modified curriculum that promotes peace and reconciliation, and an alternative to the anti-Israel education he says has long dominated Gaza’s schools.

“Obviously, he has support from so many different places around the world for the project. We wanted to ask ourselves: What could we do locally?” Greyber said.

Shortly after their introduction, Greyber invited Hasan to speak at his synagogue in November. There, Hasan shared that he had sought information about the Israeli hostages while working in hospitals in Gaza in April 2024.

That story carried particular weight at Beth El, where congregants had spent 484 days praying for the release of Keith Siegel, an Israeli hostage whose mother, Gladys Siegel, had long been a central figure in the synagogue community. Keith Siegel was released in January 2025.

As Greyber forged ties with Hasan, so did Jamil Kadoura, the owner of Mediterranean Deli, who spent part of his childhood living in a Palestinian refugee camp after the Six-Day War.

Mediterranean Deli has long been a fixture in the local Jewish community, with the restaurant serving as a caterer for lifecycle events at Beth El for many years. After the restaurant burned down in an accidental fire in July 2023, Beth El posted on Facebook, urging its congregants to donate to a relief fund.

“My restaurant delivers Middle Eastern food, so it attracts customers from both sides,” Kadoura said. “I have Israelis that come and eat here. I have all walks of life, and, you know, they seem to like our food and come and eat…I think it’s a good thing, and I hope we will do as much as we can.”

In the lead-up to the fundraiser on Tuesday, Greyber praised Kadoura and his restaurant in a social media post, writing, “If there is hope in the world, it is found in places like Mediterranean Deli, Bakery and Catering, and people like Jamil Kadoura. I am grateful to God for his friendship and presence in my life and that of my community.”

Kadoura said that he had previously hosted fundraisers at the restaurant, including for Pakistani flood relief and Syrian refugees, adding that his own experience in a refugee camp, where he said he received aid from both Jews and Muslims, shaped his desire to help others in need.

“I feel like people need help, like I needed help when I was in that refugee camp, and when people come and feed us,” Kadoura said. “Jewish and Muslims.”

Kadoura said he approached Hasan with the idea for the fundraiser, which he saw as an opportunity to bring together communities that have often found themselves divided in recent years.

“I said I would like to do a fundraiser for your organization, but what I also like to do is bring the Jews and the Muslims and the Palestinians together, because there’s a lot of Jews and Palestinians in the area that are striving for the same goal, peace and love and an end to all this misery,” Kadoura said.

When Kadoura reached out to Greyber, a longtime friend, for his congregation’s support, Greyber replied that the synagogue would be “honored” to participate.

“I think it’s a powerful and important model, you know, that we don’t let what’s happening across the world tear apart the communities that we are living in,” Greyber said.

He said his community had rallied around Hasan and helped provide a support network for his family in Durham, in part because his work, which has included partnerships with Israeli NGOs, had been “vilified by people who purport to be a pro-Palestinian community.”

Hasan’s work in Gaza began on a medical mission in December 2023, where he saw firsthand the devastation inflicted on children by the rapidly widening war. During that trip, Hasan told the New York Times he performed 20 operations in ten days, often without anesthetics or antiseptics, but that all of his patients eventually died from infections.

Since founding the Gaza Children Village last April, the nonprofit has built six “Academies of Hope,” which provide Palestinian children with daily education, meals, healthcare, and psychosocial support.

But while many nonprofits serving Palestinians affected by the war have faced allegations of ties to Hamas, Hasan has set his work apart through partnerships with Israeli organizations and a stated focus on coexistence, principles that have at times earned him the ire of some Palestinians who say his work is too aligned with the Jewish state.

“I try really hard to stay neutral,” Hasan told the Religion News Service in February. “I do not use any words like ‘war crimes’ or ‘genocide,’ because it’s not my position. I’m not a lawyer. There are courts out there that describe that. I describe events I saw. I show pictures, I don’t use subjective words.”

During his remarks at the restaurant Tuesday evening, Hasan announced that the proceeds would go to children in both Israel and Gaza who had been orphaned by Oct. 7, telling the crowd gathered that his work was motivated by one principle: “Never again for both sides.”

“We led this rehabilitation in Gaza, bridging between Israelis and Gazans, and it started here in Durham,” Hasan told the crowd, according to footage shared with JTA by Greyber. “And your action today, this is one of the very, very, very few events that have people from the synagogue, mosque, and are getting together and for once, just eating and hanging out. I can’t tell who’s Arabic and who’s Jew.”

Greyber said that Hasan also told attendees that he would be hosting a camp this fall in Italy for both Israeli and Palestinian orphans of the war.

While Greyber said he had received some concerns about the fundraiser from members of the broader Jewish community, as well as his friends in Israel, over the potential that aid would fall into the hands of Hamas, he said he assuaged their concerns by explaining that Hasan had himself been threatened by Hamas, and had worked to keep the terror group far from his operations.

“I understand their concerns, but, you know, in the end, I think this is a project that’s worthy of the Jewish community’s support,” Greyber said. “And one of the things that’s very important is that there are many people in the local Muslim community who are supporting this.”

Indeed, Greyber said that he had received a voicemail on Monday from a local Muslim community member who told him “how moved he was, that our synagogue was supporting this.”

Hasan’s wife, Lauren Hasan, who worked as a trauma surgeon, said that when she arrived at the fundraiser at 6 p.m., it was packed with attendees.

“Honestly, it was by all accounts an incredible success,” Hasan told JTA over text. “There were people from all walks of life: Muslims, Jews, Christians sitting at tables and sharing a meal. And at the end of the day, that is a microcosm of the reality my husband and I want to see.”

For Greyber, his congregation’s support for the fundraiser underscored the complicated reality that many American Jewish communities have grappled with since Oct. 7.

“Like every American Jewish community, the past two and a half years have been excruciating and have torn, have certainly stretched the seams that hold our community together,” Greyber said. “I think we have people who are deeply, deeply committed to Israel and its wellbeing, and we have people who are deeply committed to and carry with them the destruction that has happened to the community in Gaza.”

Addressing those divides, Greyber said his congregation had long approached the conflict “beginning from a place of care and relationship for actual people,” a mindset he said was shaped by the synagogue’s late matriarch, Gladys Siegel.

“Many, many people in our community carry both of those things in their hearts, right? And it’s not one or the other, they carry both,” Greyber said. “And, you know, I’ve done my best to try to keep our hearts big enough and soft enough to carry those concerns.”