A Muslim cleric in Oklahoma City was overcome with emotion by a Jewish teen’s gesture of love and empathy: She handed him the money she made babysitting and asked him to give it to a Palestinian family in Gaza.
Imad Enchassi, a senior cleric at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City (ISGOC), was doing yard work at the facility earlier this year when the timid teen walked up to him and asked to speak with the imam of the mosque.
“I was dressed in gym clothes and a cap,” recalled Enchassi, a Palestinian-American who is also chairman of Islamic Studies and chaplain at Oklahoma State University. “I guess I did not look the part.”
When he told the girl with a laugh that he was indeed the imam, she handed him an envelope containing $80.
“I want you to give this to help a family in Gaza,” she told Enchassi. “Please tell them this is from a young Jewish girl that worked all week babysitting, and that we love them and feel their pain.”
Touched by the gesture, Enchassi wrote about it in a Facebook post that was shared at least 4,500 times and generated hundreds of comments. “Humanity is marvelous indeed,” the imam said in his Facebook post, prompting the comment “True beauty does exist, most often in those that are the youngest among us.”
The teen did not wish to be identified, Enchassi said. “I understand her desire to remain anonymous to avoid the politicization of herself and her gift.”
The imam said he believes the teen donated her savings in response to a recent rally held at the ISGOC mosque, where a member of his congregation spoke about losing 14 members of her family in Gaza amid airstrikes in May between Israeli troops and the militant Palestinian group Hamas.
“You know, losing 14 members of your family is extremely hard,” Enchassi said. “So she was shaking, and her voice was breaking, and it affects everybody’s heart.”
The teen’s “generous act of humanity and humility made me think of stories my father told me before our family was forced to flee Palestine,” the imam wrote in an oped in Good Faith Media, a Baptist website that explores “the intersection of faith and culture through an inclusive Christian lens.”
Enchassi’s grandfather was a businessman and property owner who gave shelter to many Jews during World War II who fled to Palestine: to “our shared holy land, to escape bigotry, persecution and murder.”
“It is a myth that Jews and Muslims have always been at odds,” Enchassi wrote, pointing out that Muslims, Christians and Jews have largely lived in peace for centuries in the Middle East.
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