JTA — Six months after first sitting down with Dr. David Hasan for a meal, Rabbi Daniel Greyber returned to the table on Tuesday — this time bringing congregants from his synagogue to support Hasan’s work helping children in Gaza.

So many members of Beth El Synagogue wanted to attend the fundraiser at the Palestinian-owned Mediterranean Deli in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that the Conservative congregation asked them to sign up for shifts.

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 the Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical and disaster service, after the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023. The congregation also supported 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.

For the rabbi, the groundwork for the fundraiser was laid last fall, when he met Hasan at a Sukkot dinner hosted by Sophia Chitlik, a Jewish Democratic North Carolina state senator.

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 Times of Israel