Explaining the apparent thirst in the Arab world for understanding more about Israel and Judaism, he says: “I don't think Jews and Muslims exactly spend very much time these days speaking or interacting culturally, unfortunately, at least in Israel, so there are a lot of misconceptions about what we really believe.”
Rabbi Elhanan Miller on Sky Arabic[Missing Credit]
From the beginning of his university education in Islamic Studies, Miller saw that the Quran “is basically a polemic when it comes to Judaism” and, without any other sources of information about it, “Jewish peoplehood and the state of Israel as modern phenomena are still very much obscure and unknown to the Arab world.”
His initial aim with People of the Book was to teach solely the religious aspects of Judaism via ‘Ask the Rabbi’ explainer videos on YouTube, detailing the doctrinal similarities and differences with Islam and putting to rest some of the most egregious misconceptions about Jews that he noticed as originating from the Quran – one of which is that Judaism is a “secretive” religion that hides its true beliefs.
“I think my audience didn't really get what I was trying to do at the beginning. For Muslims, the idea of teaching a religion for purely intellectual reasons is something of a curiosity, because Judaism is not a prosyletising religion, and I'm not trying to convert them to Judaism,” he said. “Some people thought that I was a sort of spy or agent working nefariously to penetrate the Arab world.”
It was partly for this reason Miller was keen to avoid politics, and certainly to avoid “hasbara” or Israel advocacy, which he intuited would alienate a significant portion of his Arab audience.
“I never received one cent of funding from Israel, so I'm very much independent of the country,” Miller said.
But the online educational project has expanded since October 7 to include more than just religious lessons. By day, Miller had become something of a political analyst for mainstream Arab media outlets like BBC Arabic and Sky News Arabic, while by night, “I would be the rabbi talking about religious and spiritual stuff.” It was impossible to pretend his lessons were taking place in a political vacuum, so Miller began creating videos on Jewish peoplehood and stories of migration from the Arab world, often taking his camera with him to different countries and interviewing, in Arabic, “Jews as well as Arabs who have an interesting story to tell”.
And so, during a time of near-total polarisation between Israel and the Arab world, Miller was, miraculously, breaking through.
“I'm a big believer in the power of language to bridge cultures and especially to enable peace building,” he said. “My largest viewership on YouTube is in Saudi Arabia, then Iraq, Syria, Algeria - these are all countries that don't have diplomatic relations with Israel and that I can't visit as an Israeli, yet my face and my voice are present in these countries on people's mobile phones and computers. The idea that people can watch me and interact with me and speak to me and write to me from these places really excites and encourages me.”
The benefits of the project can go both ways, Miller believes, especially for Jewish Israeli society, where “there's a lot of taboo around the Arabic language, and especially around Mizrachi Jews who grew up speaking Arabic in the early days of the state.” One way to remedy this, in the spirit of bridge-building, would be for all Israelis to learn Arabic.
“I think, even without making political concessions, teaching all Israeli Jews Arabic would be a huge step forward in peace building and in Israel's integration into the Middle East,” Miller said. “In a way, my knowledge of Arabic puts me at a certain advantage, because it gives me a certain professional edge that most Israeli Jews don't have - but I kind of wish I would lose that edge if that would mean that more Israelis were bilingual Hebrew-Arabic speakers.”
While Miller said he hasn't faced any backlash from the Israeli side against People of the Book, it’s not been a totally open-armed welcome from the Arab side.
"There's always abuse, and from the very beginning, there's been a lot of negativity,” he said.
”I even had to shut my Facebook page to comments for a couple months at the beginning of the war following October 7."
Rabbi Miller at home (Photo: Gidi Boaz)[Missing Credit]
Altogether, working on People of the Book has given Miller cause for both pessimism and optimism; to the former, he attributes the difficulty faced by young people from the Arab world to freely and openly express themselves, many having to flee because “they couldn't really exist as open-minded, questioning citizens of Yemen or Egypt or Gaza with curiosity about Jews and Israel.”
As for the latter, Miller said he sees the Arab world undergoing promising shifts, which are helped along by the spread of information through social media.
"The internet actually makes me very optimistic that the barriers and walls that used to exist between Israel and the Arab world, which were impenetrable when there was just mainstream media and official TV channels and newspapers that controlled the narrative, today, that's been completely destroyed by social media, so I have much more power now as an Israeli citizen to affect and influence millions of people, and to reach viewers I would never have reached otherwise.”
But Miller’s big dream for People of the Book is, over time, for it to break through the confines of alternative media and hopefully one day “find its way into a respectable Arabic speaking channel that has lots of viewers across the Arab world.” And maybe, just maybe, end up in actual Arab classrooms, where the next generation can learn about Judaism, in Arabic, from an Israeli. No censorship needed.
