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Last Thursday, a delegation of rabbis joined Adnan Oktar, a prominent Turkish Muslim cleric, at the Çırağan Palace Ballroom in Istanbul for his traditional iftar feast ending a day of fasting during Ramadan. More than 750 people from different religions and nationalities, including Jewish and Christian clergy and lay leaders, joined Oktar for the annual event hosted by Oktar’s organization, the Movement for the Culture of Peace and Reconciliation.
The guest list included a number of illustrious attendees, several of them Israeli: the chief rabbi of the city of Shoham, Rabbi David Stav; retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Israel Rabbi Abraham Sherman; Anglican priest Todd William Kissam from Maryland; and Co-Chairman of the Muslim–Jewish Friendship Organization in France, Imam Mohamed Azizi. Rabbi Yishai Fleisher, International Spokesman for the Jewish Community in Hebron, was also present. He praised Oktar’s multicultural effort, saying, “I think that by you bringing us here today to Istanbul, you are part of that vision of connecting the peoples of the Middle East.”
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