Peace in Our Schools Promotes Interfaith Dialogue in Jakarta, Indonesia

As I entered the room packed with young Muslim students in Indonesia, my colleague leaned over to me and said, “You are the first Jewish person they will ever meet.”  

My trip to Indonesia was part of my Peace in Our Schools program, an interfaith dialogue project supported by the World Jewish Congress start-up style incubator, NextGenInc. I developed this program with my fellow UN Youth Delegate from Afghanistan, Ramiz Bakhtiar. Together, we work with Jewish and Muslim students in Georgia, Bosnia, Canada, and Indonesia, delivering training on conflict resolution and interfaith peacebuilding.  

While leaving the United States en route to the largest Muslim country in the world, I had a moment of realization. I, a young Jewish woman with a belief in peace and reconciliation, was going completely alone to a majority-Muslim country in which Jews have struggled to make their mark. Bringing young people into the global conversation around multicultural understanding and peacebuilding is challenging. Still, I built my organization to do the hard work.  

When I arrived in Indonesia, my hosts took me to Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia, introducing me to their country. To my amazement, I did not see an isolated community of worshippers; I saw two churches on both sides of the massive mosque. The warmth only surpassed the beauty of the buildings when speaking with Indonesians of all backgrounds. At that moment, I saw the potential for more good work in the country, filling me with hope and the belief that a better world is possible. 

In the days that followed, my lectures unpacked the ways to develop these friendships, and how we can build a better, more connected world by respecting each other. We talked about emotional charges of hatred, and how antisemitism and Islamophobia can be explained through the same perspectives of psychology. In between work, the students and I laughed, shared meals, and formed friendships. Now I can proudly say that I have over one hundred new Muslim friends, and 100 Indonesian students now can say they have a Jewish friend. In this, I found something beautiful. This exchange of ideas is the glue that can hold together our alliances and build, sometimes from nothing, a relationship between people of different faiths and backgrounds.  

In a world fraught with conflict, war, and discrimination, my trip to Indonesia was a reminder that at our best, all humans are peacekeepers. We, as Jews, understand the need for a change in the status quo; the antisemitism we experience in our own lives brings us to champion the causes of peace and security, knowing that we can lead the global conversation around an end to all forms of discrimination everywhere. 

Ms. Lika Torikashvili currently serves as a co-Director of the E-Learning Center in Kabul, Afghanistan, and a Co-Founder of the interfaith dialogue educational platform, Peace in Our Schools, supported by the World Jewish Congress’s NextGen incubator.