ROUND ROCK, Texas — On Christmas Day, two religious groups that don’t typically celebrate the Christmas holiday will gather to break bread.
For more than a dozen years, members of the Jewish and Muslim communities in Austin have joined each other for Chinese food on the holiday. It started as an interfaith community service project for Habitat for Humanity before becoming an annual lunch.
For Jews and Muslims, Chinese food on Christmas is as much a holiday tradition as Santa Claus.
“The tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas or Christmas Day is long and storied,” Neil Blumofe, the Senior Rabbi at Congregation Agudas Achim, said. “We’ve tried, particularly after 2001 and then in later efforts, things ebb and flow, to join in with folks interested in sharing this tradition with us.”
Often, Chinese food is the only thing open on Christmas Day. For the last 13 years, it has been a vessel for Austin’s Jewish and Muslim communities to bond.
“It was a nice opportunity for us to get together when everything else was closed and to break bread together, and the bonds of friendship have blossomed over the last 12-13 years,” organizer Zafar Choudhury said.
Members of both faiths put their differences aside for three to four hours to get to know each other.
“Dialogue is critical, engaging one’s neighbor and recognizing the similarities and the common dreams that we may have,” Blumofe said.
“Despite all the political rhetoric, all the jargon, despite all what we see in the news media, at the end of the day, these are human beings,” Choudhury said. “They all want the same thing. They want peace for each other. They want love and respect. They want the same thing for their families as anybody else and their children and the next generation.”
The interfaith bridge-building event has become known as the Muslims and Jews Christmas Day Lunch.
“I think it gives hope in a world where finding hope is few and far between because there’s so much banter, there’s so much rhetoric, there’s so much noise that’s out there,” Choudhury said. “You see a ray of hope that OK, these are people who are Orthodox Jews, Reformed Jews, Orthodox Muslims, liberal Muslims and conservatives and others all getting together and putting their differences aside.”
The faith groups are bridging divides and forging new bonds by breaking bread.
“We just want people to look beyond their faith, the politics,” Choudhury said. “Don’t listen to the rhetoric. Don’t listen to the extremist forces on both sides.”
“Around this time when love and fellowship are in the air when hopefully, people are thinking about the betterment of each other and the neighbors, I think it’s essential that we make a concerted effort to reach out to friends who may not be seen, or people with whom we may have had difficulty over the years, and have an opportunity to enjoy some time together,” Blumofe said. “Breaking bread is a charming way of engaging people seeing each other and hopefully relaxing while still processing things that need to be processed.”
The annual event has fostered harmony and respect between the two groups and has led to significant progress in helping the faith communities build bridges.
“It has gone a long way to promote fellowship and friendships and to root us in hopefully good cheer at this season when otherwise conversations might be much more difficult,” Blumofe said.
Choudhury said the event has taken on a new level of importance in recent years after Hamas launched attacks on Israel in 2021, sparking a conflict in Gaza that has spilled over into other Middle Eastern countries and is still raging today.
The attacks on Oct. 7 led to an all-out war between Israel and Hamas. In the past year, more than 40,000 people, many civilians, have been killed in Gaza. The attacks across Israel killed 1,200 people, and 250 more were taken hostage.
“Especially when conflict is raging, and forces are conspiring to pull us all apart, we need to double our efforts to be friends and to connect and build thicker friendships that can withstand any difficulty,” Blumofe said.
In recent years, there has also been a massive increase in antisemitism since the Hamas attack on Israel. A recent report put together by the Texas Holocaust, Genocide and Antisemitism Advisory Commission found that incidents of antisemitism and hatred toward Jewish people in Texas nearly doubled between 2022 and 2023 and have remained at elevated levels for the first several months of this year.
According to the Secure Community Network, incidents spiked from the single digits in 2018 and 2019 to 97 in 2022, 187 in 2023, and 138 through the first nine months of 2024.
Choudhury said in light of the antisemitism surge around the world, it is essential to come together and show solidarity.
“That sort of solidarity only happens when you bring everyone together and have that understanding of peace and harmony and respect for one another,” he said.
The event started with just a few families but grew to a couple of hundred people. Last year, they had about 75, and organizers are expecting about 55 people to show up on Wednesday.
“People see this event as an event of hope, as an event where people can come together and build bridges of peace and understanding,” Choudhury said.
Choudhury said it may be a small victory here in Austin, but he hopes scenes like this of Jews, Muslims, Christians. And other non-denominational folks sitting down and breaking bread together can spread far beyond.
“It’ll help plant the seeds of peace, friendship, and understanding not just here in the US but also overseas,” he said.
“In Austin, we can set a lovely tone for what is possible and be an example to other communities out there,” Blumofe said. “I think, when everything comes down to it, we’re looking out for the betterment of each other, and we do care about each other, even though rhetoric and other things may get in the way.”
The community meal is open to everyone, not just Jews and Muslims.
It will take place from 11:30 to 2:30 at the Bamboo Garden Restaurant in Round Rock. Both faith groups hope to hold more interfaith events in the future that involve community service.
“We want to see us building houses together. We want to see us feeding the homeless together,” Choudhury said. “We want to see us visiting the sick and nursing homes together.”
You can learn more about the Muslims and Jews Christmas Day Lunch here.