FAYETTEVILLE — When the congregation at Fayetteville’s Temple Shalom began looking for a new home in 2006, its members had no idea that their story would become an international sensation.
The story of how a Palestinian-American named Fadil Bayyari helped Northwest Arkansas’ only Jewish community build a synagogue is the subject of a 25-minute documentary, the aptly-titled Temple of Peace, by University of Arkansas graduate student Hayot Tuychiev.
The story began when the then-25-year-old Jewish community started searching for a permanent home. The group had been leasing a former fraternity house at the University of Arkansas formany years. The temple, which now includes about 60 families, had outgrown the house on Fayetteville’s Storer Street.
“We had tried to get into a Fay Jones house, the Butterfly House, on Rockwood Trail,” says Jeremy Hess, construction director of Temple Shalom. “We’d actually signed a contract subject to getting zoning approval from the city of Fayetteville.”
But the congregation’s plans were opposed by residents of the neighborhood who worried that the temple would not have enough space for parking.
“We decided if we really weren’t wanted there, it wasn’t worth the fight, that we would just go someplace else,” Hess says.
The story made headlines afterthe Fayetteville Planning Commission denied the church’s request for rezoning, catching the attention of Springdale contractor Fadil Bayyari.
“I was reading the paper one day just after they started talking about moving their temple to Mount Sequoyah,” Bayyari says. “It kind of disheartened me because I thought, ‘Well, this is a place of worship. Why should these people be opposed to it?’”
Bayyari approached Temple Shalom member and friend Ralph Nesson about helping the congregation build a new synagogue.
“They are a small congregation just like the Muslim congregation,” Bayyari says. “I have seen our people struggle here putting together a place of worship.”
Bayyari, Hess and Nessonheld their first meeting in 2007 at the Olive Garden restaurant in Fayetteville. Bayyari would offer labor, equipment and contracting services to Temple Shalom, as well as providing some materials at cost. Tuychiev estimates the total services provided by Bayyari Construction were worth $200,000.
Once the building process began in 2007 on Fayetteville’s Sang Avenue, local newspapers as well as the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times came to Fayetteville to interview Bayyari and Hess. So did Tuychiev, a graduate student from Uzbekistan who was encouraged by UA English professor Mohja Kahf to make a film of the story.
For two years Tuychiev followed the construction project, from groundbreaking to dedication, filming Bayyari and Hess at the building site, in meetings, at fundraisers for the synagogue, during worship services and at home.
The filmmaker interlaces these scenes with interviews with members of the Muslim and Jewish communities, as well as religious leaders such as the Rev. Lowell Grisham of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and Middle Eastern scholar and UA professor Joel Gordon. The result is sometimes a point-counterpoint discussion between those like Grisham who believe the building process is the first step toward a greater harmony and peace for all religions, and those like Gordon who see the story as just a single random act of kindness by Bayyari. Tuychiev doesn’t draw conclusions but leaves it up to viewers to judge.
Temple of Peace premiered Oct. 11 at the Fayetteville Public Library and has since been screened on UATV, the University of Arkansas’ student-run TV station. The film is now part of the UA Libraries collection, and Tuychiev says Fayetteville’s Omni Center has expressed an interest in screening it.
For their parts, Bayyari and Hess have forged a strong friendship they both say is more important than Muslim-Jewish relations worldwide or any arguments about the importance of the project.
“Fadil and I have always said we are much more similar than we are different,” Hesssays.
Their friendship has spawned a nonprofit organization called Faith to Faith, designed to help people of all religions learn more about other ethnic and religious groups.
“We’re trying to promote programs where people can study the New Testament, the Old Testament, the Koran and the Torah,” Hess says, “because the more you know the less likely you are to hate.”
As for the film, Bayyari, Hess and Tuychiev hope that one day it will be shown on AETN, by nonprofits seeking to promote peace and at documentary film festivals around the country.
“I had a family in California e-mail me and ask me how to get in touch with Hayot,” Bayyari says. “It’s on Facebook and YouTube.”
“I’m glad Hayot put it on film,” Bayyari says. “I think it portrays the good side of human beings.”
Style, Pages 55 on 11/21/2010