c. 2005 Religion News Service

THORNHILL, Ontario _“Parking is the key to world peace,” the rabbi says with a chuckle. “We have an unmanned border.”

It’s obvious he has a well-rehearsed arsenal of quips at the ready, and uses them to describe the landscape outside the window of his synagogue on a recent frigid morning north of Toronto.

“It’s a passage with no checkpoints,” he throws in for good measure.

No more than 40 yards away, the robed, turbaned and bearded imam sitting in his mosque’s book-lined study offers a less colorful take.

“The best way to describe it is just good neighborly relations,” he says in a measured voice. “I think it’s quite a natural thing.”

Perhaps so in this bedroom suburb of Thornhill. But when the Ja’ffari Islamic Centre opened in 1979 to serve Toronto’s burgeoning Muslim population, the fact that it shared its parking lot with Temple Har Zion next door _ and vice versa _ was news.

The synagogue-mosque parking area has become something of a landmark in Toronto. It is the subject of ongoing curiosity and even pilgrimages by proponents of Muslim-Jewish dialogue.

In an arrangement that might be unique in the world, the next-door neighbors not only accept each other’s spillover parking on their respective holy days, they also have a short roadway connecting the properties in the rear, allowing vehicles to zip across the “unmanned border” without the bother of leaving the lots.

The symbolism is plain: It’s a path to lasting friendship and partnership between the communities.

The congregations alert each other to upcoming religious functions to avoid parking problems in the 200-car lots.

“They don’t park in our lot on Yom Kippur and we don’t park in theirs on Ramadan,” explains Rabbi Michael Stroh, the Reform synagogue’s spiritual leader for the past 34 years. “Other than that, it’s pretty open.”

To make matters even more ecumenical, there’s a beautifully ornate Chinese Buddhist temple on the other side of the mosque, while Toronto’s sole Zoroastrian temple is all but hidden in a thicket of trees just down the street. Local wags call the famous stretch along Bayview Avenue a religious shopping mall.

There is even a movie about the famous parking arrangement, a 1994 Canadian short titled _ what else? _ “A Lot to Share.”

In November, the two houses of worship were the recipients of the annual Harmony Award, bestowed by the National Movement for Harmony in Canada. Canada’s Minister of Justice, Irwin Cotler, a one-time powerhouse in the country’s Jewish community, lauded the partnership as “the voice and vision of civil society, and a common front against racism.”

Both communities tend to use the same words to describe their relations: cordial and amicable. “Coexistence” also is heard a lot. That has been sufficient in these parts for the past 25 years, considering the bloody conflicts between Jews and Muslims elsewhere.

“As religious groups, we’re both vulnerable,” Stroh says. “There are always moments of international tension when we need to stand by each other.

“We’re in Canada, not in the Middle East, and we don’t want that kind of antagonism here. We need to cooperate with each other and not kill each other.”

Nodding toward the mosque, he adds: “They recognize we have political differences. But they have a desire to be Canadian Muslims.”

The mosque’s Iranian-trained imam, Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi, is on the same page.

“We have our political views and they have theirs. But that doesn’t prevent us from having neighborly relations,” says Rizvi, who has guided the mosque for nine years. “We don’t discuss politics.”

But the dark side of politics isn’t ignored.

Last spring, when a mosque outside Toronto was vandalized and a Montreal Jewish day school was firebombed, Har Zion and the Islamic Centre quickly issued a statement of condemnation and made joint financial donations. Similar actions followed a spate of anti-Semitic vandalism in and around Toronto last year.

The facilities are jointly involved in Toronto’s Out of the Cold program, which shelters the homeless for a night, and they also take part in an interfaith initiative called Mosaic.

They have hosted programs to help the temple’s 600 families and the mosque’s 5,000 members get to know each other. Joint programs have explored marriage and divorce, and circumcision in both traditions. Each congregation has welcomed the other’s president.

While there have been rare moments of tension in the shared lots, all involving criticism of driving skills _ no barbs of a religious nature are known to have been exchanged. The setup has brought the congregations closer together, Stroh says.

“It’s led to further cooperation; now, we pay for security together,” he says.

The heightened awareness actually started during the first Gulf War, when the mosque and temple started looking out for each other. In the wake of Sept. 11, they decided it would be prudent to hire a security guard to monitor their properties.

Volunteers direct traffic on days when both need parking.

Privately, some members of the temple say one reason for the lack of tension is that the mosque members aren’t Palestinians or Arabs. They consist mainly of Asians and ethnic Indians who migrated to East Africa and then Canada.

As for the vehicular arrangement, “It was the city’s idea,” Stroh says. “They were worried about parking and congestion when the mosque was being built. They wouldn’t approve the construction (of the mosque) unless we’d agree to share lots. Our first building had gone up in 1974, and it had just been renovated in 1978, so it was a good deal for both of us.

“We’ve been cooperating ever since.”

MO/RB END RNS