The newspapers are well prepared. Some warn of trouble to come; others run ads designed to prevent it. Many organizations, especially those devoted to promoting Jewish-Arab coexistence, have mobilized for the mission. All fear the highly sensitive encounter between the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, and the Muslim and Druze Feast of the Sacrifice, Eid al-Adha. Both fall on this coming Saturday, Oct. 4, and each is considered the holiest day of their respective faiths. While Jews fast and walk to the synagogue to ask for forgiveness and atone for their sins, Muslims and Druze mark the day by eating, singing and dancing.

Many fear that these displays of religious fervor will deteriorate into an emotional and explosive encounter between Jewish worshipers and Muslim celebrants. The ads published in the media virtually beg believers to conduct themselves with restraint and tolerance. A major ad by the New Israel Fund, the Abraham Fund Initiatives and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung foundation read, “We call on the Jewish public to recognize the needs of those of the Muslim faith to perform the rites of their holy day. We call on the Muslim public to celebrate with sensitivity and consideration of the Jewish public. This day could be an exemplary model of coexistence, tolerance and mutual respect.” The ad ran in Hebrew and Arabic.

While Jews fast and suffer to atone for their daily sins with prayers, totally abstaining from activities, Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha to mark the sacrificing of Isaac by his father, our patriarch Abraham. Asceticism and suffering will contrast with a hedonistic celebration of food and music. Often, in certain towns and villages, everything takes place in close proximity. On Sept. 27, the veteran Israeli-Arab journalist Zoher Bahalul issued a plea to believers among both peoples to control themselves during the sensitive encounter between their two holidays. Bahalul appealed to believers in Haaretz, “The egos, animosity and exclusion must be set aside to enable reason to prevail on both sides,” He added that, for instance, Arabs could hold “low-key celebrations and celebrate within their neighborhoods, avoiding flashy driving.”

Bahalul was referring to the violent incident between Jews and Muslims on the eve of Yom Kippur in 2008. Late that evening, after Jewish worshipers returned to their homes to sleep ahead of the following day’s prayers, Acre resident Tawfiq Jamal made his way to his home in the Wolfson neighborhood. He drove past residential buildings as he did every night. The neighborhood had become mixed, with Jews and Arabs living peacefully and even amicably side by side, sometimes across the hall from each other. Perhaps out of carelessness and perhaps deliberately, Jamal turned up the volume on his car radio so far that it shook the neighborhood. Loud Arab music on the evening of Yom Kippur — the Jewish residents were shocked at this flagrant sacrilege. Some burst out of their homes and attacked the young Arab. They beat him until he managed to flee for his life. He told his friends what had happened and shortly thereafter, toward midnight, hundreds of Arab youths showed up in the neighborhood and torched cars. Within minutes, a riot erupted in the neighborhood and spread to others in Acre.