It all started six years ago. Elhanan Miller, a graduate in Middle Eastern studies and a fluent Arabic speaker, was invited by the "Judor Shorashim" organization to lecture to Palestinians living in the Gush Etzion area (south of Jerusalem) on the basics of Judaism, in Arabic, and to Jews living in the same area on the basics of Islam, in Hebrew. Miller prepared a series of lessons dealing with the theological foundations of each religion, but quickly discovered that the Palestinian residents of the area were more interested in everyday questions: What are Jews allowed to eat, and what may they not? What are the black boxes on their heads? What are the kippah and tallit for, what do they do on Shabbat, what happens at Jewish weddings, and what are the Jews’ mourning customs? Their curiosity to understand the Jewish way of life was so great that the lessons evolved into a series of questions and answers with a bit of theology thrown in. Miller realized that if people living side by side with Jews do not have a reliable source of information in Arabic, then it is likely that many of the 600 million other Arabs in the world, and 1.8 billion Muslims, are also bothered by these questions but have no reliable way to find answers.

This prompted Miller to establish what has become his life’s project: People of the Book. The project is based on innovative animated videos regularly released on media platforms, each of which explains, in Arabic, a Jewish topic: Shabbat, rules of kashrut, fasts, purity, prayers, holidays. Within a short time, the project’s YouTube channel has achieved enormous success: four million views for each video and close to a hundred thousand registered subscribers, a third of whom live in Saudi Arabia.

Miller has expanded and moved on to deal with other topics in his videos. He filmed himself discussing the similarity between the Koran and the Torah, and between the foundations of the Jewish and Muslim faiths. He has also interviewed dozens of Jews from around the world who are fluent Arabic speakers. In the videos, they talk about their experiences and memories from their Arab countries of origin. The reactions to these videos have been enthusiastic: many viewers were surprised to hear Jewish memories shared in their local Arabic dialect.

Miller, who was ordained as a rabbi a few years ago, sees himself as an educator. In an interview with the newspaper Makor Rishon he described his goals in creating the project: 

"The first goal is educational, the idea was to educate the wider Muslim world about Judaism. The second goal was more limited: building peace, where the main target audience is Palestinian. This idea is in the background; in the videos I try to distance myself as much as possible from the political conflict and Israel. The viewers know that I am Israeli, and that is how I present myself. I speak using my hat as a Jew who also lives in Israel, and show what things can unite us with Islam. Food, for example, is a topic that has importance in both religions, and it shows how similar our cultural and religious heritage is —the same with subjects like prayer, clothing, fasting and Shabbat. So there is a shared infrastructure.”

Miller continues his educational work. He gives lectures, to both Arab and Jewish audiences, and teaches spoken Arabic. Although the content of the videos is at a high level and intended for adults, the beautiful illustrations also open the videos to a younger audience. We contacted Miller to ask him about his educational work among young people and students. "According to YouTube usage data, 35% of my viewers are under the age of 24, hundreds of them are between the age of 13-17." Sometimes young people from Arab countries contact him, asking questions and telling him about their interest in understanding Judaism; “I know that teachers are using my videos regularly in their classes.”

"From the responses that reach me, I see that the videos create cognitive dissonance, and confuse the viewers. The dissonance stems from the fact that quite a few of the viewers grew up in an environment where most of the time they were told negative things about Jews, and this is what they absorbed from their religion, their education system, and their media. They see something they didn't know existed at all - a Jew wearing a kippah who speaks to them in fluent Arabic and quotes verses from the Koran, and comes across as a nice person. There are those who are afraid of me and think that I am a Mossad agent, and there are also those who curse me. On the other hand, I get responses from people who say that this is the first time they have been exposed to Judaism and hear the Jewish story from a qualified source, and in my eyes these reactions are worth all the effort."

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